11. It is a bow. It spans a wide region of heaven and earth, and seems like the embrace of the everlasting arms encircling this earth of ours. It is the assurance to us that all God's unfolded character is on our side, and is pledged for the security of earth. There hangs the majestic arch, encompassing this world with divine love, and pointing forward to the renovation of heaven and earth, when He, over whose throne bends the "emerald rainbow (green with the new earth's verdure), shall come to restore creation by the word of his power.

*

Having seen the bow as it is in itself, and having considered it in its relation to man and his earth, let us now look at it in its relation to God himself, who set it in the heavens.

For unquestionably the bow has a heavenward as well as an earthward aspect; it looks not only manward, but Godward. Nay, it is a thing meant not only for man's eye, but for the eye of God. While man looks up to it from earth, God looks down on it from heaven. It is a link between heaven and earth, between God and man; and it is not what man sees in it that makes it so glorious, it is what God sees in it.

Let us now look on it in its upward aspect; in its relation to God; in its bearing upon the character of God and his dealings with the children of men.

1. It is God who brings the cloud over the earth (verse 14). In speaking thus, he means us to understand how entirely he is the doer of everything in heaven and earth, and that it is not with mere mechanical laws of nature, or with blind chance, that we have to do. So long as we mean by the laws of

* References to Iris, or the rainbow, are very frequent in the classics. Homer says that Jupiter set it in the cloud,-év vedel otηpiέe,—as a sign, Tepas, to men (Iliad, xi. 27); and Ovid, among several similar allusions, has this:

“. . . . Induitur velamina mille colorum Iris, et arquato cœlum curvamine signans.”—Met. xi. 590. Modern references are too numerous to be cited. Milton speaks of the bow "conspicuous, with three listed colours gay"—the "coloured streaks in heaven; "—the "triple-coloured bow." Thomson speaks of the ethereal bow," "bestriding earth" and unfolding every hue,

"In fair proportion running from the red

To where the violet fades into the sky."

66

grand

He speaks also of "the showery prism;"-" the various twine of light disclosed from the white mingling maze." Southey addresses it as—“ Mild arch of promise;" and Mrs Hemans bids us

"Gaze on that arch of colour'd light,

And read God's mercy there."

nature, the laws by which God governs this world of his, there can be no harm in the expression; but when they express some vague idea of natural systems and organisations independent of God, or at least in which God is not the great. mover and upholder; and when they are used as a smooth phrase to save us the irksomeness of owning God in everything; then they become mere empty courtesies-polite phraseology of men who do not mean actually to shut God out of his creation, but who have no pleasure in seeing him there; perhaps, also, not seldom, the thin veil which atheism hangs before its horrid visage; the conventional and circuitous term of the fool who says in his heart, what he shrinks from saying with his lip, "There is no God."

He who said, "I bring a cloud over the earth," meant us to understand that he is the direct, the personal agent in all such natural phenomena, however slight and apparently casual they may be. Even the blinded heathen named their great god "clouddriving Jupiter;" even they recognised God in the thin cloud as it rose, floated along, and then vanished; and shall not we, thus taught by God himself, still more explicitly and reverently own the living Jehovah, the God "in whom we live and move and have our being," as the creator of every cloud that flings its shadow over earth? We own him in the uproar of the tempest; let us own him in the stillness of the calm. We own him in the huge billow; let us own him in the ripple that quietly sinks to rest upon the strand. We own him in the whirlwind; let us own him in the placid breeze of evening. We own him in the dark mass out of which bursts the flame and the thunder; let us own him in the light thin cloud on which the rainbow bends itself, or on which the summer sunset flings its dying brilliance.

inscribes his name, and

Let us read that name so shall the very clouds

It is in the cloud that Jehovah thus out of which he sends forth his voice. and let us hear that voice day by day; of the firmament, no less than the flowers of the field, be to us the expressive memorial of the ever-living, ever-present Jehovah.

2. It is God who sets the bow in the cloud (verse 13). In this latter case, just as in the former, he claims for himself that directness and personality in the processes of nature which we are so slow to ascribe to him-" I do set my bow in the cloud." It is he who takes the sunbeam, and with his own hand parts it asunder, and lays it, fold after fold, in all the fulness of its sevenfold radiance, upon the opposing cloud, bending it into the bright curve that spans the firmament. The dark cloud

and the glowing iris are equally his workmanship. The pure white of the undivided sunbeam, and the rich hues into which it is parted, are both alike his. His own wisdom planned them all; his own hand set them in the sky. Just as truly as the rainbow indicates the presence and direct shining of the sun, so does it intimate the presence and the glory of the mighty God, of him whose name is the Sun of Righteousness. Its coming and its going, its brightening and its dissolving, are all the results of his ever-working hand. He who hung the pillar-cloud above the tabernacle, bent the rainbow over the ark. He who displayed his glory in the gloom of Sinai, displayed it no less in the mists of Ararat. He who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, made his voice no less plain to Noah out of the bow which he now set above him in the sky.

