for the natural causes of such results. Hence, the land has been cultivated more scientifically and to a greater extent, nuisances have been removed, restrictive laws have been repealed, and superior attention given to personal and residentiary cleanliness; and the consequences have been, that the famine has been stayed, and the pestilence abated; and God, thereupon, has been supposed to have repented, that is, to have turned away the fierceness of his wrath. But whoever will venture to look beneath the surface of such appearances, must see, that God cannot have undergone any change of disposition, in all these painful vicissitudes with men. If they neglect, or transgress his laws, they bring calamity thereby upon themselves. If they obey His laws, they open the channel for the incoming of His blessings. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Heb. xiii. 18.) He is essential love and goodness, and never brings affliction upon men. They are the authors of their own distresses, either by an ignorance of God's laws, or by the wilful transgression of them: in either case, the consequence, in this life, will be the same: in the life to come, the ignorant neglecter may be excused, but the wilful transgressor will be condemned. Fury is not in God, and He changeth not. (Isaiah xxvii. 4; Mal. iii. 6.) He is ever waiting to be gracious: but men must comply with the laws and conditions for receiving it, or it cannot be communicated. And therefore, any improvements in our condition, are not to be attributed to the Lord having turned away from his anger and repented, but to the circumstance of man having changed, and become more favorably disposed towards Him. It is upon this principle, that the Lord has declared by the prophets, "If that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them;" (Jer. xviii. 8;) which plainly means, that if the people improve their states by a renunciation of their evil ways, they will then become recipients of the divine mercy: and therefore, the Psalmist, when treating of the bountiful goodness of the Lord, says, "He remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the multitude of His mercies." (Psalm cvi. 45.) Whence it is evident, that the communication of mercy, is that which is meant by the Lord's repentance.

But let us endeavor to penetrate a little further into the mental philosophy of this fact. It is quite clear, that the mercy of God is exercised with a view to produce graces in men. But how are those graces to be implanted, so long as evils and errors maintain

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an uppermost position in their character? We answer, that they must become known to their possessor, and be repented of by him. The light by which a man is enabled to see his sins, is a communication from the divine mercy; and the power whereby he is enabled to repent of them, is from the same source: so that this divine principle is present in all the phases of human repentance. Repentance cannot take place in man, without the presence of the divine mercy; and it is on this account, that this holy principle is sometimes so denominated in the Word. The divine mercy produces human repentance, and as that repentance is a good, and leads to the establishment of good in man, it is a most appropriate expression, under such a circumstance, to signify that mercy. Moreover, as it has been intimated, that disorderly state of man which needs repentance, causes an appearance in him, when it takes place, as though the Lord were becoming more favorably disposed towards him; whereas, the real truth is, that man is becoming more favorably disposed towards the Lord. The change is in man, and not in God.

The mercy of the Lord, consists in every thing which he does for mankind, to relieve them from darkness and distress. When they fall into disorders and transgression, He does not withdraw His tenderness, but pitieth and regardeth them with mercy. The punishment which the wickedness of the wicked brings upon themselves, is permitted by the divine mercy, because, thereby, evil is to be checked and removed, and good developed and promoted. The happiness also, which is enjoyed by the faithful and obedient, is the result of the divine mercy, because the Lord is present with his own principles in them, and he dwelleth in them. It was to such that He said, "the Spirit of truth dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." (John xiv. 17.)

The mercy of the Lord is essential, infinite, and active goodness. But all human ideas of this mercy, are formed from what we know of this principle and its operations among mankind. If men did not form their ideas of the divine principles, according to their own apprehensions of them, it is plain, that no conception at all could be obtained concerning them, and in that case, they would be left without instruction. It is in consequence of man's ideas of the Lord's infinite principles, being formed on finite notions of them, that merely human and finite actions are, in the Scriptures, so frequently attributed to the Lord. He, however, is not a man, that He should repent; nevertheless, He is a God that

will be merciful, and when He is said to repent, it is a declaration that His mercy was about to be displayed.

The same general remarks apply to the sentence, "and it grieved Him at His heart." The Lord cannot grieve on account of any thing that He may have done. On the completion of His works, it is written, that He beheld them all, and pronounced them to be very good. The grief, therefore, which is predicated of Him, must be intended to express the interposition of His mercy, at a time when its blessedness was about to be rejected by the perversities of men; and thus it is similar to his repentance; for repentance includes grief, and grief indicates repentance, so that both terms are significant of the divine mercy, yet with a distinction which it may be useful to explain.

