T| I remember once, in the south of Europe, descending about sunset into a deep solemn valley, circled in by precipitous mountains, and shadowed over with dark pine groves. It seemed as if we were about to lose sight of the day, and of the gladness of nature, and to descend, with Jonah, to the bottoms of the mountains. But, in the perpendicular rocks on the opposite side
3o2 THE VALLEY OF ACHOR
there was a deep breach or cleft, and right up to this our path pointed. Now, through that rift the setting sun was pouring such a golden glory that it seemed the path to a better world ; and I thought then, and I think now, that the deep gloom of the valley, and the brightness which we could not reach save by descending into it, were no bad types of the light affliction which is but for a moment, and the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory hereafter.1
SJ Kussel Wallace tells us that one of the most peculiar and least generally considered features of our earth, but one which is also essential to the development and maintenance of the rich organic life it possesses, is the uninterrupted supply of atmos- pheric dust which is now known to be necessary for the pro- duction of rain clouds and beneficial rains and mists, and without which the whole course of meteorological phenomena would be so changed as to endanger the very existence of a large portion of the life upon the earth. Now, the chief portion of this fine dust, distributed through the upper atmosphere, from the equator to the poles, with wonderful uniformity, is derived from those great terrestrial features which are often looked upon as the least essential, and even as blots and blemishes on the fair face of nature — deserts and volcanoes. Most persons, no doubt, think they could both be very well spared, and that the earth would be greatly improved from a human point of view, if they were altogether abolished. Yet it is almost a certainty that the con- sequences of doing so would be to render the earth infinitely less enjoyable, and, perhaps, altogether uninhabitable by man.
In most human lives are periods closely corresponding with the deserts of the earth; times and conditions distinctly stale, flat, and apparently unprofitable ; spaces of compulsory isolation and solitariness ; seasons of intellectual infertility and depression ; stretches of drudgery ; tedious spells of personal affliction ; times of enforced inaction ; years of dullness, dreariness, and barrenness. Destitute of the ordinary interests, excitements, and charms of life, we may justly reckon such periods as constituting the wilderness stages of our pilgrimage. Of these monotonous inter- ludes we think and speak regretfully. They are looked upon as the waste part of life, the days when we simply marked time, when we ploughed the sand. What the desert is to nature, a blot and blemish, that, we conclude, are the grey featureless terms of human life. Yet may we not be mistaken about our dreary days and years as we are in our estimate of the worth of deserts in the system of nature? As Dr. Wallace reminds
1 J. M. Neale.
HOSEA ii. 15 303
us, indirectly we get our vineyards from the Sahara; and is it any more difficult to believe that what we are tempted to call the waste places of life fulfil a mission similarly benign and precious ? *
3. The prophet speaks out of his own experience. He is tell- ing what he himself has gone through. He had married a sweet and lovely girl in her purity and charm, and she had become an unfaithful wife. She that had been the guardian of his home, the spring of his happiness, the source of his strength, was disloyal; she was an adulteress, and the man's heart was rent, and in anguish he looked up to God. But how had he borne it ? He had come out of the great tribulation, and washed his robes and cleansed his heart from all hatred and revenge, and ascended to loftier heights of spiritual power than he had ever known before, to larger con- ceptions of God's pity and love. The valley of Achor — that is, the valley of troubling — had been the door through which he ascended to the highlands of the spiritual order — the heavenly places of God.
Hosea found his gospel where he found God — in himself ; but he did not keep it to himself. He gave it to others. He turned the materials of his own experience into the means by which he became a Barnabas, a son of consolation. As one of our best teachers says : " He saw God in the tragedies of his life. He heard the voice of God in the sorrow and shame of his own home ; and so, led by the love he still bore to his sinful wife, he became the messenger of Divine love and mercy to God's sinful people."
•[J John Bunyan, in his Pilgrim's Progress, talking about the Valley of Humiliation, says that " it is the most fruitful valley that ever crow flew over." So it is. Where do we look when we want to feed our faith — when we ask for something that shall enable us to set our feet down firmly, to stand loyal to our conviction, true to our principle ? We go back to the Valleys of Achor ; see the men who suffer like heroes, passing through, rising high, doing their work whole-heartedly ; and we are stiffened in conviction and sustained in conflict. Yes. " Call to remembrance the former generations," turn over the history of human progress, and what do you come upon ? Valleys of Achor. The greatest, the best souls go through them, and go through to the widest service of mankind. John Morley asks —