The only true insight into nature is that which we get through the illumination of grace. There are three vast kingdoms of nature, grace, and glory; corresponding with body, soul, and spirit, and all three of these kingdoms are built on one pattern in the divine mind. Every law in the natural world has an exact counterpart in the spiritual. Day and night, winter and summer, verdant hills and barren wastes, mountains and valleys, and all other forms of creation are like thin gauze veils, under which God hides the semblances of great spiritual truths in the upper kingdoms of grace and glory. An angelic mind, from the heights of glory, can look down through all the ranges of mind and matter under him, as into the celestial depths of crystal waters, and behold the marvelous unity of the Creator's ideas, from the top to the bottom of creation. Thus God arranged the showers of rain in the land of Palestine, as a type of the operations of grace. He fashioned the land of Canaan to be the model land of all lands, to contain the products of all zones and climes, to be a miniature world in itself, and so he fashioned the coming and going of its rain clouds on a spiritual pattern, to beautifully adumbrate the movements of the Holy Spirit. For just what rain is to the earth, the Holy Spirit is to the soul. All through the Scriptures we have allusions to the early and the latter rain, and these rains are used as types of the Holy Spirit. (Joel ii, 23; James v. 7.)

1. The Lord arranged for two special rains in the land of Canaan. One in the early spring, when they planted the seed. This early rain was to give the earth a good soaking, and cause the seed to swell and sprout, and give the vital forces a good propulsion on their annual journey of growth. The soil of that land is very fine and heavy, and a good rain will last about three times as long as in countries where the soil is lighter. Then there came a long dry spell of several weeks, allowing ample time of bright clear weather for the cultivation of the crops. Then there came another copious rain to ripen the grain for the harvest. This latter rain came just in time to re-enforce the exhausted forces of the grains and fruits, and to fill out the ears of corn, and the fruits with an abundance of sap. Then the latter rain passed away, leaving the bright, warm sunshine to mature and mellow all the harvests, and giving beautiful cloudless days for the reapers to work in. Hence we learn in the life of Samuel that it was an extraordinary phenomenon for it to thunder or rain during harvest time.

2. These physiological arrangements for rain in the Holy Land are wonderfully illustrative of the operations of grace in the individual believer who is living in the Canaan life. For it must be remembered that all God's analogies have a startling exactness in them. Thus the physiology of Egypt is a type for persons living in the Egypt state; and the climatic and weather conditions in the Arabian desert a type for those living in the wilderness condition; and so the weather and crops in the land of Canaan, a type for those living in a Canaan condition of soul. When a believer first enters the sanctified state, he is wondrously inundated with a spiritual rainfall of the Holy Spirit. This is designed to perform the same work in grace as the early rain in Canaan, namely, to thoroughly moisten all the seeds of Bible truth which have previously been planted in the mind, so as to make them expand and rapidly grow in the soul, and also to give all the heart and understanding a thorough saturating with supernatural principles, affections and discernments. Hence it is a common experience, that when believers receive the baptism of the Spirit, dormant truths in the mind suddenly sprout and expand into amazing verdure and beauty. A supernatural freshness comes into all the faculties, agreeing with the sudden, beautiful verdure that breaks forth on earth after a spring rain. This early rain fills all the fountains of the being with heavenly love and light. The soul is full to overflowing with tears, and smiles, and songs, and tenderness, and a sweet zeal, so that it is like a tree just after a rain, everything that touches it brings down the glittering drops from the verdant leaves. This is the rain that soaks the seed of God's word deep in the soil of the understanding, and makes every latent germ of life start into vigorous growth. Then comes the period for cultivation of all the various crops of grace, a period of sunshine, of apparent sameness in the days, without special phenomena; without any signal deviations from the plain path of simple life. No moral earthquakes, or thunderstorms, or special floods of emotion, but the days follow each other calmly. The soul settles down into a steady walk of faith.

Oftentimes believers misunderstand this period of their experience. They think it is too tame, and are on the lookout for some more of the marvelous accompaniments of the early rain which at first inundated them. They are apt to want some spiritual thunder peal, or a rainbow, or a drenching shower, such as a trance, or heavenly vision, or something unique and startling in spiritual things. But, no, the Holy Spirit keeps them down to a steady walk of commonplace sunshine and every-day faith. This is the time to put in the solid work of Christian life, to be using the plow and the rake, to be practicing all those wondrous things that sprouted so vigorously under the first gushes of the outpoured Spirit. But by and b}' the rainless days get to be monotonous, the dry weather begins to be felt, and the soul begins to get uneasy. It would fain go back to what it felt under the early rain, or else rush prematurely forward to the latter rain, for the Holy Ghost gently intimates to the inner spirit that there is a latter rain after this dry spell, which will bring the soul out into a large place.

