simply as they are, without reference to the past or future at all. He
coldness or distance. They are not the utterance of resentment, as if pity had now been extinguished, and the fondness of affection been supplanted by the fierceness of revenge.
But still, it may be asked, How are the words to be reconciled with the character of God as the all-knowing Jehovah, seeing the end from the beginning, and ordering everything from eternity, according to the counsel of his will? To clear up this, let me remark—
1. That God is represented to us here, as looking at events or facts, simply as they are, without reference to the past or future at all. He isolates or separates them from all connection with his own purpose; and looking at them simply as they stand alone, he declares what he thinks and feels. In so far as they stood connected with his own vast purpose, which age after age was evolving, he did not repent, or change his mind, or wish them undone; but, in so far as they were exhibitions of human wickedness or wretchedness, he did grieve, and he did repent. For let us remember that there must ever be two kinds of feelings in such matters,—one called up by looking at each event by itself, and another by looking at it as part of a mighty plan, which, in its origination and developments, is from eternity to eternity.
2. That God's purposes do not alter God's estimate of events, or his feelings respecting individuals and their conduct. It was by the "determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God" that Christ was betrayed and slain, yet that did not affect God's estimate of the crime committed by them that slew him. God's allowing man to fall did not make God the approver of his sin; it did not make him the less to hate and to grieve over the sin whose permission had been foreseen and decreed. Each action or event is a link in God's mighty purpose, yet it must be weighed separately in the balances, and judged according to the perfect standard of right and wrong.
3. That God is looking at the scene just as a man would look at it, and expressing himself just as a man would have done, in such circumstances. He takes the place of a finite being; hears with finite