_Job 11:7--_"Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" _Rom. 11:33--_"how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" Every doctrine, therefore, has its inexplicable side. Here is the proper meaning of Tertullian's sayings: "Certum est, quia impossible est: quo absurdius, eo verius"; that of Anselm: "Credo, ut intelligam"; and that of Abelard: "Qui credit cito, levis corde est." Drummond, Nat. Law in Spir. World: "A science without mystery is unknown; a religion without mystery is absurd." E. G. Robinson: "A finite being cannot grasp even its own relations to the Infinite." Hovey, Manual of Christ. Theol., 7--"To infer from the perfection of God that all his works [nature, man, inspiration] will be absolutely and unchangeably perfect: to infer from the perfect love of God that there can be no sin or suffering in the world; to infer from the sovereignty of God that man is not a free moral agent;--all these inferences are rash; they are inferences from the cause to the effect, while the cause is imperfectly known." See Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 491; Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, 22.
(_b_) _In the imperfect state of science, both natural and metaphysical._ This gives rise to a class of accidental mysteries, or mysteries which consist in the apparently irreconcilable nature of truths, which, taken separately, are perfectly comprehensible.
We are the victims of a mental or moral astigmatism, which sees a _single_ point of truth as _two_. We see God and man, divine sovereignty and human freedom, Christ's divine nature and Christ's human nature, the natural and the supernatural, respectively, as two disconnected facts, when perhaps deeper insight would see but one. Astronomy has its centripetal and centrifugal forces, yet they are doubtless one force. The child cannot hold two oranges at once in its little hand. Negro preacher: "You can't carry two watermelons under one arm." Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 1:2--"In nature's infinite book of secresy, A little I can read." Cooke, Credentials of Science, 34--"Man's progress in knowledge has been so constantly and rapidly accelerated that more has been gained during the lifetime of men still living than during all human history before." And yet we may say with D'Arcy, Idealism and Theology, 248--"Man's position in the universe is eccentric. God alone is at the centre. To him alone is the orbit of truth completely displayed.... There are circumstances in which to us the onward movement of truth may seem a retrogression." William Watson, Collected Poems, 271--"Think not thy wisdom can illume away The ancient tanglement of night and day. Enough to acknowledge both, and both revere: They see not clearliest who see all things clear."