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Updated: June 13, 2025
That is an old law in the Church of God: 'like people like priest, and 'like priest like people. And while there are various influences at work retarding and perplexing the immediate operation of that law, at the same time, he who has eyes to see such things in a congregation and in a community will easily see Hosea's great law of congregational selection in operation every day.
"Ever since the men and women who dwell by the Nile have submitted, for the sake of a great cause, to demands opposed to their wishes," replied the priest. "Consider all this, and remember that Hosea's ancestress he boasted of it in your own presence was an Egyptian, the daughter of a man of my own class." "How many generations have passed to the tomb since?" "No matter!
He had anticipated that very day surprising him with the news that he had been promoted above men many years his seniors and of Egyptian lineage. Instead of the slights Nun had dreaded, Hosea's gallant bearing, courage and, as he modestly added, good-fortune had gained him promotion, yet he had remained a Hebrew.
Shortly after Hosea's departure the chief-priest died and, on the same day Bai, the second prophet, became his successor. Many changes now took place, and the most powerful man in the kingdom filled Pharaoh with hatred of the Hebrews and their leader, Mesu, whom he and the queen had hitherto protected and feared.
His notes and introduction are filled with Latin quotations, and he appears as much a scholar as Hosea Biglow does a natural. He says he tried to teach Hosea better English, but decided to let him work out his own ideas in his own way. Still, he endorses Hosea's principles, and is in every way thoroughly his friend.
Be you Israel, and God will surely be your dew; and life and growth will be possible. That is the first lesson of this great promise. II. The second is, that a soul thus bedewed by God will spring into purity and beauty. We go back to Hosea's vegetable metaphors. 'He shall grow as the lily' is his first promise.
But scarcely had he performed the task of repetition when, with impetuous earnestness, he grasped Hosea's hand and besought him to tell him whether he had any cause to fear for his life. The warrior clasped him affectionately in his arms and answered that he hoped he had entrusted this message to him only to have it forgotten.
Brethren, if we are to set forth anything, in our daily lives, of this strength, remember that our lives must be rooted in, as well as bedewed by, God. Hosea's emblems, beautiful and instructive as they are, do not reach to the deep truth set forth in still holier and sweeter words; "I am the Vine, ye are the branches." The union of Christ and His people is closer than that between dew and plant.
In Hosea's tender picture of the divine training of Israel which, alas! failed of its effect, we read, 'I drew them with cords of a man, which is further explained as being 'with bands of love. The metaphor in the prophet's mind is probably that of a child being 'taught to go' and upheld in its first tottering steps by leading-strings.
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.
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