The palm tree blessing is a high blessing. It is the "higher life" indeed. "And a highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it" (Isa. 35:8).
"There is a path which no vulture's eye hath seen." This is the path of the pilgrim. It is so high that the vulture in his aerial flights has never yet been able to look down upon it. Pity such a person? Never! The world thinks they are looking down upon us, but no worldling on this mundane globe ever looks down on the palm tree saint as he walks the narrow, heavenly trail, practically oblivious of conditions below. Let not any worldling think that he is looking down on God's holy ones; they are looking down on him and they are so far above, that he looks like a mere dot upon the surface.
The minds of many are turned toward the airships of the day. The aviators are vying with each other in long distances, speed, altitudes, and endurance; but the palm tree saints have solved the problems of aviation long ago. They have an heirship, though it may not be spelled exactly like those of the world, yet, for altitude, endurance, speed, and long traveling, it perfectly eclipses them all. The aviator of the world may break the world's record today, and break his neck tomorrow, but the possibilities of the Christian aviator are exceedingly charming and the dangers are reduced to naught. He is safer in his heirship than on the earth. Borne upward on the wings of faith, pushed onward by the propeller of perfect love, with a lateral stability which is a marvel to many who gave him "just three weeks to hold out," he is still rushing on toward the meridian sun, and has been out of sight for years. He never expects to come down again. Some day he will fly so far away from earth's attraction, and get so near heaven, that the gravitation, inversely to the square of their distances, will pull so in the other direction, that he will sail into glory and drop his pardon and purity biplane on the gold-paved streets of the New Jerusalem, amidst the shouts and cheers of the angelic host and the multitudes that have sailed in before, there to enjoy an eternal "aviation meet" with prizes and crowns of glory for all.
CHAPTER XIII
THE PALM TREE IS PECULIAR IN ITS GROWTH
We have in the botanical world the exogenous and the endogenous tree. The exogenous tree grows by adding to its exterior. Year after year adds layers or rings to the outside, thus increasing its size. It is in this way that scientists are enabled to determine the age of trees. Some of the mammoth trees of California show an age of many hundred years. Most of the trees with which we have to do are of the exogenous type.
The endogenous tree increases by internal growth. The palm tree is endogenous. Its growth is internal; out from the center and out at the top.
How exact to the analogy was the Holy Spirit when He inspired the statement, that "the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree"! The palm tree saint does not have his growth from the external, pushing out along the lines of earth, and parallel to things of the world; but his growth is internal, and upward toward God and heaven, and perpendicular or diametrically opposed to the world, the flesh and the Devil.