WE are often called upon to explain or harmonize portions of Scripture, where there at first sight appears to be a discrepancy, which infidel scrutiny has searched out and persists in distorting into an objection against the holy book. We hear such objections more and more frequently urged, as the mechanical arguments of infidels are gaining from day to day a wider circulation among the people. Some of the charges which the carnal heart frames against the Bible and the God of the Bible, are of course too puerile to deserve notice; but some may seem to demand an answer. An objection as commonly urged perhaps as any other, is said to be found in the following texts, of which a correspondent has asked an explanation. If we shall be able to shed any light upon them, it may be a help to others as well as to our correspondent. The texts are the following: Gen. vi. 6; Num. xxiii, 19; 1 Sam. xv, 11, 29; 2 Sam. xxiv, 16; Joel ii, 13; Mal. iii, 6, and Jas. i, 17. These texts represent God as repenting that he had made man on the earth, repenting that he had set up Saul as king, &c., and yet they declare immutability to be one of the divine attributes; for "God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent." The objection proceeds on the supposition that the term repent has the same signification in every instance; and that when under certain circumstances and in reference to some objects he is represented as repenting, and again under other circumstances and in reference to different objects it is said that he does not repent, there must necessarily be a contradiction. This point however stands in need of proof as we shall see. A sufficient answer to this objection, and to all others of its kind, is found in the fact, which all must admit, that a divine revelation to man, is at times, and must necessarily be, accommodated to the modes of human thought and expression. But we will look at the matter still further. God has laid down an invariable rule by which he acts in reference to mankind. It is that whenever he has spoken to do evil concerning a people on account of their wickedness, if they turn from their wickedness he will turn from the evil he thought to do to them; and, vice versa, whenever his word has gone forth to do them good on account of their righteousness, if they fall from their righteousness and do evil in his sight, he will withhold from them the good which he had purposed to bestow. See Jer. xviii, 7–10. From this rule we learn the unalterable purpose of God to punish the wicked and reward the good. Otherwise than this he could not act, and yet maintain his character of justice and mercy. In the light of this fact let us look at the inhabitants of the antediluvian world. They had hopelessly departed from God, they had resisted his Spirit, the earth was filled with violence and corruption. God, in language accommodated to human thoughts and modes of expression, wishes to declare his abhorrence to sin, and his regret at the depraved state of the world; for he had no pleasure in sin, nor in the death of the sinner. We ask then, how could he better have done this, than in the language used: "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." And more than all this, in the fact that God swept away that godless race, we find the strongest argument for his immutability. Rather than suffer his holy law to be transgressed with impunity, such is his unchanging counsel and determination, he swept the whole race from the earth by one fell catastrophe, excepting only eight righteous persons, when it had become incurably polluted and defiled. Then Gen. vi, 6, instead of showing any changeableness in the divine character, is simply an expression to show how he regarded the world as it then existed. Numbers xxiii, 19, involves a different principle altogether; namely, a change of purpose. Balak had sent for Balaam to curse Israel. Balaam declared that he must speak the words that the Lord should put in his mouth. The Lord changed his cursing into a blessing. Why? Because it is contrary to his immutable character and purpose, according to his rule in Jer. xviii, to curse those who maintain a character upon which he has pronounced approval; therefore he said, "God is not man that he should lie; nor the son of man that he should repent;" or change his purpose. 1 Sam. xv, 11, is a parallel case with Gen. vi, 6. Verse 29 is parallel with Num. xxiii, 19. In 2 Sam. xxiv, 16, we learn that repentance turned away the evil, just as God had promised in Jer. xviii. Joel ii, 13, is in accordance with the same principle. Mal. iii, 6, and Jas. i, 17, contain declarations of God's immutability; and there is not a particle of testimony in the passages before noticed which conflicts in the least degree with these declarations.