Although divine mercy is ever active for the benefit of men, and is unfolding itself in a thousand forms of beneficence and use, yet, upon examination, it will be found to operate in a twofold manner, including the intelligence of wisdom, as well as the clemency of love. Mercy, without the intelligence of wisdom, would be blind; and without the clemency of love, it would be cold. Now, it is this twofold, or distinctive action, of the divine mercy, which are intended to be expressed by the repentance, and grief at heart, which are predicated of the Lord. By repentance, is denoted, that activity of the divine mercy, in which wisdom is the most conspicuous; and, by grief at heart, that in which love is the most distinguished. The divine mercy, indeed, always includes the activity of these principles, in their utmost fulness; but then, both of them are not at the same time equally prominent with their recipients. Sometimes one, and sometimes the other, is most easily observed. For instance; in the blessings of peace, which may have been promoted by a succession of wars, we at once recognize the love of the divine mercy; but the wisdom of divine mercy is not so very conspicuous in the wars, by which that peace may have been secured. So, we can see the love of the divine mercy in creation and redemption; but the wisdom of the divine mercy in the means is not so evident. We perceive that there is love in the divine mercy, which has provided and declared, that there is a heaven for the good of the human race; but we do not so clearly see the wisdom, by which it has become necessary to surround the nature of that kingdom with some obscurity. Persons who are rescued from dangers, or the perils of death, are said to be providentially saved. The love of the divine mercy, in such cases, is very

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evident; but the wisdom involved in it, is surrounded with haze and mist, particularly when others are known to have perished in the same calamity. These cases show, very satisfactorily, that the wisdom and love, which are included in the divine mercy, are variously manifested, according to the varying circumstances in which they operate; and consequently, we learn, that those two terms, repentance, and grief at heart, are significant of the wisdom and love, which are always included in the activities of the divine mercy, and which, in the circumstance before us, are very evident. That to repent, has respect to the wisdom of mercy, and that grief at heart, has reference to the love of mercy, may also, in some measure, appear to those who will venture to reflect a little beneath the surface of the expression. In that case, repentance will be found to be an affection of the understanding, produced therein by the implantation of truth, when errors prevail; and grief at heart, will be seen to be a sensation of the will, induced therein by the insemination of good, when evils are urgent. They who receive truth into their understandings, and by the light thereof, are led to examine and acknowledge the disorders of their life, are in a condition of repentance; and they who receive good into their wills, and by the influences thereof, are made to experience the impurities which prevail, are in a condition of grief. Both conditions are from the activity of the divine mercy, though there is an evident distinction between them: the former arising from the reception of truth, and the latter from the reception of goodness. So that the mercy of the Lord, signified by the statement of His repentance, consisted in the manifestation of His wisdom; and that which is denoted by His grief at heart, consisted in the display of His love. Hence, for the Lord to repent and grieve that he had made man, are forms of expression, which mean, that the divine mercy, in its fulness, was now about to become conspicuous.

And was it not so? Did not the Lord interpose for the preservation of our race? Although men had abandoned themselves to the most wicked persuasions, and nad destroyed within them, the faculty of perceiving what was good and true; notwithstanding they had voluntarily brought themselves into excesses of iniquity, and were upon the point of bringing down everlasting destruction upon the human race; yet, the divine mercy of the Lord interposed to hinder the catastrophe. The threatened calamity was prevented, and mankind have been preserved. This could not have been the case, if the Lord's repentance and grief that he had made man,

meant, what a superficial understanding of the phrases seems to imply. He surely would not have perpetuated the existence of that which had afflicted him with regret and sorrow. Man remains, and it is true that he has continued to live in evils, but then the evils are not of God's origination, nor are they perpetuated by Him; and therefore, He can have nothing to repent of: but man, having both produced the evils, and continued them, has become a perpetual subject of God's mercy; and this is plainly what is meant by those penitential expressions. The interposition of God for the purpose of continuing our species, at a period when mankind had sunk so deeply into spiritual wickedness, evinces most conspicuously the mercy of the Lord, both in its wisdom and its love. Man was preserved, not to perpetuate the evil, but that he might have the opportunity of attaining good by the rejection of evil, and so become the recipient of God's mercy.

But, while it is evident that the interposition of God, for the perpetuation of man upon the earth, was an act of divine mercy; in what did that interposition consist? It could not have been an act independently of the state of man. God does not operate among His people like a tyrant; He acts like a father, and pitieth those who fear Him and we find, that there yet remained, among the last posterity of this profligate people, some who did so. "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord;" and the Lord said unto him, "Thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation." (Gen. vi. 8; vii. 1.) These statements disclose to us the existence of a qualification for the reception of the divine favors. This qualification consisted in a capacity for the understanding of truth, when presented in a form suitable to man's state. He could no longer be approached by an internal way: he had closed the interiors of his mind against those celestial influences, which had originally reached him from within, and therefore, a medium for approaching him, by instruction from without, was promised and provided in the covenant that was about to be established with Noah. This, as a new covenant, consisted in a new method of communication from God to man; in the adaptation of divine truth to that external capacity for its comprehension, which appears to have been retained among the people called Noah, and his family, and signified by the statement, that he found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

The human race have, ever since that period, been instructed in the things of faith, charity, and religion, by an external revelation; that is, a revelation partaking of a documentary character, and