3. It is his own bow that he sets. He calls it " My bow; he claims it as his own property; nor does he feel that such a light frail piece of earth's most evanescent form is too insignificant for him to claim as his property. He forms nothing which he is ashamed to own, just as he does nothing which he needs to undo, nor speaks anything which he may wish unspoken. And is it not a blessed thing, not merely to know that there is this divine proprietorship in reference to all things here, but to hear God himself so directly, so explicitly putting in his claim to the property, saying, " It is mine!" Try to catch the deep meaning of these words, "My bow!" It is Jehovah who speaks; and, oh, how close do such words seem to draw the bond between earth and heaven, between us and the God who made us! Hear him saying, as he bends over earth," My world, my mountains, my forests, my streams, my flowers!" So in the passage before us, hear him saying, “My bow." And do we not feel, in thus listening to God's claims of proprietorship, as if drawn irresistibly closer to a being who thus takes delight in owning us, in claiming us and all around us as his property, not as the child claims the toy, or the master claims the servant, but as the owner claims the inheritance, as the father claims the son?

Verse 16upon it." It

4. God turns his eye to the bow which he sets. "The bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look is in the case, as it was afterwards in the Passover, of which it is said, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you" (Ex. xii. 13). The great security which Israel had on that night of terror, was not that they saw the blood, but that God saw it. It was meant for his eye, even more than for theirs; and it was his seeing it that was their salvation, not their own. So with the rainbow. He does not say, When ye see it, then be

of good cheer-though that is implied; but he says, When I see it, I will call to mind my covenant. This token of the covenant is meant not merely for us, but for God. It is not merely a memorial to us, but it is a remembrancer to God.. While we are looking up to it from earth, he is looking down on it from heaven; and each time when we stand gazing on that fair bow, let us remember that God is gazing on it too. As far-sundered friends fix upon some bright star for their common gaze, at some particular hour, that they may feel as if their eyes were meeting, when turned at the same moment to the same star,—so God has fixed his rainbow, as the object on which our eyes are to meet, we gazing upward, he gazing downward, upon the one appointed token of remembrance. Thus it is on the rainbow that we find his eyes and ours meeting-meeting in peace, for the object on which they rest is the token of the covenant of peace with man and man's earth. And is not the cross, like the rainbow, the place where God's eye and the sinner's may meet in peace? Pointing to the cross, he says, "Look where I am looking, let your eye rest where mine is resting; look, and in looking to this object of our common interest, learn how gracious I am, and how sure is the everlasting covenant which the blood of that cross has sealed."

5. God remembers his covenant when he sees the token. Verse 16" 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." It is not that he needs to be reminded, yet he sets this to remind him, just as we set up monuments to remind us.* Just as he loves the living remembrancers who plead for Jerusalem (Is. lxii. 6, 7), who give him no rest till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth, so does he love these inanimate remembrancers that remind him of his covenant, and silently plead with him for the fulfilment of his promise. So that, while they are to us the visible token of his covenant, they are to him the constant remembrancers of his faithful love, which he delights to look upon, that he may be reminded of his promises of old. With what grace and condescension does he thus put himself in the attitude of one who needs, and who loves, to be reminded of what he has spoken! We are thus made to feel, in gazing on this sign-" As surely as that rainbow reminds us of the covenant, so surely does it also remind God." Nay, we may forget the covenant when look

*

Gregory (of Nazianzum), expounding the first chapter of Ezekiel, speaks of the Iris as introduced into the scene, as being the symbol of peace, and of the covenant entered into by God with us.' -Works, vol. i. p. 723.

ing at the token-he cannot; it is a sure remembrancer to him, whatever it may be to us.

And then, remembering how, in after days, he brings before us the rainbow, circling the Son of man and his throne, are we not to regard it as the repetition of the sign, the re-assurance to us of his gracious purpose towards this world of ours? And seeing in that rainbow nought but the emerald, earth's own colour, may we not consider it as peculiarly the pledge of favour towards this earth of ours, and pointing forward to the time when its blighted verdure shall be restored, when earth shall not merely be secured against a second deluge of water, but against a second flood of fire, and shall be perpetuated in unfading green, through dateless ages, a universal Eden, fairer and fresher than that in which our first father had his dwelling? And may we not then, looking up to the bow in the firmament, act as the Lord's remembrancers, reminding him of his promise to our world. and giving him no rest till he bring it to pass, making the wilderness and the solitary place to be glad for them, and the desert to rejoice, and blossom as the rose?

ART. IV.-PATRIARCHAL PILGRIMS.

The man of

THERE is a charm about the very word PILGRIM. the world and the Christian, the man of genius and the unlettered believer, each have their own associations clinging around it, which gives it harmony in their ears. The lovers of history, and the admirers of superstition, delight to think of the long journeys which devoted pilgrims have paid to their favourite shrines. The places which they visited, and the roads which they traversed, are even now full of interest to them. Though the Christian may to a certain extent sympathise with these feelings for religion does not forbid his searching the page of history, or blunt his feelings as a manyet other and loftier emotions are awakened within his mind. He mourns to think how superstition has triumphed over the human family; and while he allows that possibly some indirect and undesigned good has in past ages resulted from the pilgrimages paid to supposed holy places, yet he cannot help asking, Where are they now whose feet once trod the pilgrim's road, and whose heads once bowed low before the shrine of a man-made saint?