measurable love of Christ, and how it fills with blessing all those who approach Him. We know from Holy Scripture that from His garments there went forth virtue and healed them all. Much more was this the case with His cross. And all this we may understand of the will and affections. It is in the heart and by the heart, that the Cross is borne with Christ.

JOHN HENRY PARKER, OXFORD AND LONDON.

Tracts for the Christian Seasons.

MONDAY IN HOLY WEEK.

The barren Fig-tree.

EPISTLE, Isaiah lxiii. 1. GOSPEL, St. Mark xiv. 1.

Ir was late on the evening of Palm Sunday, when our Lord left the temple at Jerusalem, and departed out of the city together with the twelve, and went to lodge for the night at Bethany, which was a village beyond the Mount of Olives about two miles from Jerusalem. And early on the following morning He was returning with His disciples to the city, as it appears that He spent these days in teaching in the temple, after He had driven out from thence the buyers and sellers. On the way to Jerusalem it is said, "He was hungry:" the circumstance of His being hungry thus early on leaving the place of His abode before the labours of the day, may be accounted for by our supposing that He had probably spent the night in fasting and prayer. For on other important occasions we find it expressly recorded that He spent the whole night

in solitary places in prayer. And on the night when He was taken by His enemies, He was praying in a garden according to His custom, for Judas, it is said, knew the place because Christ oft resorted thither with His disciples. This may account for the fact of His being hungry; yet on another occasion when the disciples presumed that He must be hungry, as He sat on the well of Samaria, because He had nothing to eat, "He said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of." "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work." Therefore we may suppose that the circumstance of its being now stated that "He was hungry," is also for our instruction. In like manner as afterwards, when on dying our Lord said, "I thirst," it is added by the Evangelist that this expression of His want was in order that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. Being hungry, and seeing from afar off a fig-tree by the way side, He went up, if haply He might find fruit thereon, but found on it nothing but leaves. And Jesus, addressing the tree on which He was looking in vain, said unto it, “Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever!" And His disciples heard His words; as doubtless He intended that they should. It was early on

the following morning, as we find from St. Mark, as they were again going by on the same road from Bethany to Jerusalem, that they beheld the fig-tree withered up from the very roots. Notwithstanding the genial warmth of the sun and air at the spring-time of the year, and the refreshing dews of night, as rapidly as if it had been struck by a lightning blast or by a wintry frost, the fountain of life within was dried up, and all the proud show of leaves which it displayed but yesterday, with the very stock and branches on which they grew, were in the course of a few hours laid prostrate in the dust.

Now I suppose no one ever read this account without perceiving at once that this action of our Lord's was intended to teach something. And we naturally look upon it as having some lesson with regard to the important events that were then about to take place. Our Lord was now evidently come in an especial manner to seek fruit. of the Jewish nation, the fruit of good works, of faith, humility, and charity; and found none, but leaves only, much external pretension to religion, ordinances, and professions, for which they were known throughout the world; so that from "afar off" you might have supposed there would be fruit under these leaves; but there was in

reality none at all, when the All-seeing God came to look thereon. Fig-leaves there were in abundance, such as those with which our first parents endeavoured to hide their shame and guilt, when the Lord God came unto them in the garden; such were the hypocrisies for which the Pharisees were so notorious, and which rendered their wickedness so grievous in the sight of God. But even these false shadows of religion, and all their external worship, were now to vanish away. Christ came in the time of their visitation and found no fruit; and forthwith they became sear and withered, even the leaves were dried up and dropped away.

All this is so manifestly the case in what occurred in the history of the Jewish nation, which now immediately ensued, that I suppose even a child would so understand and apply what our Lord meant by this very striking incident. And it is interesting to observe that He had Himself spoken a parable of the Jewish nation under this very similitude of the fig-tree; while He was for the three years of His public ministry teaching them and interceding for them with the Father. For when He had been saying that they all as a nation should perish unless they repented, in like manner as those Galileans which were slain

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