The Seer is introduced to a scene which we first recognise as the glorious audience-chamber of a great King. Everything as yet speaks of royalty, and of royal majesty, power, and judgment. The _jasper stone_ as we learn from a later passage of this book, in which it is said to be "clear as crystal,"[89] was of a bright, sparkling whiteness; and it fitly represents the holiness of Him of whom the seraphim in Isaiah cry one to another, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts,"[90] and who in this very chapter is celebrated by the unresting cherubim with the words, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord, God, the Almighty, which was and which is and which is to come." The _sardius_, again, was of a fiery red colour, and can denote nothing but the terror of the Almighty's wrath. _Out of the throne_ also--not merely out of the atmosphere surrounding it, but out of the throne itself--_proceed lightnings and voices and thunders_, always throughout the Apocalypse emblems of judgment; while the use of the word _burn_ in other parts of the same book, and the fact that what the Seer beheld was not so much lamps as torches, leads to the belief that these torches as they burned before the throne sent out a blazing and fierce rather than a calm and soft light. It is true that the _rainbow round about the throne_ points to the Divine covenant of grace and promise, and that its _emerald_ greenness, absorbing, or at least throwing into the shade, its other and varied hues, tells with peculiar force of something on which the eye loves, and does not fear, to rest. But the mercy of God does not extinguish His righteousness and judgment. Different as such qualities may seem to be, they are combined in Him with whom the Church and the world have to do. In the New Testament not less than in the Old the Almighty reveals Himself in the awakening terrors of His wrath as well as in the winning gentleness of His love. St. Peter speaks of our Lord as not only the chief corner-stone laid in Zion, elect, precious, so that he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame, but as a stone of stumbling and rock of offence;[91] and when the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews gives us his loftiest description of the privileges of the Christian Church, he closes it with the words, "Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe: for our God is a consuming fire."[92] So also here. Would we conceive of God aright, even after we have been brought into the full enjoyment of all the riches of His grace and love, we must think of Him as represented by the jasper and the sardius as well as by the emerald.