ll; who is wonderful
in counsel and excellent in working; whose counsel stands, and who doeth
all his pleasure." (Eph. i. 11.) Can a rational creature work without a
plan? And shall mortal man be more rational than his Maker? The objects
which were presented to John are not to be understood as _material_
objects. It was requisite that he should be "in the Spirit," before he
could see them. The exercise of his bodily senses, the organs of
sensation, must be suspended, that he might have a perception of the
objects presented in vision. As the "spirits of just men made perfect"
in glory, in a disembodied state, are still conscious and active; so are
we warranted to conceive of souls yet in the body as being in a state
analagous,--falling into a trance. (Acts x. 10.) The first object seen
by John was a "throne set in heaven," the emblem of sovereignty. "One
sat on the throne," who cannot be described, only in an obscure manner
by comparison, being "the invisible God, whom no eye hath seen, nor can
see." Yet we know with certainty it is the person of the Father, because
he is in the next chapter plainly distinguished from "the Lamb." Seated
on the throne,--and "in the throne he is greater than the Mediator." A
relation between these divine persons was shadowed forth in Egypt
between Pharaoh and Joseph. (Gen. xli. 40.) Occupying the throne of the
universe, the Father sustains the majesty of the Godhead, and represents
the persons of the adorable Trinity; for the idea is equally
unscriptural and absurd, that either person appears or acts (_ad extra_)
in absolute or essential character. (Is. xlii. 1; John x. 18; xiv. 31.)
He that "sat, was ... like a jasper and a sardine stone,"--not like any
human form, but in allusion, perhaps, to the Shekinah or visible glory
above the mercy-seat in the most holy place, he appeared in the
essential purity or holiness of his nature and awful justice,--one "who
will by no means clear the guilty." The rainbow is the familiar emblem
or "token of the covenant." Its being "round about the throne" teaches
us, that God "in wrath remembers mercy." As "green" is the color most
pleasing to the natural eye, so is the rainbow of covenant mercy most
grateful to the penitent sinner, contemplated by the eye of faith. God
is "ever mindful of his covenant." (Ps. cxi. 5.)

Ever since the revelation of mercy to fallen man, God deals with
mankind, not in essential or absolute character, but by covenant in
econom