^ As I witness the energies of nature, I feel that the heart that fashioned it was young. There is no sign of age about crea- tion. There is no trace of the weariness of years. It is inspired with an abounding energy that tells me of a fresh and youthful mind. Christ may have lived from everlasting ages before the moment of creation came ; but the eternal morning was still upon His brow when He conceived and bodied out the world. There are the powers of youth in it. There are the energies of opening life. " Thou hast the dew of thy youth." 2
2. We may however take " youth " to be a collective noun, equivalent to young men. In that case the army is described as a host of young warriors, led forth in their fresh strength and countless numbers and gleaming beauty, like the dew of the morning. Did you never see the dew-drops glistening on the earth ? and did you never ask, " Whence came these ? How came they here so infinite in number, so lavishly scattered everywhere, 80 pure and brilliant ? " Nature whispered the answer, " They came from the womb of the morning." So God's people will come forth as noiselessly, as mysteriously, as divinely, as if they came " from the womb of the morning," like the dew-drops. Science has laboured to discover the origin of dew, and perhaps has guessed it ; but to the Eastern, one of the greatest riddles was. Out of whose womb came the dew ? Who is the mother of those pearly drops ? Now, so will God's people come mysteriously. Again, the dew-drops — who made them ? Do kings and princes rise up and hold their sceptres, and bid the clouds shed tears, or affright them to weeping by the beating of the drum ? Do armies march to the battle to force the sky to give up its treasure, and scatter its diamonds lavishly? No; God speaks; He whispers in * 0. H. Spurgeon. ' G. H. MonisoQ, FloodTuU, 286.
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the ears of nature, and it weeps for joy at the glad news that the morning is coming. God does it ; there is no apparent agency employed, no thunder, no lightning ; God has done it. That is how God's people shall be saved ; they come forth from the " womb of the morning"; divinely called, divinely brought, divinely blessed, divinely numbered, divinely scattered over the entire surface of the globe, divinely refreshing to the world, they proceed from the " womb of the morning."
% When you go out, delighted, into the dew of the morning, have you ever considered why it is so rich upon the grass ; — why it is not upon the trees ? It is partly on the trees, but yet your memory of it will be always chiefly of its gleam upon the lawn. On many trees you will find there is none at all. I cannot follow out here the many inquiries connected with this subject, but, broadly remember the branched trees are fed chiefly by rain, — the unbranched ones by dew, visible or invisible ; that is to say, at all events by moisture which they can gather for themselves out of the air ; or else by streams and springs. Hence the division of the verse of the song of Moses : " My doctrine shall drop as the rain ; my speech shall distil as the dew : as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass." ^
^ Until I heard from my friend Mr. Tyrwhitt of the cold felt at night in camping on Sinai, I could not understand how deep the feeling of the Arab, no less than the Greek, must have been respecting the Divine gift of the dew, — nor with what sense of thankfulness for miraculous blessing the question of Job would be uttered, " The hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it ? " Then compare the first words of the blessing of Isaac : " God give thee of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of earth " ; and, again, the first words of the song of Moses : " Give ear, oh ye heavens, — for my speech shall distil as the dew " ; and you will see at once why this heavenly food (manna) was made to shine clear in the desert, like an enduring of its dew ; — Divine remaining for continual need. Frozen, as the Alpine snow — pure for ever.*
3. The soldiers of this King retain their youth. He who has fellowship with God, and lives in the constant reception of the supernatural life and grace which come from Jesus Christ, possesses the secret of perpetual youth. The world ages us, time and physical changes tell on us all, and the strength which belongs
* Ruskin, Proserpina, i. chap. iii. § 22. ' Ruskin, Deucalion, i. chap. vii. § 12.
364 A VOLUNTEER ARMY
to the life of nature ebbs away ; but the life eternal is subject to no laws of decay and owes nothing to the external world. So we may be ever young in heart and spirit. It is possible for a man to carry the freshness, the buoyancy, the elastic cheerfulness, the joyful hope of his earliest days, right on through the monotony of middle-aged maturity, and even into old age shadowed by the long reflection of the tombs which the setting sun casts over the path. It is possible for us to grow younger as we grow older, because we drink more full draughts of the fountain of life, and so to have to say at the last, " Thou hast kept the good wine until now." " Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." If we live near Christ, and draw our life from Him, then we may blend the hopes of youth with the experience and memory of age ; be at once calm and joyous, wise and strong, preserving the blessedness of each stage of life into that which follows, and thus at last possessing the sweetness and the good of all at once. We may not only bear fruit in old age, but have buds, blossoms, and fruit — the varying product and adornment of every stage of life united in our characters.