shore shall we depart, but as loved and longed-for pilgrims, who return to open arms and welcoming hearts. I long to see Jesus, and angels who have watched over me and befriended me, and all the great and good whose virtues have enriched the ages. I know that I shall hasten rapturously to worship my Lord; maybe he will take me in his arms to bear me over the river, and so to him I shall pour out my great and reverent love; but I am certain I shall see crowding down nearest the shore some forms that will give me their first caressesforms that will be more to me than all the jeweled host that circle the eternal throne. Heaven will recognize their right, nor will it be for a day."

XXXI.

THE RAINBOW OF MERCY.

And there was a rainbow round about the throne, like an emerald to look upon.-Rev. iv. 3 (Revised Version).

BACK in the beginning of the Bible, in the first book of the human story, in Genesis, we have the rainbow. From creation it had existed, of course, in the heavens after every rain-storm when the sun shone out upon its retreating phalanx; but God chose it as his pledge to Noah, and to every man that should come after him, that he would never again destroy the earth by flood. It is a beautiful pledge, coming as it always does after a storm; it is like the day which follows night, like the spring that follows winter, like the sunshine after rain; it is God's bow in the cloud which tells us that he loves us as much in storm as in shine.

And now here in the closing book of the Bible, in the midst of the glorious vision which came to this aged Greatheart whom Jesus loved, we have another rainbow. It is the rainbow round about the throne. The throne stands for law. It means government. This picture means that man's salvation

is no mere soft-heartedness on the part of God. God's throne is vindicated. Heaven and earth may pass away, but not one jot or tittle of God's law shall fail. God's love does not controvert his justice. God's throne stands forever, and the rainbow is round about the throne because love and mercy are as surely the characteristics of God as justice.

The atonement made by Jesus Christ is not something on the outside, to appease the wrath of an angry Deity. The atonement had its source in God's own heart. "God so loved the world" that he gave his Son. It is strange how men stumble at vicarious suffering in the atonement. We are all well enough accustomed to it in ordinary life. Every mother suffers vicariously for her child. The atonement is God's suffering for man in the person of Jesus Christ on the cross. It is to this thought of God's divine mercy that I want to fasten your attention for a few moments. In that rainbow is the world's hope.

A newspaper man who visited Oberammergau, and who wrote a very brilliant description of the Passion Play, entitled it, "The Story that Transformed the World." But the mere story of Jesus Christ and his sufferings and love could never have transformed the world. It is the great fact deeper than the story, that every sinful man and woman, by confessing their sins and taking Christ as a personal Savior, find their sins forgiven and their

hearts cleansed from all unrighteousness, that is transforming the world.

Man was lost, was sick in sin, was without hope; and Jesus came, not only to bring us pardon, but to show us the perfect manhood within our reach and inspire us to rise out of the "mire and the clay, and mount up with wings as eagles into the lofty air of heaven, where we belong.

دو

The story is told that some one gave a gentleman in Scotland an eagle, and he confined it until it sickened. One day he went out and looked at it. It was a pitiful sight. There it was with drooping wings and film-covered eyes. It seemed as if it would surely die. He said to himself: "It is a pity this free bird should die here. I will give it its freedom." He took it out on the heights and put it upon a rock, and went and lay down in the heather to watch what would happen. Presently he saw it lift its head and open its eyes and look. That eagle's eye saw something in the upper air which the man could not see, and that eagle's ear heard something which the man could not hear; but he watched until he saw a speck in the sky, and that speck grew larger, and presently he became aware that another eagle was coming down. Down it swept, with a scream of exultation, and passed over the sick eagle, and fanned it with its mighty wings, and lifted it up upon its own broad pinions, until the sick eagle gathered strength from contact with the messenger from the sky, spread

its wings, and soared away into the blue depths. That eagle could bring life and vigor down to earth because it came from the upper air.

Christ came down from the glory of heaven not only to make possible pardon for our sins, and to show us the rainbow of mercy round about the throne, but to fan our faded cheeks with the pinions of his own noble life, to bear us upward on the wings of his courage and faith, and to arouse in us a hungering for the better life for which we were made.

John McNeill tells the story of a man who had a young eagle which he put in the hen-yard with a clog on one of its feet so that it could not fly, and there it grew up. At last, when the man was going to move away from that part of the country, he decided to liberate his eagle. He took off the clog; but the eagle went hopping about just the same among the chickens. So very early one morning he took the eagle and set him up on the coping of the wall just as the sun was rising. The eagle opened his eyes and looked at the sun, and, lifting himself proudly up, stretched his mighty wings, and with one scream of hope launched himself into the upper air, and in five minutes was a vanishing speck.

My dear brother or sister, Jesus Christ has by his atoning sacrifice taken the clog off your foot; he has made it possible for you to be saved. He has made the most beautiful and holy life that was ever