working. It
comes quietly and works noiselessly. But the changes effected are
radical and immeasurable. Literally it gives to the earth a nightly
baptism of new life. That is God's plan for the earth. And that, too,
let me say to you, is His plan for our day-by-day life.

It hushes one's heart with a gentle awe to go out early in the morning
after a clear night when air and flower and leaf are fragrant with an
indescribable freshness, and listen to God's voice saying, "_I will be
as the dew unto Israel._" That sentence is the climax of the book where
it occurs.[25] God is trying through Hosea to woo His people away from
their evil leaders up to Himself again. To a people who knew well the
vitalizing power of the deep dews of an Oriental night, and their own
dependence upon them, He says with pleading voice, "_I_ will be to you
_as the dew_."

The setting of that sentence is made very winsome. The _beauty_ of the
lily, and of the olive-tree; the _strength_ of the roots of Lebanon's
giant cedars, and the _fragrance_ of their boughs; the _fruitfulness_
of the vine, and the _richness_ of the grain harvest are used to bring
graphically to their minds the meaning of His words: "as the dew."

Tenderly as He speaks to that nation in which His love-plan for a world
centered, more tenderly yet does He ever speak to the individual heart.
That wondrous One who is "alongside to help" will be by the atmosphere
of His presence to you and to me as the dew is to the earth--a daily
refreshing of new life, with its new strength, and rare beauty and fine
fragrance.

Have you noticed how Jesus Himself puts His ideal for the day-by-day
life? At that last Feast of Tabernacles He said, "He that believeth on
me out of his inner being shall flow rivers of water of life."[26] Jesus
was fairly saturated with the Old Testament figures and language. Here
He seems to be thinking, of that remarkable river-vision of
Ezekiel's.[27] You remember how much space is given there to describing
a wonderful river running through a place where living waters had never
flowed. The stream begins with a few strings of water trickling out from
under the door-step of the temple, and rises gradually but steadily
ankle-deep, knee-deep, loin-deep, over-head, until flood-tide is
reached, and an ever rising and deepening flood-tide. And everywhere the
waters go is life with beauty, and fruitfulness. There is no drought,
no ebbing, but a continual flowing in, and fillin