nded some
god, they knew not how; always afraid of some god turning against
them, and bringing diseases against their bodies; floods, drought,
blight against their crops; storms against their ships, in revenge
for some slight or neglect of theirs.

And all the while they had no clear notion that these gods made the
world; they thought that the gods were parts of the world, just as
men are, and that beyond the gods there was the some sort of Fate,
or necessity, which even gods must obey.

Do you not see now what a comfort--what a spring of hope, and
courage, and peace of mind, and patient industry--it must have been
to the men of old time to be told, by this story of the flood, that
the God who sends the flood sends the rainbow also? There are not
two gods, nor many gods, but one God, of whom are all things. Light
and darkness, storm or sunshine, barrenness or wealth, come alike
from him. Diseases, storm, flood, blight, all these show that there
is in God an awfulness, a sternness, an anger if need be--a power of
destroying his own work, of altering his own order; but sunshine,
fruitfulness, peace, and comfort, all show that love and mercy,
beauty and order, are just as much attributes of his essence as
awfulness and anger.

They tell us he is a God whose will is to love, to bless, to make
his creatures happy, if they will allow him. They tell us that his
anger is not a capricious, revengeful, proud, selfish anger, such as
that of the heathen gods: but that it is an orderly anger, a just
anger, a loving anger, and therefore an anger which in its wrath can
remember mercy. Out of God's wrath shineth love, as the rainbow out
of the storm; if it repenteth him that he hath made man, it is only
because man is spoiling and ruining himself, and wasting the gifts
of the good world by his wickedness. If he see fit to destroy man
out of the earth, he will destroy none but those who deserve and
need destroying. He will save those whom, like Noah, he can trust
to begin afresh, and raise up a better race of men to do his work in
the world. If God send a flood to destroy all living things, any
when or anywhere, he will show, by putting the rainbow in the cloud,
that floods and destruction and anger are not his rule; that his
rule is sunshine, and peace, and order; that though he found it
necessary once to curse the ground, once to sweep away a wicked race
of men, yet that even that was, if one dare use the words of God,
a