CHAPTER XIX.

Immutability of God—-Not Impugned by our Argumnient—-Affected by Suffering no more than by lncarnation—-ImpliUes only Identity of Essence and Primary Attributes—@lf God was InII-flexible as FPate, Prayer would be Useless, perhaps Impious—-Immutability allows Mutation of Emotion and Action--Affirmed of Christ—-Andcl yet Christ Suffered.

IT would be doing great injustice to our argument to suppose that it seeks to impugn the unchangeableness of the Godhead. Immutability is one of the glorious attributes of the Deity. Amid all the varieties in the divine administration, a voice is still heard from the pavilion of the Highest, “I am the Lord: I change not.”--Malachi, 3iii. 6. Sometimes, indeed, he appears the personification of mercy ; sometimes a “consuming fire.” It is he who has breathed into the harps of heaven their joyous melody; “it is he who has lit up the quenchless conflagration of hell. God the Son is the Lamb slain. from the foundation of the world; he, too, is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. The voice that mourned over Jerusalem with more than a mother’s”s tenderness will pronounce, in tones more astounding than ten thousand thunders, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Nevertheless, his words and his acts, when duly understood, alike confirm. the proclamation, “I am the Lord: I change not.” That in him “ is no variableness, neither shadow of” turning,” is written on the eternity of the past; it will glow in still brighter colours on the eternity of the future.--James, 1i. 17. “,,I AM THAT I AM” is forevermore his holy, and awful, and changeless name.

If the imputation of suffering would cast a shade of changeableness upon him “14 w ho is over all, God blessed forever,” so would his incarnation, in 9p the view of those who seek to survey that great event through the imperfect microscope of human reason. How stupendous the seeming change, when the “,Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us!” What greater change could mortal imagination conceive than the transition from the celestial throne to the manger of Bethlehem! The transformation wrought on the immutable God by his wondrous incarnation has filled even heaven with amazement. At the right hand of power, the angelic hierarchies once beheld the spiritual Essence of the second person of the Trinity ; they now behold there, with holy curiosity and wonder, the same spiritual Essence clothed in glorified human flesh, bearing, no doubt, on his hands and feet the marks of .the nails of the cross, and on his side the scar of the Roman spear. By the incarnation a total eclipse had passed over his glory; and then it passed away, leaving his glory still changed, but yet more glorious.

To gain an adequate conception of the unchangeableness of the Godhead, the beholder must stand on an eminence high as heaven, and extend his comprehensive view along the illimitable tracts of eternity and immensity. Then will he find, in Ithe incarnation and sufferings of the eternal Son, 1the fulillest development of the immutability of the triune Deity ever revealed to mortal vision. Rather than change his unchangeable mercy, God the Son consented to become incarnate and suffer in his own divine essence, that sinners might be saved. Rather than change his unchangeable justice, God the Father “ spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.” The incarnation and sufferings of God the Son were not caused by any change in the eternal counsels. The apostacy of man took not omniscience by surprise. It had been foreseen from the beginning. The earliest eternity had registered in its archives the advent and sufferings of the incarnate Deity, and his ascension and ceaseless reign at the right hand of the Highest. We might almost say that, before the worlds were formed, incarnation and suffering were incorporated into his very being among its constituent elements. Had God the Son not been laid in the manger of Bethlehem; had God the Son not “endured the cross;” had the cup passed from God the Son, as he for a moment so pathetically supplicated, unchangeableness must have been forever plucked from the glorious constellation of the attributes of the Godhead.

His temporary suffering affected, no more than did his incarnation, the immutability of the second person of the Trinity. The God “emptied” of his beatitude for voluntary suffering, lost not his identity any more than did the God “ emptied” of his glory for voluntary incarnation. The objection, that, if the uncreated Word suffered on earth, he must, to maintain his eternal unchangeableness have suffered from the beginning, is of no greater avail than would be the objection that, he must have been incarnate from the beginning because he became incarnate on earth.

