INTRODUCTORY

(i) JESUS CHRIST, GOD AND MAN


_I and My Father are one_.--JOHN X. 30.

_My Father is greater than I_.--JOHN XIV. 20.


The mysteries of the Church, a materialistic scientist once announced to
an astonished world, are child's play compared with the mysteries of
nature.[1] He was completely wrong, of course, yet there was every
excuse for his mistake. For, as he himself tells us in effect, he found
everywhere in that created nature which he knew so well, anomaly piled
on anomaly and paradox on paradox, and he knew no more of theology than
its simpler and more explicit statements.

[Footnote 1: Professor Huxley.]

We can be certain therefore--we who understand that the mysteries of
nature are, after all, within the limited circle of created life, while
the mysteries of grace run up into the supreme Mystery of the eternal
and uncreated Life of God--we can be certain that, if nature is
mysterious and paradoxical, grace will be incalculably more mysterious.
For every paradox in the world of matter, in whose environment our
bodies are confined, we shall find a hundred in that atmosphere of