A second question is now propounded respecting the Christian Gospel.
"The Gospel of Christ" is spoken of in a connection which seems to
indicate that Luther and Augustine were equally, in the writer's
opinion, the setters forth of a "gospel." Is this an unintentional
disclosure of his estimate of our blessed Lord,--"Rabbi, we know that
Thou art a teacher come from God," and no more than that? For the eighth
Letter contains a sneer at the Gospel that He is our Advocate with the
Father, as one to mend the world with. A confused question follows,
which may mean either, that it is in the first place desirable that the
Gospel should be put into plain words, or, that the first principles of
the Gospel should be put into plain words. Its probable meaning is, "Is
it not desirable that religious teaching should be divested of any
mysteries?" The extraordinary supposition that the Gospel is intended to
be set forth in the Thirty-nine Articles can only be equalled by a
supposition that a treatise on military tactics is embodied in the
Articles of War. Perhaps even some of the axiomatic principles of
mathematics, such as that "a point is that which hath no parts," though
laid down in "plain words and short terms," might sorely perplex "simple
persons."
But several fallacies underlie this second question. The fallacy that
the moral principles of our nature are necessarily connected with the
extent of our intellectual capacities; the fallacy that Divine Truths
can be adequately expressed through the inaccurate instrument of human
language; the fallacy that deep things are necessarily made plain by the
use of plain words; the fallacy that everything upon which we act is
necessarily understood. A plain man does not refuse to use the telegraph
because he may know nothing about the Correlation of Force, or a simple
person to travel because "space" is beyond his comprehension. If the
Gospel is, as St. Paul says it is, a revelation of the power of God unto
salvation, an amount of mystery must necessarily surround it. Since it
is impossible that the Divine Nature should be to us other than a
mystery, a revelation of Divine purposes such as is the Gospel as
understood by the Church, must remain mysterious also. Only upon the
supposition that our Lord was the teacher of a high but still human
morality can we remove all mystery from the Christian Gospel, if it
still deserve the name. Such teaching might be conveyed in plain words
and short terms, but it would cease to be a Gospel which angels desire
to look into, and could hardly be described as the "manifold wisdom of
God," or be the story of the "love of Christ, which passeth knowledge."
The Gospel, as the Church understands it, rests upon the revealed fact
of the Incarnation, or the union of the Infinite with the Finite, that
He who is very God of very God became man in order to introduce the
Divine possibility of manhood being made to partake of the Divine
nature; and so long as the triumphal chant ascends that "the Catholic
Faith is this," so long will the Church's Faith be veiled indeed with
mystery, and so long will she continue to gather within her bounds the
humble and holy men of heart, who are content to say, "I cannot
understand: I love." That "God sent His only-begotten Son into the
world that we might live through Him" are short and plain words enough,
and Gospel enough, surely, but the depth of their meaning is
unfathomable by even the most cultivated understanding, to which the
power of God and the wisdom of God may appear to be but foolishness.