IN a note book containing the substance of several sermons written from memory by my brother, Thomas Boorne, who died in February, 185o, he has recorded, that on Saturday, August 1st, 1846, London and its vicinity was visited with a most terrific thunder storm, accompanied with hail, in size, larger than beech nuts, destroying many panes of glass. It was reckoned that it would cost from £1800 to £2000 to restore the damage done to Buckingham Palace alone, and the new houses of Parliament also suffered severely from the hail. I have some recollection of a very heavy hail storm, which probably was the one recorded by my brother, for I distinctly remember my dear mother throwing a large cloak over her head, and rushing outside our house to close the shutters, which were fixed in the old style, on either side of the windows; and I remember too, in my fright, taking refuge in a large cupboard under the staircase. But eventually the storm ceased, when a rainbow appeared, which filled my heart with delight. I suppose it was the fact of the rainbow being mentioned in the Bible, which was the cause of my joy. My parents being godly people, it was their custom to read the Bible with us, their children, on a Sunday afternoon, as a family Bible class, and they would be likely to select such portions as would be of some interest to a child’s mind. I name this incident as an introduction to a few remarks on the rainbow. Whether the happiness I felt at its appearance after the terrible storm arose from any knowledge of God’s promise with the bow, I am unable to say. Probably it was so; being old enough in some measure to understand. And I have ever felt a pleasure in beholding the many appearances of it since that day; for it conveys a sacred and sweet sign, and remains a token of God’s faithfulness.
The rainbow occupies four places in the Word of God. The first mention of it relates to the covenant God made with Noah after the old world had been deluged by the flood. God declared He would no more destroy all flesh by the waters of a flood, as he had done; giving the bow as a token of the covenant between Him and Noah and every living creature that was with him for perpetual generations; saying, “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.”
The poet Hart puts it thus in verse,
“When, deaf to every warning given,
Man braved the patient power of heaven,
Great in His anger, God arose,
Deluged the world, and drowned His foes!
Vengeance, that called for this just doom,
Retired to make sweet mercy room;
God of His wrath repenting, swore
A flood should drown the earth no more.
That future ages this might know,
He placed in heaven His radiant bow;
The sign till time itself shall fail,
That waters shall no more prevail.”
The prophet Ezekiel, describes the vision which he saw of the four cherubims and the four wheels, with the living creatures within them, whose noise of their wings were like great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, and above them over their heads was the likeness of a throne with the likeness as the appearance of a man upon it, which had color of amber as the appearance of fire, and brightness round about it as the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain. This, says the prophet, with other majestic signs, “was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.”
The evangelist John speaks in the book of Revelation of a throne he saw set in heaven, and of One who sat on the throne, “whose appearance to look upon was like jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like unto an emerald.”
The three references to the rainbow are connected with the mercy of God in the throne of His grace. In the first it appears as a token of God’s covenant; in the second it irradiates the throne of His glory as seen by the prophet on earth; in the third instance it surrounded the throne of God’s glory in heaven, as seen by the evangelist John, wherein “stood a Lamb as it had been slain.”
There is a fourth reference to the rainbow in the book of Revelation, where the evangelist saw “a mighty angel come down from heaven clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head”; he had in his hand a little book open. He cried with a loud voice, when seven thunders uttered their voices. John was about to write, but he was commanded to seal up those things which the seven thunders had uttered; but the little book was handed to him, with the command to eat it, and it was sweet in his mouth as honey, but to his belly it was bitter.
It is not possible in this brief article to touch more than the shadow of the glorious signification of the rainbow blended in the foregoing instances. Like the bow, its arch is too high and its extent too wide; but this we may say that its connection with the covenant, with the throne of grace, and Him who sits thereon, yea, who is. the throne itself, gives a majesty and glory to it, so that grace, mercy, and peace, are blessedly set forth by its. radiant beams; as says good Mr. Hart:
“This bow that beams with vivid light,
Presents a sign to Christian sight,
That God has sworn (who dares condemn?)
He will be no more wroth with them.
“Thus the believer, when he views
The rainbow in its various hues,
May say, ‘those lovely colors shine
To show that heaven is surely mine.
“‘See in you cloud what tinctures glow,
And gild the smiling vales below!
So smiles my cheerful soul to see
My God is reconciled to me.’”
John Bunyan, in his “Saints’ privilege and profit, or the throne of Grace,” sums up his excellent essay on the beauty set forth by the rainbow, as follows; “The bow is of that nature as to make whatever you shall look upon through it, to be of the same color as itself, whether the thing be bush, or man, or beast; and the righteousness of Christ is that that makes sinners, when, God looks upon them through it, to look beautiful and acceptable in His sight, for we are made comely through His comeliness, and made accepted in the Beloved.”
May it be your high privilege, dear reader, may it be mine, to apprehend by a living faith, the Echo of the gospel portrayed in the bow, which the Lord has, declared to be, “my bow in the cloud.”
New Cross. S. B.
Since writing the above, our attention has been called to the faith (unbelief) of the bishop of Rochester. We append his utterances, as reported in some of the daily papers of 28th January; and it goes without saying that he practically denies the truth of the Bible.
These are his words:
“The Flood and the Incarnation”! The one the center or substance of Christian faith, with all the lines of evidence converging into it; the other, a far-off tradition or story from the prehistoric period, about which various views are obviously tenable: and the literalist one is open to the gravest difficulties, and is quite unneeded as a support to Christian faith.
We would ask how can he possibly believe in the substance of the Christian faith when he denies, or treats as fables, the words which fell from the lips of Jesus Christ, where Christ utters these solemn words; “But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away: so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
In the face of Christ’s own word, to treat the flood as a fable is to make the Son of God a teacher of lies, and saying in effect that he, the bishop of Rochester, knows better than the Christ of God as to the truth of the Bible.