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CHAPTER XIV.

THE RAINBOW.

"Far up the blue sky a rainbow unrolled
Its soft tinted pinions of purple and gold;

It was born in a moment, yet quick as its birth
It had stretched to the utmost ends of the earth;
And, fair as an angel, it floated as free,

With a wing on the earth and a wing on the sea."

"And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth."- GEN. ix. 11-17.

How interesting to us all is the fact, that that bow which spans the clouds so beautifully amid the shower and the sunshine, has been looked upon by Abraham, by Noah, by Shem, by Japheth, by Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; by all the world's grey fathers; by apostles, evangelists, saints, and martyrs, until the year that now is. There is some

thing striking in the lasting nature of the institutions of God, and not less striking when contrasted with the evanescence of the generations. the successive generations of man. The expression "I do set my bow in the cloud," does not mean that the bow was created or instituted then as a thing; but that it was appointed, or selected, or established then as a symbol and a memorial to all generations. Some think that it was then created, and if so, that there was no rain previous to the Flood, because none seems to have been needed; and no doubt a vast physical change has taken place in the air, the earth, the structure and the constitution of our globe since that era; but this opinion appears to me to be the least probable explanation; at all events, it is not necessary. The words are not, "I create the bow now for the first time," but "I appoint or constitute the existing bow that spans the cloud, to be a token of my covenant between me and you to all generations."

This rainbow, which so many have looked on, has been the theme of poets, the admiration of man from age to age; ever fresh, ever beautiful, never wasting or waning, like all God's grand creations, by the lapse of centuries; and sometimes a poet expresses an idea, indeed it is the function of the great poet to do so, more fully and beautifully than the ordinary expositor can; and therefore I read that beautiful passage from the ancient poet, Vaughan, who wrote in 1691, where he says:

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"How bright wert thou, when Shem's admiring eye
Thy burnished flaming arch did first descry;
When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,
The youthful world's grey fathers in one knot,
Did with attentive looks watch every hour
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower!
When thou dost shine, darkness looks white and fair;
Forms turn to music, clouds to smiles and air.

Bright pledge of peace and sunshine, the sure tie
Of thy Lord's hand, the object of his eye.
When I behold thee, though my light be dim,
Distinct and low, I can in them see Him

Who looks upon thee from his glorious throne,
And minds the covenant 'twixt all and one."

Or, as it is expressed by Campbell, in language more chaste and beautiful, if it is possible, and familiar to most of you:

"Triumphal arch, that fills the sky
When storms prepare to part,

I ask not proud philosophy

To teach me what thou art.

"When o'er the green, undeluged earth,
Heaven's covenant thou didst shine,
How came the world's grey fathers forth
To watch thy sacred sign!

"How glorious is thy girdle cast

O'er mountain, tower, and town;
Or, mirrored in the ocean vast,
A thousand fathoms down.

"As fresh in yon horizon dark,
As young thy beauties seem,
As when the eagle from the ark
First sported in thy beam.

"For faithful to His sacred page,

God still rebuilds thy span,

Nor lets the type grow pale with age,

That first spoke peace to man."

So beautifully and truly has Campbell celebrated the same lasting sign.

It may be asked, why this great necessity for such a sign

suspended in the sky to Noah and his family? We may see that every thing in the chapter is a prescription against the fears, and the discouragements, and the despair of man. God gave him a prescription against the beasts of the field, he gave him a sense of safety against the violence of man, and now he furnished him with a pledge that such a convulsion as that which had swept the earth, and borne the ark to Ararat, should not again occur in the history of mankind. One can easily understand that, without this sign suspended in the cloud for reminding Noah and his family of the pledge and promise of his God, every careering cloud must have frightened them. As they saw the lightnings gleam,. and heard the thunders roar, and saw the shower begin to fall heavily, they must have been tempted to say, here is another deluge coming upon us Iwe need not sow the seed in the spring, for we shall be all swept away before the autumn; we need not build houses, for they will be carried away by the overwhelming flood. In short, all civilization, all progress, all domestic and social being, would have been, if not entirely prevented, at least nipped in its very commencement, unless God had given to man some great pledge on a great scale, and accompanied by some visible mark, that such a catastrophe should not happen to the world again. And hence, when Noah recollected God's word, and saw span the sky the beautiful bow that was the form and the representation of it, as he saw the black cloud hide the sun, as he heard the rain drops begin to patter upon his roof,—as he listened to the thunder reverberating along the mountain gorges, his heart did not faint, nor did his courage droop, but he felt, let nature discharge her terrible artillery, let the sky be clothed with sackcloth, let the red lightnings flash, and the whole horizon be lightened up with their splendors, I have a protection in the simple promise of my God, and I know that that promise will stand good

to all generations, by the bow that is in the sky; that makes me feel perfect peace, sure that the word of the Creator is stronger than the forces of all creation combined together.

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I explained in my last lecture that Noah offered a sacrifice when he came forth from the ark, and that that sacrifice was partly eucharistic, partly expiatory. Our sacrifice, I showed, has been offered. The rainbow comes after Noah's sacrifice; our rainbow, whatever it be, comes after ours. We have a sacrifice which we have not to offer as Noah had, "for this Christ did once for all." The difference between us and Noah is just this, that he, through a prospective faith, accompanied with the slaughter of an innocent creature, expressed his confidence in "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”. - we, in the exercise of a retrospective faith, without the painful and sanguinary accompaniment of a creature slain, rest in that sacrifice which was made once for all, and the last words of which still echo along the centuries, "It is finished." There is now no more offering for sin; by that sacrifice the poison of sin was neutralized, our transgressions can be forgiven, our iniquities completely and fully put away; and we know that there is no condemnation to us, just as certainly as Noah knew there was no second Flood to overflow the world. Noah reached the point from God's information that there would be no second Flood, and the rainbow was the sign of it; and we have reached the conclusion from God's information, that there will be no second wrath to us who are in Christ Jesus, and the memorial of it is—what? What is our rainbow? It is the Bible that proclaims this truththe Lord's supper that is its seal- the sign and the standing memorial of it. It is the Bible that proclaims this truth. The Bible does not make it true, any more than the rainbow made God's word to Noah true. It merely records the truth. Were the Bible annihilated, it would be no less

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