The Budding of the New Leaf.
They are not only faithful workers, but they are unselfish workers. No leaf can have the joy which belongs to another, or the glory of all the leaves. Each leaf has the reward of doing a little, and when its work is done it must drop to the ground and perish in the dust. The work which it has done and the tree which it has helped to build will be its monument and reward. If each leaf gives its life faithfully for the building up of the tree, no leaf can fall to the ground or be shaken from its place by the autumn wind and perish in despair.
If you will go into the forest at the autumn period of the year, or go into the orchard and examine where the leaves are about to drop off, you will find that at the base of the stem of each leaf, already there appears the budding of the leaf which is to be unfolded next spring, and even though the leaf withers and falls to the ground, leaving the barren limb alone to battle with the winter storms, yet there is the promise and the evidence that when the gentle breath of spring shall come and break open the icy sepulchres of the winter, these little buds will feel the genial warmth and unfold their green beauty in a radiant springtime of beautiful foliage. So one generation of men may die and pass away, to have their work continued and completed by those who are to come after them.
But these leaves also teach us of our mortality. For, as Isaiah says, "We all do fade as a leaf." We are all very apt to forget that we must die. And so each year, when the summer is over and the fruit is gathered, the leaves begin to wither, and the early frost tinges the forests of the closing year, like the sun oftentimes makes the clouds all crimson and glory at the close of the day. These things should teach us that as advancing years come, we also must fade and die. God spreads out before us this great panorama along the valleys and on the hillsides each autumn to teach us that as the leaves perish, so we must also fade and droop and die.
But there is one great encouragement, and that is, that although the leaves fall, the tree stands. The leaf perishes, but the tree abides, and year after year, sometimes for centuries, it goes on increasing in stature and in strength, abiding as the giant of the forest. So also, when at last each of us must die, that which we have built shall abide, and what we have received from others and to which we have added our efforts and our labors, others shall receive from us, and they also shall carry on the work in which we have been engaged. So each generation receives and carries on the work of those who have gone before. As the poet has well said,
"Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withered on the ground;
Another race the following age supplies;
They fall successive, and successive rise;
So generations in their course decay
So perish these when those have passed away."
The tree stands a monument of strength and beauty at the grave of all the dead leaves which lie buried at its feet. So what each boy and girl, each man and woman, shall have accomplished of good or evil, will remain after they have perished and passed away, to tell of their lives, and God will note the result. He who says that not even a sparrow can fall to the ground without His notice, and who tells us that the very hairs of our heads are all numbered, He will note our deeds, and He will be our reward.
If I were speaking now to older people I might call attention to the fact that the autumn leaves are more beautiful than the summer leaves. And so boys and girls, it seems to me, and it has always thus seemed to me, that there is something more beautiful in manhood and womanhood, during the later years of life, than during the earlier years. Always honor and respect the aged whose heads are gray, whose features are venerable and whose characters are Christ-like.
Questions.—Are the leaves alike on all trees? In what ways are the leaves like the tree on which they grew? Are Sunday-school scholars much like the school that they attend? Are grown people greatly influenced by the pastor who preaches to them, and the people with whom they are associated? Of what are great trees the result? How do leaves accomplish this? When a leaf drops from the tree, what has already started? What do fading and dropping leaves represent? Does the tree abide when the leaves fall? When we die do the great influences which we have helped forward remain to bless the world? Who still notes our deeds when we pass away? Which are more beautiful, summer or autumn leaves? What periods of life are they like?