Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/429

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MYSTERY.
421

From mad dogs and grumbling professors may we all be delivered, and may we never take the complaint from either of them.


MYSTERY.

Whoever believes in a God at all, believes in an infinite mystery; and if the existence of God is such an infinite mystery, we can very well expect and afford to have many of His ways mysterious to us.


There is no religion without mysteries. God Himself is the great secret of Nature.


Where is the subject that does not branch out into infinity?


For every grain of sand is a mystery; so is every daisy in summer, and so is every snow-flake in winter. Both upwards and downwards, and all around us, science and speculation pass into mystery at last.


Augustine, the father of theologians, was walking on the ocean shore and pondering over the truth, "three distinct persons, not separate, but distinct; and yet but one God;" and he came upon a little boy that was playing with a colored seashell, scooping a hole in the sand, and then going down to the waves and getting his shell full of water and putting it into the hole. Augustine said, "What are you doing, my little fellow?" The boy replied, "I am going to pour the sea into that hole." "Ah," said Augustine, "that is what I have been attempting. Standing at the ocean of infinity, I have attempted to grasp it with my finite mind."