1 W. L. Watkinson, The Ashes 0/ Hoses, 98.
3o4 THE VALLEY OF ACHOR
" To what quarter in the large historic firmament can we turn our eyes with such certainty of being stirred and elevated to thinking better of human life, and of the worth of those who have been most deeply penetrated by its seriousness, as to the annals of those intrepid spirits whom the Protestant doctrine of the indefeas- ible personal responsibility brought to the front in the sixteenth century in Germany, and in the seventeenth century in Scotland V1
The wilderness shall blossom
Beneath Thy ray benign And Achor, with its vale of woe,
Shall spring with Hope Divine ; Thy resurrection power
Transforms the dreary scene, Abundant blossom shall appear,
Where all had cankered been.
The earthly clod is helpless,
All, all the power is Thine, The seedling and the fruitage fair,
The shower and the shine ; To Thee be all the glory,
To Thee resultant praise, Eternity will still unfold
The wonder of Thy Ways.
1 J. Clifford, The Gospel of Gladness, 36.
The Blessing of the Dew.
JER.-MAL. — 20
Literature.
Burns (D.), Sayings in Symbol, 151.
Comrie (A.), Memorial Sermons, 158.
Famcomb (Dora), In the Garden with Him, 17.
Gibbon (J. M.), In the Days of Youth, 52.
Gregory (J. R.), in Thanksgiving Sermons, 77.
Henry (P.), Christ All in All, 201.
Hind (T.), The Treasures of the Snow, 56.
Lambert (J. C), Three Fishing Boats, 79.
Litchfield (G.), The House of the Potter, 40.
McCook (H. C), The Gospel in Nature, 30.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Ezekiel to Malachi, 134.
Miller (J. R.), Our New Edens, 63.
Norton (J. N.), The King's Ferry-Boat, 135.
Pearse (M. G.), Parables and Pictures, 95.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, iii. 57.
Purves (P. C), The Gospel according to Hosea, 29.
Raleigh (A.), Quiet Resting Places, 23.
Ritson (J.), Life, 193.
Sadler (M. F.), Sermon Outlines, 285.
Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 135.
Smith (W. C), Sermons, 66.
Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, vi. (1860), No. 342.
Thompson (J.), Words of Hope and Cheer, 109.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xii. (1875), No. 919.
Watkinson (W. L.), Studies in Christian Character, i. 237.
Children's Pulpit : Nature Talks to the Young, xvii. 58 (G. Calthrop).
Christian World Pulpit, xxviii. 20 (W. H. Tetley).
Churchman's Pulpit: Twenty- third Sunday after Trinity, xiii. 260
(H. Greene). National Preacher, xl. 253 (J. M. Sherwood). Penuel, iv. 50 (G. Warner).
3!o6
The Blessing of the Dew.
I will be as the dew unto Israel : he shall blossom as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon.— Hos. xiv. 5, 6.
Hosea was a poet as well as a prophet. His little prophecy is full of similes and illustrations drawn from natural objects ; scarcely any of them from cities or from the ways of men ; almost all of them from Nature as seen in the open country, which he evidently loved, and where he had looked upon things with a clear and meditative eye. This whole chapter is full of emblems drawn from plant life. The lily, the cedar, the olive, are mentioned in the text. And there follow, in the subsequent verses, the corn, and the vine, and the green fir tree.
The words, no doubt, originally had reference to the numerical increase of the people and their restoration to their land, but they may be taken by us quite fairly as having a very much deeper and more blessed reference than that. For they describe the uniform condition of all spiritual life and growth — " I will be as the dew unto Israel " ; and then they set forth some of the mani- fold aspects of that growth, and the consequences of receiving that heavenly dew, under the various metaphors which are employed.
I.
The Dew.
"I will be as the dew unto Israel."
1. This points us to the source of fruitfulness, the secret of
beauty, growth, and strength. Dew is so copious in Palestine
that it supplies to some extent the absence of rain. It is of great
importance to the agriculturist. In several passages of Scripture
307
308 THE BLESSING OF THE DEW
it is coupled in the Divine blessing with rain, or is mentioned as a chief source of fertility ; and its withdrawal is attributed to a curse.
% Dew is the water of the atmosphere deposited in minute globules upon the earth. It does not fall, in the ordinary sense of the term ; but after the sun has set, and the supply of heat is cut off, vegetation that has been warmed by its rays and has absorbed them, radiates its heat back into space and becomes rapidly cooled, until it becomes lower in temperature than the surrounding air. The result is that the moisture from the lower stratum of air is condensed and forms dew. The water vapour which is being continually breathed out by plants also helps in the formation, for on a still night it is supposed that the amount of water deposited is more than could have condensed out of the air coming into contact with the leaves of the plants, and that the plant itself assists in the deposition of moisture on its leaves. Dew is deposited, not on plants alone, but on all objects that have become cooled by radiation. Plants radiate their heat more freely than other bodies, and so receive a greater proportion of moisture.