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.