Frowns—See [Smiles and Frowns].
Fructification, Spiritual—See [Life, New, from God].
FRUIT AND SOIL
A choice variety of plum was purchased and set out in a certain garden. When the tree came to maturity, to the keen disappointment of the owner, there was no fruit on its branches. Investigation showed that the fault was not in the tree. The land in which it was planted proved to be barren and lacking in proper nourishment.
A tree growing in poor soil can not bear, because it requires all the strength it can extract from the soil to barely sustain its life. It takes all the virtue there is in the soil to support the head and foliage so that the fruit is literally starved out.
There are church-members who branch into Christian profession but who are rooted in the world. Such will bring forth nothing but leaves. (Text.)
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FRUIT-BEARING
Suppose the tree should say: “My roots are strong, my boughs elastic and tough, firm against the stroke of wind and storm. Look at my bark, how smooth and fresh; and where is there a tree whose tides of sap are fuller or richer? What leaves, too, are these that I have woven out of the threads of sun and soil! Little wonder that the birds build nests in my branches, while the cattle find shade beneath my boughs.” Well, this is a good argument—for an apple-tree—but a poor one for a man. The hungry farmer-boy does not leap the fence on his way to the apple-tree looking for apple-sap or apple-boughs or apple-leaves—he is looking for apples. And God has built this world, not for the root moralities that support man. Industry is good—it is good not to lie and not to steal, and not to kill and not to perjure, but these beginnings are fundamental only, the man must go on from the leaf to the fruit. The fruit is truth in the inner parts, justice, measured by God’s standard, and mercy that tempers justice, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith that trusts, and will not be confounded. (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.
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