^y little girl looked up at the same sight and said, " Mamma, if the
wrong side of heaven is so fine, how very beautiful the right side
must be! "2
3. The rainbow is chiefly suggestive of thoughts either (1) of mystery or (2) of joy and sorrow.
(1) Mystery. — There is no more striking illustration of the vast difference between the religion of the Bible and that of the ancient pagan world than is afforded by their respective explana- tions of the rainbow. A phenomenon so remarkable would naturally excite the wonder and curiosity of primeval man. Its mystic beauty, the rarity of its appearance, the fact that it had the heavens for its scene, almost inevitably invested it with a supernatural significance. The old mythology, as we know,
' Morris Joseph. ' L. A. Banks.
GENESIS IX. 13 171
discerned a god in every wonder of Nature ; and therefore it is not surprising to find that for the ancient Greeks the rainbow was the visible representative of a golden-winged maiden who attended the Lord and Mistress of Heaven, and carried their messages to mortals. According to one account, Iris is actually changed into the beautiful rainbow as a reward for her services ; according to another, the rainbow is but the glittering ladder by which she descends from the sky to do her errands on earth. Now, contrast this myth, graceful, yet lacking the true religious spirit, with the interpretation of the rainbow given in Genesis. Here the phenomenon is made to tell a story of the Divine love for all the world — a story which breathes comfort into every heart that opens to receive its message.
^ Rude and distant tribes agree in the conception of the Kainbow as a living monster. A New Zealand myth, describing the battle of the Tempest against the Forest, tells how the Rainbow arose and placed his mouth close to Tane-ma-huta, the Father of Trees, and continued to assault him till his trunk was snapt in two, and his broken branches strewed the ground. It is not only in mere nature-myth like this, but in actual awe-struck belief and terror, that the idea of the Hve Rainbow is worked out. The Karens of Burma say it is a spirit or demon. " The Rainbow can devour men. . . . When it devours a person, he dies a sudden or violent death. All persons that die badly, by falls, by drowning, or by wild beasts, die because the Rainbow has devoured their ka-la, or spirit. On devouring persons it becomes thirsty and comes down to drink, when it is seen in the sky drinking water. Therefore when people see the Rainbow, they say, " The Rainbow has come to drink water: look out, some one or other will die violently by an evil death." If children are playing, their parents will say to them, " The Rainbow has come down to drink : play no more, lest some accident should happen to you." And after the Rainbow has been seen, if any fatal accident happens to any one, it is said the Rainbow has devoured him. The Zulu ideas correspond in a curious way with these. The Rainbow lives with a snake, that is, where it is there is also a snake ; or it is like a sheep, and dwells in a pool. When it touches the earth, it is drinking at a pool. Men are afraid to wash in a large pool ; they say there is a Rainbow in it, and if a man goes in, it catches and eats him. The Rainbow, coming out of a river or pool, and resting on the ground, poisons men whom it meets, affecting them with eruptions. Men say, " The Rainbow is disease. If it
172 THE RAINBOW
rests on a man, something will happen to him." Lastly, in Dahome, Danh the Heavenly Snake, which makes the Popo beads and confers wealth on man, is the Eainbow.^
Suddenly The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky Keceived at once the full fruition Of the moon's consummate apparition. The black cloud-barricade was riven, Ruined beneath her feet, and driven Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,
North and South and East lay ready For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,
Sprang across them and stood steady. 'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, From heaven to heaven extending, perfect As the mother-moon's self, full in face. It rose, distinctly at the base
With its seven proper colours chorded. Which still, in the rising, were compressed, Until at last they coalesced,
And supreme the spectral creature lorded In a triumph of whitest white, — Above which intervened the night. But above night too, like only the next,
The second of a wondrous sequence,
Eeaching in rare and rarer frequence. Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, Fainter, flushier and flightier, — Eapture dying along its verge. Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the keystone of that arc?
He was there.
He himself with his human air.*
(2) Sorrow and Joy. — The devastating waters, concerning which God has made with men His covenant of mercy, are the waters of sorrow. These, too, have their bounds set them by the Divine hand. To them the fiat goes forth : thus far and no