May 1

"I will be as the dew unto Israel."—Hosea 14:5.

HOSEA, more than most of his brothers in the goodly fellowship, is the prophet of the Love of God. With wonderful virtue and healing in them, these ancient sentences of his should fall on my heart.

I will be as the dew, God says to me through this old messenger and servant in His family. How good a word that is!

Nothing is more beneficent than the dew. It refreshes the hot, tired earth. It rekindles its vanished beauty. It calls forth its fruit—the grass and the clover and the corn. So God, in His mercy and grace, promises that He will deal with me. He will change my soul and my life from a wilderness into His sweet garden.

But nothing is quieter and more noiseless than the dew. It makes no stir as it does its gracious work. It is as silent as it is mighty. There is none of the whir and snarl of man's machinery about its operations. And God performs in me His miracles of marvellous regeneration and renewal, and His presence is not seen by the world outside at all. But I see, and know, and love, and praise.

And nothing is more discriminating and isolating than the dew. It falls on the wide world, on field and forest and hill; but "ilka blade o' grass," as the Scottish song says, receives its own coolness and quickening and benediction. Thus God assures me that He will not forget and miss me in the vast and thronging crowd. He is not careful of the type and careless of the single life. On me, even me, the showers of His rich blessing will descend, as if I were His sole and only child.

Is it not the very promise I require?