Consider now the token of the covenant which God gave to Noah. It was the rainbow. What is the rainbow? Sunlight turned back to our eye, through drops of falling rain. What sign could be more simple? And yet what sign could be more perfect? Noah’s sons would fear that another flood was coming, perhaps flood after flood. The token of the rainbow said to them, No. Floods and rain are not to be the custom of this earth. Sunshine is to be the custom of it. Do not fear the clouds and storm and rain; look at the bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself. That is a sign that the sun, though you cannot see it, is shining still. That up above, beyond the cloud, is still sunlight, and warmth, and cloudless blue sky. Believe in God’s covenant. Believe that the sun will conquer the clouds, warmth will conquer cold, calm will conquer storm, fair will conquer foul, light will conquer darkness, joy will conquer sorrow, life conquer death, love conquer destruction and the devouring floods; because God is light, God is love, God is life, God is peace and joy eternal and without change, and labours to give life, and joy, and peace, to man and beast and all created things. This was the meaning of the rainbow. Not a sudden or strange token, a miracle, as men call it, like as some voice out of the sky, or fiery comet, might have been; but a regular, orderly, and natural sign, to witness that God is a God of order. Whenever there was a rainy day there might be a rainbow. It came by the same laws by which everything else comes in the world. It was a witness that God who made the world is the friend and preserver of man; that His promises are like the everlasting sunshine which is above the clouds, without spot or fading, without variableness or shadow of turning. And do you fancy, my friends, that the new covenant, the covenant which God made with all mankind in the blood of His only-begotten Son, is narrower or weaker than the covenant which He made with Noah, Abraham, and David? He asked no conditions from them. Do you think He asks them from us? He called them by free grace. Do you think He calls us by anything less? He swore by Himself to them. How much more has He sworn by Himself to us? He who was born, and died, and rose again for us, who now sits at the right hand of the Father, very Man of the substance of a human mother, yet very God of very God begotten.