As the Dew | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 14, 1875

As the Dew.

When God selects the dew as the image of the working of his Spirit upon the spirit of man, he selects, perhaps, the gentlest, as well as the most beautiful, emblem which the whole range of nature supplies. Yet in the settling of the dew, at first as an invisible film of moisture, its gathering into dew-drops, its absorption by the plant, is involved the mighty forces by which the worlds are formed and guided in their orbits. Destructive forces are often noisy and violent. In the emotions, speech, and conduct of men, violence is often a sign rather of weakness than of strength. The Holy Spirit is so gentle in his working just because he is almighty. So it was written of Him to whom the Spirit was given not by measure: “He shall not strive, nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets.” His doctrine is dropped as the rain, and distilled as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb. Men’s hard, haughty, flint-like hearts, which the lightning could not melt nor the earthquake rend, were won and subdued, they knew not how, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. He was as the dew unto Israel.

How often Christians rebel against this character of divine grace! They want sudden, violent emotions; convictions of sin to make men weep and beat their breasts, and cry out, “What must I do?”—raptures to lift the soul into paradise, uncertain whether in the body or out of the body; gifts to convert hundreds by a single sermon; love to Christ so warm that self-denial will be no trouble, and martyrdom be coveted as a luxury; impressions so irrepressible that doubt shall be slain on the spot, never to rise again. We wish for Niagara, not “the dew.” But God who best knows how to carry on his own work says, “I will be as the dew unto Israel.”

The words shadow forth the secrecy of the working of divine grace. How silently, how secretly, the dew fulfills its gentle ministry! Every one takes notice of it when it lies thick on the grass and drips from the trees and hedges in the morning sunshine, and each dewdrop sparkles like a diamond and is colored like a rainbow. But who can tell when it began to fall? You were walking at sundown on the greensward that had seemed all day as dry as dust. A slight chill crept over you, scarcely perceptible; stooping, you swept your hand over the grass and found it damp. The dew was there, but you could not tell when its first cool, reviving breath stole out of the warm twilight upon the thirsty herbage. Through the dark night it gathers, obeying most fixed laws, yet with the most delicate, incessant variety of operation, never two nights, two hours, quite the same. The morning light reveals its abundance and beauty, and in the unclouded sunshine it vanishes.

Even thus secretly, silently, mysteriously does the Spirit of God often work. Not, indeed, always. Sometimes his visitation is like the rain of summer, heralded by thunder and lightning, every drop visible in the open sky, and the gathered torrent rushing down the streets and highways. But churches are not to suppose they can be revived only by Pentecostal showers. Christians are not to be discontented with themselves or with one another because they cannot fix the day and hour of their conversion to God. The blessing may be just as real, possibly even more precious, if it comes “as the dew.”

This image represents to us, moreover, what we may venture to term the humility of the divine Spirit. It is written that God humbleth himself to behold the things done in Heaven and upon the earth. The disdainful pride of human greatness, which scorns to pay attention to what is little and lowly, is at the very farthest remove from the likeness of God. What a tiny thing is a dew-drop! Yet it is a vast globe compared with one of those minute particles, or molecules of water, of which it is made, and by means of which God carries on his work, in building up the plant-tissue and providing food for man and for beast. Nowhere is divine power so marvelously displayed as in the realm of the infinitely small.

If in the natural world God works by what is least, we may infer by analogy that in the spiritual realm Christians are very wrong in despising what is least. “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.”

It is not enough that we keep open the eye, the ear, the hand, of the spirit; all the invisible pores of our spiritual nature need to be kept open likewise, if we would inherit the blessing which comes “as the dew.”

The inexhaustible fullness of divine grace, and also the conditions under which it works, are forcibly presented under this image of the dew. Where did all this treasure of dew—these countless millions of purest water drops—come from? Even from the very air which seemed so arid while the plants faded in the

scorching sun. It was all there all through the summer day. What hindered it from falling? Only the sunshine. God had to withdraw one blessing to make room for the other. The Spirit of God is ever near to us in unexhausted fullness, illimitable power. How easily the dew may be hindered! The shadow of a cloud is enough to prevent its gracious ministry, and keep Gideon’s fleece dry when the herbage all around is drenched.

You have prayed, it may be, sincerely, earnestly for the dew of God’s grace to bathe your thirsty spirit, purifying, refreshing, fertilizing it. What hinders? Perhaps, while the hot sunshine of worldly prosperity (which also you have prayed for) rests on you it cannot descend. God may see the cold shade of trial, loss, disappointment, the dark night of weeping to be the indispensable conditions for the fulfillment of this prayer. Then, as all earthly scenes of beauty and familiar home-marks of joy grow dim, and the night breeze blows chill, the stars of promise shall shine bright in the cold, clear sky, and love beyond all earthly love, peace passing understanding, faith that overcomes the world, and even joy unspeakable and full of glory, shall descend and fill the heart which had no room for them before.

God only knows what this promise means, and how and when it can be fulfilled. It will be “as the dew.”—Christian Weekly.