every created thing is in this sense a mystery, the word
mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be
applied to light. The God in whom we believe is a God of moral truth,
and not of mystery. Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of
human invention that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.

Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of
moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery. The belief of a God,
so far from having anything of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most
easy, becauses it arises to us out of necessity. And the practice of
moral truth, or, in other words, a practical imitation of the goodness
of God, is no other than our acting towards each other as he acts
benignly towards all.

When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of religion
incompatible with the word or works of God in the creation, they were
under the necessity of inventing or adopting a word that should serve as
a bar to all inquiries and speculations. The word "mystery" answered
this purpose, and thus it has happened that religion, which in itself is
without mystery, has been corrupted into a fog of mysteries.

As mystery answered all general purposes, "miracle" followed as an
occasional auxiliary. Of all the modes of evidence that ever were
invented to obtain belief to any system or opinion to which the name of
religion has been given, that of miracle is the most inconsistent. For,
in the first place, whenever recourse is had to show, for the purpose of
procuring that belief, it implies a lameness or weakness in the doctrine
that is preached. And, in the second place, it is degrading the Almighty
into the character of a showman, playing tricks to amuse and make the
people stare and wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of evidence
that can be set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the thing
called a miracle, but upon the credit of the reporter who says that he
saw it; and therefore the thing, were it true, would have no better
chance of being believed than if it were a lie.

As mystery and miracle took charge of the past and the present, prophecy
took charge of the future, and rounded the tenses of faith. The original
meaning of the words "prophet" and "prophesying" has been changed, the
Old Testament prophets were simply poets and musicians. It is owing to
this change in the meaning of the words that the flights and metaphors
of th