the Prophet was in his threatening mood, he predicts that 'an east
wind shall come, the wind of the Lord shall come up from the
wilderness'--the burning sirocco, with death upon its wings--'and his
spring shall become dry, and his fountain shall be dried up.' We have
then to imagine the land gaping and parched, the hot air having, as with
invisible tongue of flame, licked streams and pools dry, and having
shrunken fountains and springs. Then, all at once there comes down upon
the baking ground and on the faded, drooping flowers that lie languid
and prostrate on the ground in the darkness, borne on the wings of the
wind, from the depths of the great unfathomed sea, an unseen moisture.
You cannot call it rain, so gently does it diffuse itself; it is liker a
mist, but it brings life and freshness, and everything is changed. The
dew, or the night mist, as it might more properly be rendered, was
evidently a good deal in Hosea's mind; you may remember that he uses the
image again in a remarkably different aspect, where he speaks of men's
goodness as being like 'a morning cloud, and the early dew that passes
away.'

The natural object which yields the emblem was all inadequate to set
forth the divine gift which is compared to it, because as soon as the
sun has risen, with burning heat, it scatters the beneficent clouds, and
the 'sunbeams like swords' threaten to slay the tender green shoots. But
this mist from God that comes down to water the earth is never dried up.
It is not transient. It may be ours, and live in our hearts. Dear
brethren, the prose of this sweet old promise is 'If I depart, I will
send Him unto you.' If we are Christian people, we have the perpetual
dew of that divine Spirit, which falls on our leaves and penetrates to
our roots, and communicates life, freshness, and power, and makes growth
possible--more than possible, certain--for us. 'I'--Myself through My
Son, and in My Spirit--'I will be'--an unconditional assurance--'as the
dew unto Israel.'

Yes! That promise is in its depth and fulness applicable only to the
Christian Israel, and it remains true to-day and for ever. Do we see it
fulfilled? One looks round upon our congregations, and into one's own
heart, and we behold the parable of Gideon's fleece acted over
again--some places soaked with the refreshing moisture, and some as hard
as a rock and as dry as tinder and ready to catch fire from any spark
from the devil's forge and be consumed in the ev