something secret or concealed, impossible or difficult to comprehend.

All religions, true or false, have their mysteries. The pagan religion was remarkably full of them. Ovid reckons it a great crime to divulge the mystic rites of Ceres and Juno. The eleusinia, or sacred rites of Ceres, solemnized at Eleusis, were called, by way of eminence, the mysteries; and so superstitiously careful were they to conceal these sacred rites, that if any person divulged any part of them, he was thought to have called down some divine judgment on his head, and it was accounted unsafe to abide under the same roof with him; and Horace declares, that he would not put to sea in the same ship with one who revealed the mysteries of Ceres. The pagan mysteries, it is true, were generally mysteries of iniquity, and concealed only because their being published would have rendered their religion ridiculous and odious. Thus the sacred writings often speak of the infamous mysteries of the pagan deities, in which the most shameful crimes were committed under the specious veil of religion.

The whole religion of the Egyptians was mysterious from the beginning to the end, and both their doctrine and worship wrapped up in symbols and hieroglyphics.

The religion of the Jews is supposed to be full of mysteries. The whole nation, according to St Augustine, was a mystery, as it represented or was a type of the people of Christ, and the Christian religion. Whatever was commanded or forbidden them was figurative; MYT

Mythical gurative; and their sacrifices, priesthood, &c. included mysteries. The prophecies concerning Jesus Christ in the Jewish books, are likewise figurative and mysterious.

The Christian religion has also its mysteries: but in the scripture-language the word mystery is used with some latitude, and denotes whatever is not to be known without a divine revelation, and all the secret things which God has discovered by his ministers the prophets, by Jesus Christ and his apostles. The mysteries of the Christian church are, The incarnation of the Word; the hypostatical union of the divine and human natures; the miraculous birth, death, and resurrection of the Son of God; the doctrine of the Trinity, &c.

St Paul often speaks of the mysteries of the Christian religion; as the mystery of the gospel, the mystery of the cross of Christ, the mystery which was kept secret since the world began: and he calls the preachers of the gospel, the stewards of the mysteries of God.