(1) The appearance of the dew has always filled men with a sense of mystery. The dew neither rises nor falls. It neither comes down from heaven nor rises out of the earth ; it is distilled from the air. As the sun sets, the air cools and deposits on the place of need the vapour it can no longer hold. The dew is thus ever at hand — hidden yet becoming more intimately manifest when evening falls. Both the Old Testament and New Testament assure us that God is not far from us — " He is very nigh thee." Wonderful is His appearing, as on some Emmaus road, when the heart is bruised and life is exhausted ; in the gloaming of the day He comes to heal us.
On the poor heart worn out with toil Thy Word Falls soft and gentle as the evening shower.
And yet how mild and familiar this wonderful economy of Nature has become, inspiring no dread, arousing no suspicion, creating no fear, but simply accepted as a gracious, providential arrangement that, despite the fact that it seems so incomprehen-
1 F. E. Marsh, Emblems of the Holy Spirit, 200
HOSEA xiv. 5, 6 311
sible, may be safely left to its close and constant contact with our earthly life ! And God Himself, who does all these things, is not more easy of comprehension. Though, like the dew, He is in close and familiar contact with us, He is infinitely beyond the grasp of our understanding, and before His great and glorious attributes our penetration is baffled and our apprehension con- founded. Everywhere we may discern the evidence of His exist- ence and the manifestations of His glory ; yet to mortal eye He is invisible, and we can nowhere discover the place where His honour dwelleth.
(2) The dew comes quietly. It has a great work to do, but it uses no force, makes no noise, shows no sign. Gardens, fields, forests are to be revived. Gems, with a secret of life in them, are to be laid into each uplifted hand of grass, and leaf, and spray. There is an infinitude of business, but no token of the worker. We witness the vast result, but not the operation. The whole meadow and mountain have been baptized into a fresh, pure life, but no one caught a glimpse of the finger from which the dew- drop fell ; and the foot that bore the blessing has left no print.
When God comes to our soul, as to His field, He comes thus quietly. We hear no footfall; we feel no touch; we mark no motion of the miracle that is being done. We are born again ; and we may note it, and remember it no more than in the case of our first birth. God's work on us is a secret with Himself. We recognize it only by its result. Our spirit is quickened : we are alive with the life of God. With eager faith we draw in the refreshing, strengthening truths which bathe our soul. In each of these, as the sun in a dewdrop, we see the shining Sun of heavenly love. We are glorious with a glory which is all the gift of God.
(3) There is power in the dew. " Only a dewdrop," we care- lessly say — a thing of light and beauty, quivering in our sight for a little space with ephemeral radiance, and then lost in the sunbeam, scattered by an insect's flight, or wafted to destruction by a breath of morning air. Yes; but there is power in the dewdrop. It represents a force far transcending the potency of mechanical contrivance or dynamic agency — the force that gladdens the wilderness and the solitary place, and causes the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose. For though it is only
312 THE BLESSING OF THE DEW
a dewdrop it sparkles with the glory of a new creation, and hides within its jewelled bosom the freshening might that maketh all things new. And God will be as the dew unto Israel — uniting in Himself this gentleness and force, and in all the relations He sustains to us, giving to them glorious manifestation.
Tj There is more energy imprisoned in a drop of dew than is liberated by a thunderstorm.1
(4) The dew comes seasonably. It comes when it is needed, and when it can gain its end. The very existence of the dew indicates a loss sustained by Nature and a provision in Nature for repairing that loss. The absorbing effects of the sun's heat not only tell upon the earth in stimulating its demand for moisture, but they likewise produce those variations of temperature which ensure its supply. They cool the surface of the earth, on the one hand, and warm the volume of the atmosphere, on the other ; and as the ambient air, laden with generous gifts, broods over the soil, where the springs of life have been drained and the energies of growth are flagging, it feels the cool touch of lips that plead for refreshing, and of faces upturned for benediction, and at once the pearly drops condense and gather that they may afford the fertilizing supply.
There are seasons in our religious experience when the chill of fear or of failure changes our spiritual state ; seasons, too, in the Church, when the low and lifeless tone of its fellowship is a true index of its spiritual dearth. Life is not lost, but it has become torpid ; and we need that energizing touch of Divine grace which our very benumbed condition provokes to quicken us.