desire for Him to the utmost measure of its capacity: "I have answered and will regard him; I will be as the dew to Israel: he shall blossom as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They shall revive as the grain, and blossom as the vine; I am like a green fir-tree; from me is thy fruit found."
It will be seen from this that our text is really the climax of this speech of Jehovah. Through the addition of image to image the divine purpose of giving Himself gathers intensity, till at last God appears as a green tree, bearing fruit for his people. This is truly a marvelous representation, well adapted to startle us, when we think ourselves into it. It seems to imply something in God that, in the desire for self-communication exceeds even the strongest affection of a human parent for his children. And yet, my hearers, when reflecting upon it for a moment, can we fail to observe that the marvel in it is nothing else than the heart-miracle of all true religion, the great paradox underlying all God's concern with us. That He, the all-sufficient One, forever rich and blessed in Himself, should, as it were, take Himself in His own hands, making of Himself an object to be bestowed upon a creature, so as to change before the eyes of the prophet into a tree, showering its fruit upon Israel, lavish as nothing in all nature but a tree can be, this surely is something to be wondered at, and something which, though it recurs a thousand times, no experience
