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pretation ? When we come to such expressions as “ God's 
arm/' “ God's eye/' “ God's mouth/' how do we deal with 
them ? We assign no new sense to the words themselves ; 
“ arm " as much means arm, “ eye " eye, “ mouth" mouth, 
here as anywhere else. But we say that while the words 
are to be taken in their literal sense, the ideas they convey 
are yet not to be pressed literally, but only by way of accom- 
modation. These terms, “ arm," “ eye," “ mouth," are the 
best human representatives of the Divine realities denoted ; 
their fitness as such representatives depending upon their 
relation literally to man being the same in hind as the rela- 
tion of these Divine realities to God. So in exactly the same 
way we treat such statements as that “ God went down to 
see," that “ God smelled a sweet savour," or that “ God 
repented." We do not say that “go down" means any- 
thing but go down, or “ smell " anything but smell, or 
“repent" anything but repent. Yet we do not ascribe 
any one of these actions literally to God, but we assert that 
there were actions of God having the like relation to His 
nature, which these actions, taken literally, have to our nature. 
The natures are widely different, and therefore the parallelism 
must not be pressed too closely, but still it remains the truest 
representation of the actual verity which the imperfection of 
human thought will allow of. 
Before proceeding to apply this principle of interpreta- 
tion to the case immediately in point, it may be well to 
notice that it is upon this method of accommodation that 
the entire cosmogony is constructed. When, for example, 
we read there of God speaking in order to call things into 
being, we do not understand by that a literal utterance of 
audible words, but that the power or influence by which He 
created was not a physical or material one, but a spiritual or 
moral one, of which the fittest representative was the human 
word-of-command. So, when we read of His giving names, 
we do not take that to mean a literal bestowing of verbal 
titles, but a defining of character and position, answering in 
His sphere to what the giving of names is among men. So, 
once more, when we read of God's resting, . whether we take 
this in the sense of “leaving off" (nDtP Gen. ii. 2-3), of 
“sitting down" (0*0 Ex. xx. 11), or of “taking breath" 
(WVj Ex. xxxi. 17), we do not understand a literal resting, 
but only an act which, judged by the standard of God's 
nature, was like what such resting is to man. The words 
still bear their ordinary sense, and no other, but in their ap- 
plication to God, they are felt to be only representatively true, 
not literally to be insisted on. 
