CHAPTER XXI.

Voices of the Summer, continued-The Season of Activity and Growth; of dew, light, heat, electricity, clouds, showers-Gradualism and toil in the process; concentration and immutability in the results-The final Triumph of Holy Principle and Habit.

THE summer is the season of growth and consolidation. So indeed is the spring, at least in the latter part of its progress; and in both seasons the same images may be used, and are used, to illustrate the laws and habits of growth, both in the mind and heart. The growth is little by little, imperceptible while looking at the plant, and to be measured only at intervals; but there is no regression; there is constant accretion and consolidation of character, good or bad. The husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and the latter rain; all the time between these periods must be that of growth and patience. Paul may plant, and Apollos water, but it is God who giveth the increase. Native intellectual progress may seem to be of man, as well as the planting and the watering; but all spiritual life and progress are from God. There is a summer in our spiritual existence only because He works, and blesses our working. And as in nature, first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the

ear, so in the kingdom of grace, so in the growth of a child of God towards perfection. The trees of righteousness, that are of God's planting, are of gradual growth, as well as the trees of a forest. Day by day, in an appointed circle of years, the sun must shine upon them, and the rain must fall.

The summer is also the season of the greatest abundance and activity of all principles, causes, and operations of Nature necessary for the increase, which God giveth in the natural as well as the spiritual kingdom. The summer is the season of DEW. How sweetly, silently, softly, imperceptibly, its precious influences fall! In what purity and beauty, while every blade, leaf, and flower drinks its fill, bathed in the all-surrounding but invisible suffusion of refreshing moisture, do the crystal drops gather form and brightness for the morning light, impearling the lowliest grass, and every branch and blossom. Then, when the sun rises, how indescribably refreshing is the loveliness and splendor of the dewy landscape!

What process in nature can be more exquisitely beautiful than this; more salutary in its results, more illustrative of the goodness and grace of our Heavenly Father? Accordingly, it is this process which is chosen as the sweetest and most perfect image of the gift of God's refreshing word from Heaven, and of its reviving, life-giving power to the soul: My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew; as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass.—It is in the warm still night, it is when the sky is clear, it is when the wind is sleeping beneath the sparkling stars, in serenity, in repose, in silence, that the dew abundantly distils its moisture; and so, in the calm, attentive, quiet hour, when the glare of the noon of life passes into the evening, and the throbbing pulses of

he world are still, God's precious word settles into the soul. How many things solemnly impressive come to the mind at night, come in silence, and beneath the stars! Beautifully is the Dew classed among "the precious things of Heaven," in Joseph's blessing; and God himself says, "I will be as the Dew unto Israel; he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon." When God descends as the Dew, it is His Truth and His Spirit on the nation and the soul, and every thing holy and precious grows and prospers.

In Oriental climes these allusions were still more impressively beautiful even than in our own. To the life and beauty of a Judean or Egyptian landscape an abundant supply of dew was absolutely necessary; if it were withheld, beneath the fervor of a summer sun every thing would wither and die. The dew in those climates falls so rapidly and abundantly that it may be collected in a shallow vessel, like water from a shower of rain; and the want of rain in the day-time is thus gently and constantly supplied by the bounty of the night; were it otherwise the most distressing droughts must be the consequence. Hence the intensity of that curse of David, Ye mountains of Gilboa! Let there be no dew, neither rain upon you, nor fields of offerings! And hence may be conceived the tremendous character of the predicted years of famine in Israel, in the time of Elijah, There shall be neither dew nor rain.

"Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit," God says, describing the retributive consequences of the continued sins of his people. But again, when God will renew his mercy, and fulfil his promises, says, "The seed shall be prosperous; the vine shall give her fruit, and the ground shall give her increase, and the heavens.

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shall give their dew." As the dew upon an Oriental landscape, reviving its life and freshness, blessing the earth with fertility and luxuriance, deepening the greenness of the verdure, and the perfume and beauty of the flower, so the combination of Grace and Truth in God's Divine Word, preached from the heart that he has taught and visited, revives a Christian congregation, or in solitary and prayerful communion with the Sacred volume, refreshes and enlivens the soul. And how striking is the application of the same figure to the influence of God's Church in the world, sacred, reviving, renewing. "The remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as the dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass." Like the sweet prediction of the coming and kingdom of the Redeemer, "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that water the earth," these images possess the soul with freshness and beauty; the very reading of them is as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.

The Summer is the season of greatest light and heat, which in combination and interchange with the showers, perpetually renew the earth's exuberant dress of budding, blossoming, flowering fragrance and loveliness. The Summer is the season of the play of the lightning, when, between the vegetable world and the atmosphere, the circulation of electricity establishes another powerful agency of growth. The Summer is the season of cloud-landscapes, gorgeous and glorious, with all the grateful and refreshing changes of sunshine and shade, and cloud-terraces of purple radiance let down from heaven to earth in the morning and evening twilight.

In all this habitude of summer growth and glory, we see just the type of what takes place in a soul, in which God is employ

ing his gracious divine agencies to develope and renew its faculties and powers. Sometimes there is in individual souls a concentration of Summer splendor and loveliness, in all the qualities of grace springing from and demonstrating the power and glory of the life hid with Christ in God. Sometimes there is such a concentration in the Church. At particular periods everything flourishes in all the luxuriance of summer verdure and flowers. There may be a summer season in our souls, in which all the sensibilities open with unusual delicacy of perception and sensitiveness to the light from heaven; in which our minds and hearts drink in the abundant influences of grace and truth and providence, falling like rain, the dew, and the sunshine. It is the time in which, between our roots, buds, leaves, and the atmosphere, the play of heaven's electric life goes on intensely; it is the time of fervid and luxuriant growth, and of rapidly concentrating and established habit towards heaven.

In all this, the law is that of gradual growth, and the principle is that of God giving the increase. We have but to commit our way to Him, and He will bring it to pass. A thousand exterior arrangements may be requisite, but whatever providences are needed, shall be at hand. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young; the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.

Through all the apparent chaos of what may seem human contingencies, God's will in the discipline of individual character is consummated on principles as sure as the succession of day and night, by laws more lasting than any arrangements of the material universe. The law by which the tides of the ocean