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In our dealing with our fellow-men we resent reserve, secrecy, isolation, almost as sharply as though they were moral transgressions. We are attracted by frankness. The best hated men the world has had in it have always been men of silence. Mystery is one of the arts of crafty ambition, for the silly world is generally ready to accept silence for wisdom. Men cultivate the habit of concealment, so that they may pass themselves off for better than they really are. But reserve is not always ignoble. Strong, and noble, and unselfish qualities sometimes determine a man's silence. The welfare of an empire may sometimes turn upon the power a statesman has of keeping the counsel of a department. There are reservations in the knowledge that God has given us of His own nature, purpose, and government; but these reservations always rest upon motives that are pure, noble, and holy, and are identified with the highest glory of the Divine character. No mystery is meant to alienate us from God, but to attach us in closer bonds. It is needless to define the area of mystery, if indeed that were possible. It starts in God, and covers the last outlying atom of His dominion.

1. There are mysteries in the Divine nature and government that bear direct witness to the glory of God's person. The silence He maintains is a sign of His self-sufficiency. As a matter of privilege, God may permit us to enter into sympathy and co-operation with Himself and His work. But He does not need our help, and by the stern reserve in His revelations He asserts the separateness and the sufficiency of His own mighty power. If He employ us at all, it is for our good. His power is separate, sufficient, solitary. God conceals many things, to remind us of the gulf that separates the glory of His nature from the dimness of all finite natures. Man is destined to more exalted and intimate communion with his Maker than any other being in the universe, and yet there are limitations upon his privilege necessitated by the very supremacy of God. There are secrets we cannot enter, counsels we cannot share, age-long problems, the solution of which we are not permitted to see. God conceals many things, so that throughout the successive stages of our destiny He may bring into our contemplation of His nature and works elements of inexhaustible freshness. Reservations that are determined by motives of this type have an intimate relation to the glory of the Divine name. The revelations of the life to come will be gradual and progressive. If God's revelation were a revelation of exhaustive fulness, a revelation with no reserved questions in it, the very enchantment of God's nature would be gone.

2. God is glorified by mystery, because mystery has its place in the discipline and exaltation of human character. The veiled truth sometimes calls out a higher faith, a more chastened resignation, a more childlike obedience in God's people, than the truth that is unveiled. God conceals many things, so that He may be magnified through His people's trust in darkness and uncertainty. No genuine spirit of trust can spring up in ignorance. In God's dealings with us, profound silence and ringing oracle, the hidden and the revealed, the mystery and the defined truth, alway alternate with each other. It is "the glory of God to conceal a thing," because by the very shadows in which He hides it we are cast with a more pathetic dependence upon His sympathy and care, and come into truer and more childlike contact with His spirit. God conceals many things, so that He may protect us from needless pain and fear, and magnify His own gentleness. Many a thing must be hidden from a child, and the more sensitive he is, the stricter must be the concealment. God conceals some things from us to excite us to nobler and more strenuous endeavour in our search after the truth. There are truths that we shall come to know through our own thought and struggle, and deepening spirituality of life, temporary mysteries that it is best for us to know through conflict, experience, sustained contemplation. God hides many things from the world, so that He may have secrets with the custody of which He can honour His own chosen servants. And He conceals some things from us, so that He may impress us with the solemnities of the unknown. God never conceals what may be necessary to furnish His people for the work and service of life. Let the revelation inspire your faith, and let the mystery awaken your awe.

(Thomas G. Selby.)

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KJV: It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

WEB: It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.