THE RAINBOW. 
261 
The remembrance of its beauty fills me with adoration 
to Him who sitteth with a rainbow round about His 
throne; I tremble before the deep truths it has unfolded 
to me, and I offer my soul to God as an unworthy 
creature. It has suggested to me thq affluence of 
that exhaustless energy which needs but to will 
and it is done; that same energy which to things of 
simplest use adds the touch of perfect and enduring 
beauty. It has shown me, too, how infinite variety may 
result from varied phases of the same facts, how a 
universe may partake of one idea in its elements, 
construction, order, and completeness. It tells me, too, 
of the tenderness of divine love, the sympathy, com¬ 
passion, and gentle consideration of my God for the 
most ungrateful of his creatures; for the very rain 
drops that splash out of the rainbow on the green 
herb sing the praises of the Lord, and have for 
the burden of their song this monition for us— 
“ Wide as the rainbow stretch your arms of faith, 
and seek happiness as the reward, not of proving, 
but believing.” 
The evening breeze has died away; the moon throws 
a yellow gleam athwart the grass. The dews thicken, 
and as I glance across the moisture-spangled herbage, I 
see a sufficient play of iridescence to be assured that 
every dew-drop bears a rainbow : and I remember that 
Shakspere saw the rainbow in a tear, and placed on 
record, in anticipation of philosophy, the fact, that there 
is the same completeness and the same properties in the 
spectrum formed by the minutest shining globule as in 
