The After-glow of a Great Reign | Page 8

winter and summer, seed time and harvest shall not cease"; and, fourthly--strange paradox at first, but true--a rainbow is one of the most awful things in the world, because it reminds us that what has created it is the terrible light which, without the atmosphere, would scorch to nothingness; for, while the sun, through the medium of the atmosphere, blesses, let its flames, mountains high, touch a planet that has drifted from its course, and it scorches to death.
With those four thoughts in our minds, let us first contemplate the rainbow round the throne of God. And we shall now understand that the first thing which we can learn is, that there is around the throne of God a circle of unblemished purity. We might have known it; we have been told it over and over again. "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." "With the clean thou must be clean, and with the holy thou must learn holiness." We know it, yet where we fail is in not realizing the awful bearing which it has upon our lives. A rainbow of perfect purity bars the way of entrance to the throne of God, except for the pure.
And then, secondly, to temper, as it were, the awfulness of the first revelation, we find that the light of God is brought us through a medium; the glory, grace, and truth of God are shown us in the face of Jesus Christ.
And, as we follow Him during these coming six weeks, let us remember that we are watching the rainbow, that we are watching the medium through which the light of God reaches us in all its inherent attractiveness. If the heavenly rainbow is not produced by the light shining upon the tears of human penitence, where is hope for the world? But because it is so produced, the rainbow round the throne of God wins us to God. "Come unto Me," it seems to signify, "all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Thirdly, the rainbow round the throne of God speaks of hope. Just as the husbandman, getting anxious about his harvest, troubled by the variableness of the season, looks up on some showery day and sees the rainbow in the sky, and it reminds him of the faithfulness of God, and His promise that seed time and harvest shall not cease, so the father with his son snatched suddenly from him in the battle, so the soul waiting so long year after year, for something to come which does not come, so the tempted one at home or at work, looks upon the rainbow round the throne of God, and that rainbow speaks of God's faithfulness. "His righteousness standeth," that is what the rainbow says, "like the strong mountains, and His judgments are like the great deep." And, founded on the faithfulness of God, we can hope.
And yet, in spite of the attractiveness and in spite of the hope, the rainbow round the throne of God is still awful, for it reminds us of what, in our soft age, we are apt to forget--that "our God is a consuming fire," that never, from generation to generation, does He lower His standard for a moment, that not because in one age or another sins are condoned or thought lightly of does He vary for an instant the standard of holiness He demands, because He has appointed a day when He will judge the world by the standard of that Man Whom He has ordained.
And when, therefore, we turn from the prototype in Heaven to the copy of it which we have been lately seeing on earth, we are not surprised to find the same mingled elements of attractiveness and awfulness in the rainbow which encircled the throne of the empire for three and sixty years.
In the first place, we find it a rainbow of unsullied purity. No one could go down, even for a few hours, to preach at the Court, without being struck by the goodness of the men, as well as the goodness of the women, who surrounded the Queen. There was an atmosphere of goodness, of innocence, of pure home life, which constituted a beautiful rainbow round the throne. It had what we should expect--an attractive power throughout the world. Everyone felt, for that reason, at home with their Queen, because they were conscious that, at her home, there were just the very qualities, and the very characteristics, of a pure, and true, and good home. It gave an impulse of hope to the whole empire. Young mothers in Canada, Australia, and the islands of the sea, mothers of grown-up sons and daughters who found it difficult to keep the standard high in their own homes, thousands of