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

MERCY OF LOVE AND MERCY OF WISDOM.

259

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

God does not operate among

independently of the state of man. 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

NEW COVENANT A NEW COMMUNICATION.

261

adapted to their external capacities for appreciation. Thus, at the time of Noah, the mental constitutions of the people were different from what they had been in preceding ages. The people in the better times of those ages, enjoyed perception; that is, an internal impression and discernment concerning holy and heavenly things: they felt, from an internal dictate, what was right and excellent ; and this, to them, was instead of a documentary revelation. But in the days of Noah, this state perished, and then that new method of communication with man, of which we have spoken, was begun. Hereby, the knowledges of religion have been preserved, and hereby man has had his acquaintance with them maintained, and herein all may see the mercy of the Lord, a mercy manifested in the provisions of that new covenant, that new characteristic of revelation, and consequent church, by which so important a result has been accomplished. Unless there be a communication kept up between the Lord and man, man must perish. It may vary in its form: it may be by an internal dictate and impression, as was the case with Adam, and his immediate posterity; or, it may be by documentary declarations, as it has been in subsequent ages. But its existence, in some form, is indispensable to the perpetuation of man. And it was, because this communication had ceased with the principal part of the people of the later antediluvian periods, that they perished in the catastrophe called the flood. And here we close this chapter. We have endeavored to rescue the points which have been handled, from the marvellous and incomprehensible character which they present in their merely literal structure: and we have shown, that in their esoteric sense, they come home to a reasonable view of human nature, and God's dealings with. men, and so commend themselves to our faith in them, as portions of God's Holy Word.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE ARK-NOAH AND HIS FAMILY ENTERING INTO IT-THE BEASTS PRESERVED THEREIN.

"Those who have written professedly and largely on the subject, have been at great pains to provide for all the existing species of animals in the ark of Noah, showing how they might be distributed, fed, and otherwise provided for. But they are very far from having cleared it of all its difficulties; which are much greater than they, in their general ignorance of natural history, were aware of." - KITTO'S Cyclopædia of Bib. Lit. Art. Ark, Noah.

To provide for the continuation of mankind, by saving some

For

from the flood, that was about to overwhelm the general population of the antediluvian world, Noah was directed to make an ark of certain dimensions, having three stories, with one door in the side, and one window above, to the whole; and having finished what was thus commanded him, "the Lord said unto him, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female: of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the earth. yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living substance that I have made, will I destroy from off the face of the earth." (Gen. vii. 1-4.) The subjects announced, in the literal sense of this history, have always been considered exceedingly difficult to comprehend. To science they appear inexplicable; to religion they seem miraculous. For ages they have been placed in the niches of a misty faith; and the effort to understand them, has, not unfrequently, been denounced as infidel and presumptuous. Ecclesiastical authorities of a bygone period, having committed themselves to a certain course of thinking upon these subjects, succeeded in fastening their notions of them upon the minds of the multitude; and their descendants, in later times, have found it more convenient to stigmatize the doubter of their views, with an odious name, than to remove his scruples, or satisfy his inquiries with information. The few who have thought upon the popular views of those matters, and ventured to question their accuracy, have been treated as unfriendly to revelation, by the many who have not thought at all upon the subjects. The populace are more led by passion than by reason, and they are too frequently influenced more by those who hold offices of authority, than by the dignity of their own thinking. If men would receive religious knowledge, and improve their own intellectual condition, they must reflect for themselves. It is that which they make their own, by an effort of their own mind, which remains and endures with them. They take nothing with them into the other life, which has not been incorporated into their affections and thoughts during their abode below. The profession to believe the dogmata of faith, upon the authority of others, is not a belief in the thing proposed, but in the persons proposing; and such a belief is rather a reliance upon man, than a faith in God. It is of importance that this circumstance should be reflected on: those who desire wisdom,