Suffering wrought no change in the decrees or purposes of the redeeming God. If it effected any change, it must, then, have been either in his essen,ce or in his attributes. That suffering cannot change the essence of spiritual beings, is an awful truth deducible from the revealed history of the universe, past and prospective. The suffering God, then, remained identical in essence with the creating God. Nor did suffering change any of his glorious and fixed attributes. His justice, holiness, power, wisdom, truth, immutability, and love never shone so coonspicuousligy nor@ harmbtr@ioniouslyudy as when, made sin for sinners, he meekly submitted himself, in all hiMs omnipotence, to the avenging sword of the Lord of Hosts. Even from the cross the ear of faith might have caug-&hti the still, deep whisper, unheard by carnaledra@l earts, “I am the Lord: I change not.”

Had God been inflexible as the imaginary fate of heathen mythology, prayer would be useless,r,, perhaps impious; for it would seek, by creature importunity, to move the Immoveable. But the God ”of the Bible is the hearer and answerer of prayer.. “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” To the prayers of Elias the rains of heaven were made obedient.—- James, 5v. 16, 17. Present death was denounced against Hezekiah; yet the earnest prayer of the pious king had efficacy to

“Roll back the flood of never-ebbing time,”

and add fifteen years to the span of his life. 2 Kings, 20xx. 1-1 1. At the prayer of Moses, “,the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.”--Exodus, 32xxxii. 14. When the penitent cry of Nineveh was wafted towards heaven, “ God saw their works that they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them, and he did it not.”--Jonah, 3iii. 10.

But amid all these seeming changes in the purposes of the Almighty, he is still the unchanging God, “ with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” To hear and answer the prayers of the faithful was a part of his eternal counsels, forming a ,constituent element of the Godhead ere the worlds were a,created. His patient hearing and gracious answering of prayer, in every age and every place, is, to fallen creatures, the most consolatory development of divine immutability. Should he cease to be the paternal hearer and answerer of prayer, he would cease to be himself. He would become thenceforth the changed, instead of the unchangeable God.

The very perfection and immutability of God’s”s attributes induce mutations in his feelings and actions. A being of infinite and unchanging poweri, wisdom, holiness, goodness, justice and truth, must needs have felt and acted differently towards the persecuting Saul of Tarsus, and Paul, the devoted, the exulting martyr. Upon the rebellious and fallen angels, now monuments of ”his righteous and unpitying wrath, the light of God’s”s countenance once beamed, perhaps, as benignly as on his own faithful Gabriel. From everlasting to everlasting the glorious attributes of the Deity continue in unvarying perfection. But in a universe where sin has entered; where created intelligences abound with volitions “free as air;” where the principle of good and the principle of evil contend for mastery with varying success, he “ who sitteth in the heavens” is of necessity led, by the immutability of his own infinite perfections, to mutation of emotion, and consequent mutation of action. Yet is there no real change in the unchanging God. His mutations are but the developments of his unalterable perfections. Their most astonishing development was the sacrifice of his own uncreated Son, to save our sinful and perishing world. The descending sword of the Lord of Hosts, awakened to smite his other self, was the crowning demonstration of divine immutability.

The position, so confidently maintained by the advocates of the prevalent theory, that, if a person of the Trinity were to suffersufrer for a time, he must, to preserve his unchangeableness, suffer from everlasting to everlasting, has less affinity to the philosophy of the Bible, than to that of the classic voluptuary of heathen Athens. Epicurus thus spoke of his imagined and iron-bound divinity: ,” The Deity could neither be influenced by favour nor resentment, because such a being must be weak and frail ; and all fear of the power and anger of God should be banished, because anger and affection are inconsistent with his immutable nature.”

