THB CHRISTIAN NATURALIST. 55 



by that dire event; and even if it did not, 

 surely he who maketh the clouds his chariot, could 

 have so regulated their appearances that they might 

 never have exhibited the Rainbow. As all the pro- 

 phetic symbols have had a meaning, this would seein to 

 have been intended as the bow of mercy, in opposition 

 to those bows used in war, and in the chace from the 

 earliest times, which were rather weapons of wrath and 

 destruction. The imagination of Noah and his pos- 

 terity might in this bow well figure to themselves the 

 noblest symbol of power, united with forbearance; the 

 emblem of Almighty strength, divested of its fearful 

 arrows of wrath, and no longer strung for purposes of 

 hostility, but suspended in heaven as a potent war- 

 rior's trophy and token ; being alike adorned with the 

 colours of anger and peace, as if to denote at once 

 the wrath of an offended God towards his enemies, as 

 well as the eternal duration of his favor to all the re- 

 pentant and believing sons of Adam. 



If to Noah the Rainbow might have suggested thus 

 much, may it not teach a still higher lesson to us ? Is 

 it not now the emblem or type of a new and better 

 covenant than that which God made with his Old 

 Testament Church? Such, assuredly, we may deem 