During this dry period the soul passes through a crisis in its history. With some it is a period of severe spiritual conflicts, corresponding with the wars of Joshua in the land of Canaan, and with the battles described by Paul in the sixth chapter of Ephesians. Many believers at this period are fiercely assailed by demons. They undergo severe temptations and annoyances. Some are sorely tried on the line of the affections, others on the line of truth and error, causing the intellect to be wrapped in battle smoke.

Others during this dry period have no special temptations, but undergo great losses and desolations, which reduce the soul to such narrow straits as to reveal undreamed-of depths of poverty and weakness of nature. Others have no marked conflicts with Satan, or signal desolations, but suffer much from inward aridity of spirit. All their inner life seems parched, their prayers are dry, the juices seem to have evaporated out of their souls, and they pine for moisture like the withered com fields.

There are no chapters in theology which properly set forth these various experiences of a devout life. Very few writers on Christian holiness have any adequate delineation of this stage of experience. The life of God in the soul is infinitely larger and more diversified than the definitions of any theology. Hence all books on sanctification, which simply prove and explain the first and second works of grace, with a few other outlines of general doctrine and experience, fail to furnish many of the saints with those deep and detailed truths which are needful for souls in passing through stages of peculiar trial or dryness. There is a marvelous variety among saints, and no book but the Bible is large enough to fit every case. But with most of sanctified believers there is a passage in their lives, sometimes extending over years, which might be called the "Arizona" of religious life; and as in passing from-the rich prairies of the western states to the evergreen fields of Southern California, the traveler must cross a stretch of dry territory, so between the early and the latter rain there is a period of drought. But be it remembered that this drought is just as essential to the fulness of Christian life as the rain is, and this is what many do not understand. It is the dry spell that tests everything, and puts qualities into the harvest which nothing else could. If the soul passes safely through this rainless period and meets the conditions, there will come in due time the latter rain.

The Holy Spirit who has been with the soul through the drought, will again flood the spirit with a fulness and sweetness and heavenly joy which will fill and ripen all the graces for the heavenly garner. There is an enlargement and fatness and overflow of heavenly love which Jesus stands ready to give to all those who perseveringly pray and believe for the fulness of the promises. This latter rain of the Spirit in the individual believer corresponds accurately with what the latter rain did for the crops in Canaan, such as filling out the withered grain, giving fragrance, and flavor, and beautiful color to the various fruits, filling the pools and fountains for winter use, and forming the buds for the resurrection of the coming year.

3. The latter rain applies also to the church at large. From the day of Pentecost, for over a hundred years, the church was kept inundated with mighty floods of salvation. But when the church was formed into a great hierarchy, the long drought set in, interspersed with a few showers of gracious revival through the middle ages. Under the reformations, the preliminary showers of the latter rain for the Gentile age began. The modern holiness movement is emphatically the latter rain of the outpoured Holy Spirit, which is designed to call forth the elect from the nominal believers, and to rapidly transform and ripen them for the harvest of the coming of Jesus. In our version where it reads * "the harvest is the end of the world," the Greek says the harvest is at the "end of the age."� This is the last revival that the Gentile churches will ever have. All the saints should pray earnestly that God would pour out his Spirit to the uttermost in these days, and thereby fulfill that prophecy in Zech. x., where we are told to "ask of the Lord rain, in the time of the latter rain,"� that is, urge him to make the latter rain just as powerful and drenching as he can. There will likely be no other outpouring of the Spirit this side of the winter of the great tribulations. After the latter rain there was a dry spell in which to harvest the crops, and then came the winter. So will it be at the end of this age. After this great outpouring of holiness there will come another dry spell, in which the ripened saints will be harvested, and then will set in the wintry storms of the great tribulations, to be ended only by the millennial spring morning, when Jesus and his glorified saints shall "return from the wedding to take charge of the world. Both for ourselves personally, and the saints collectively, let us plead for drenching floods of latter rain.