What an ally did the Epicurean faith unexpectedly find in the dominant theory of Christendom! The god of the Attic libertine could not have become angry without becoming mutable; the God of the prevalent theory must have stooped to the like mutability had he voluntarily suffered! 1 It follows as a necessary corollary of the classic dogma, that if its god, from some turn of destiny should once become incensed, he must remain incensed for endless ages. The prevalent theory, if correct, would confirm the dogma of Epicurus and its necessary corollary. If the supposition of vicarious and short-lived suffering by the everlasting Son would of necessity imply his eternal suffering, why does not the revealed truth that the infinite Father “is angry with the wicked every day” necessarily imply the everlasting continuance of his wrath, though rivers penitent tears, purified ceaselessly flow from their weeping eyes and broken hearts? ? If the suffering God of to-day must suffer for ever, or become mutable, why must not the angry God of to-day remain angry forever or forfeit his perfection of unchangeableness ? And yet the immoveability predicated of the divine nature by the Epicurean philosophy, would, if applied to the Jehovah of sinners, wrest fr@om him the vital element of their hope—-even his prayer--hearing and prayer--answering attribute.

The God of Christians resembles not the mM” arble idol of the classic voluptuary. The Sacred Volume indeed, teaches that his primary attributes are without change. Perhaps even the Almighty himself could not change them without impugning the immutable laws of his being. Such are his omnipotence; his wisdom ; his holiness; his justice ; his truth; his goodness. It is the permanent identity of these, and of his essence, that constitutes the immutability of the great I AM. We do not, however, understand that the scriptural vocabulary has classed his glory and his beatitude among his primary and inflexible attributes. The Bible clearly reveals that his glory was subject to his volition. God, the Son, divested himself of it when he became incarnate; he deeply felt the bereavement, and prayed for restoration to his prim “ evail-state.—-John,i 17xvii. 5. There is no intimation in the Sacred Oracles, that the beatitude of God is not also subject to his volition. It is the arrogance of human reason, and not the Bible, that would chain the Omnipotent tSo ceaseless bliss, whether he wills it or not. Coerced happiness would, perhaps, be but misery in disguise. Philanthropy, urged by its own benign impulses to suffer in some high and holy cause, might endure more from involuntary restraint than from voluntary suffering. We believe it essential to the perfection of God’s”s blessedness that it should depend, rather on his own sovereign choice, than on an inflexible destiny that overrules even his own almightiness. If the Bible were allowed to speak for itself—-if we were permitted to open our souls to the free reception of its sacred testimonials—-the conclusion would appear to be inevitable, that the eternal Son, when he became incarnate, “ emptied himself” of his beatitude as well as of his glory.

The following passage seems demonstrative that temporary suffering, voluntarily incurred, is not incompatible with the attribute of divine immutability,—@,, “ Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”—-Hebrews, 13xiii. 8. The term “ yesterday”s wasg not literally confined by the apostle to the day preceding that on which the inspired passage was pennoured ; it reached back to the epoch of the incarnation, when the . person of the Mediator was first and unchangeably constituted by the union of his divine and human natures. The text, then, contains the proposition that from the moment of the holy union of the God and the man down to the date of the epistle to the Hebrews, Jesus Christ had been the same, and that he was to remain the same forevermore. Thus the attribute of unchangeableness was predicated of Jesus Christ as unequivocally as the Jehovah of the Old Testament affirmed it of himself when he declared, “ I am the Lord ; I change not,” or as St. James affirmed it of the “ Father of lights, with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning.”

Jesus Christ was the same in his manger cradle as when be ascended in triumph to the bosom of his heavenly Parent. True, he had “increased in wisdom and stature;” but such physical advancement changed him not. True, he had been covered “ with light as with a garment” on the mount, and in the garden with great drops of exuded blood “,falling down to the ground;” but such vicissitudes changed not the changeless Christ. True, he had suffered beyond what man or angel could have endured; but temporary agony wrought no change in any of the elements which constituted his sameness. He who hung on the cross forsaken of his Father, was identical in every attribute of his being with him who will come in the clouds to judge the world in righteousness, accompanied with all that heaven can furnish of the magnificent, the awful, the sublime. Holy immutability may voluntarily suffer for a time without losing its essential unchangeableness; else the epistle to the Hebrews would not have affirmed of the humbled, suffering, dying, risen, glorified, ever blessed Jesus Christ, that he was “ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”.