Wrath, indeed, has gone out against the transgressor; the righteous
else, would be to say that the will of the creature was stronger than the will of the Creator; and that the folly of the creature had baffled the wisdom of the Creator.
2. They do not mean that an unexpected crisis had arisen. With man it may be so. A crisis may come to him unexpectedly, so as entirely to disconcert himself and defeat his schemes. With God there can be nothing unexpected, nothing sudden, nothing unforeseen or unprovided for. The whole future, with its endless turns and intricacies, lies before him, as open and as clear as the past. No evil, however great, shoots up unpermitted or unlooked for. Neither Satan's wiles nor man's apostasy; neither the rejection of Noah's warnings, nor the spread of sin, nor the ruin of the race, were unexpected evils.
3. They do not mean that God is subject to like passions and changes as we are. He does not vary as we vary, nor repent as we repent. Instability is the property of the creature, not of the Creator. Frailty is for man, not for God. There is no vacillation, no fluctuation in him. That he does feel, we know. If he did not, he would not be God. But his feeling is not weakness. That he alters his procedure we know, but not as we alter ours. There is no caprice in his emotion or his acting. All is the serenity of highest wisdom, which cannot be taken by surprise, nor blinded by anger, nor rendered unavailing by fickleness, or facility, or arbitrary will.
4. They do not mean that He has ceased to care for his creatures. Wrath, indeed, has gone out against the transgressor; the righteous wrath of the righteous, though loving, God; and "the soul that sinneth it shall die." Yet, neither man himself, nor his habitation, the earth, has been overlooked by God, far less hated and spurned. The words intimate neither the coldness nor the dislike of the Creator toward the creature. It is something very widely different which they convey; a sadder, tenderer feeling; a feeling in which, not indifference, but profound compassion, is the prevailing element. They do not intimate the quenching of his love, nor even imply