"The United Seas"

by Robert W. Rogers

"Command the children of Israel that they bring in to thee pure oil of olive beaten for the light to cause the lamps to burn continually."

There was no spot in all of Palestine that Christ loved to frequent more than the Mount of Olives, to which he retired for meditation and rest. And why was this? It may have been because of the general outlook that he gained upon nature; which is doubtless true in part. But it was not the primary nor exclusive reason why He resorted to the Mount of Olives. For if there are tongues in trees, as well as sermons in stones, I thoroughly believe that those beautiful olive groves must have said something to His observing mind. What was it? Why did He go to the Mount of Olives?

Perhaps it was because the olive is the symbol of peace. As Ovid said, "In war the olive branch of peace is in use." So the olive groves which the poet Browning says "have the fittest foliage for dreams," may have helped Him in coming from the turmoil of Jerusalem to regain calm and self-control for a warring soul.

Or, as He walked through the orchards, noticing that each tree was sympathetic to the rest and that each appeared to be a neighbor to the rest, He may have been inspired by thoughts similar to those of the eloquent naturalist who said, "The trees live but to love and in all the groves the happy trees love each his neighbor." And as a result He found it more possible to return to His work with a quickened love for His fellow-men.

Or perhaps suggestions for chivalrous meekness came to Him as He observed the gray foliage of the trees modestly glistening in the sunlight. It might have helped Him to say, "Blessed are the meek."

It may have been that the inspiration of timeless time, the power of eternal years, was awakened in His thought by the knowledge of the marvelous age of those trees. He may have known that well cared for trees will live for three hundred years and even longer. For so great is the olive's hold on life that even when a dying tree is cut down close to the ground, its vigorous root will give birth to still another tree.

Or it may have been that the Mount of Olives, clothed with green beauty, like many of our own olive-planted foothills, helped Him more to find the spiritual inspiration of nature than a trip to some other, bald and naked, mountain; helped Him to say:

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole
"Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
"Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame;
"Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
"Glows in the stars and blossoms in the trees."

All these inferences may be true and doubtless are in part. But—if I dare say it—it seems to me that the primary lesson that Christ learned in frequenting the Mount of Olives was the importance of fruitfulness of life. For the predominant characteristic of the olive is fruitfulness. So much so that Spencer in his "Faerie Queen" speaks of the warlike birch—"the beech for shafts," "the ash for nothing ill," "the willow for forlorn paramours;" but always and every time, he speaks of the olive as the "fruitful olive."

And this is the reason why the olive should wave its branches over the other trees. For, like manna, it is a composite growth—a food, a fruit, a medicine. Always fruitful for a three-fold end; and never failing to be prolific, the trees bearing even for centuries.