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Tracts for the Christian Seasons.

MONDAY BEFORE EASTER.

Christ curses the barren fig-tree, and drives the buyers and sellers out of the Temple.

On the morning of the second day of the week, Jesus is on His way from Bethany, a small village at the foot of mount Olivet, where He now lodged at night under the roof of Lazarus. And the very first incident of this day takes place, not in Jerusalem, whither He was going to spend the day in fulfilling the last week of His ministry, but on the road to it. And a most remarkable one it is. Our Lord sees a fig-tree by the wayside, which promised so fairly by its appearance of leaves, that He went up to it, to look for fruit. But He found nothing but leaves. He then addressed it in those awful words, "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever."

It stood by the way-side to such as were going up to Jerusalem. And verily its example stands by the way-side, that none may overlook it on their road to the Jerusalem which is above. Come

and see therefore all ye travellers on that road, all ye that profess to set your faces as if ye would go up to that glorious city. Come and learn the terrible warning which your Saviour hath given, as on this very day of this season. If the cross on Calvary calls you all to repentance and faith, and proclaims the beginning and end of your course, so this fig-tree on the way-side tells you most solemnly of something on your course. Blasted with the curse of barrenness it bids all the professors of repentance and faith to look most anxiously to the bringing forth fruits meet for repentance. Let us then go into the circumstances of so remarkable an incident.

The nature of the fig-tree is singular in this point. The fruit sets and grows before the leaves shoot. Now in this fig-tree the leaves had already come. Therefore our Lord naturally said to Himself, "I ought to find fruit upon this tree, for the leaves are come out. And it cannot yet have been gathered, for the fig-season has not yet arrived." He went up to it therefore with the reasonable expectation of finding fruit upon it, How grievous then was the disappointment, when He found nothing but leaves. It was then that He cursed it as barren and unprofitable. And when His disciples came by on the next morning

they found that the curse had been most surely and miserably fulfilled. It had withered away.

Since this is not the only occasion on which our Lord compares His followers to the fig-tree, but also elsewhere (Luke xiii. 6) admonishes them from it of the danger of being cut down and cast out of God's vineyard for unprofitableness, we should look narrowly into the comparison. And then the first thing that will strike our minds will be something like this. The fig-tree, like every other tree, has two channels of nourishment, the root and the leaves. Through the root it draws from the fatness of the soil, and receives the sap which is the very well-spring of life. So that the root is to the plant very much what the stomach is to man, who is thence supplied in every nerve and vein with the means of life. Again, through the leaves the tree draws nourishment from the air, and they do the same office for the plant that the lungs do for the man. And the bearing of the fruit depends upon the proper proportion in which these two offices work. If the root draw too much nourishment, rankness of leaves takes the place of fruit. And, on the other hand, if the leaves be too thin, the fruit soon withers away, both from want of the due supply of nourishment which comes through the leaves,

and from the lack of shelter from the excess of sun and rain. These two circumstances are common indeed to all trees. But Christians are in the Church of God, and therefore compared to trees which are carefully grown in a garden, and not to such as grow wild on forests and mountains, as the oaks on the hills of Bashan, and the cedars on the sides of Lebanon. Now therefore let us apply the comparison to ourselves.

As members of the Church of God must we not apply two distinct means of spiritual nourishment. Is there not in us the inward and secret, working like the root, which is hidden from outward sight in the ground? Assuredly there is that part which we call the heart, the mind, the spirit, the inner man, through which we have communication with God Himself, to whom faith, which dwells in this part, draws us near, and in whom love, dwelling here also, establishes us. Wherefore St. Paul prays that the Ephesians (iii. 17) may be "rooted and grounded in love," and bids the Colossians (ii. 7) be "rooted and built up in Christ Jesus." It needs not to be said that here lies the fountain-head of all spiritual life. That cannot come from any other source than communion with God, and with our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the life of man. And it

cannot be maintained in any other way than through the inward and secret working of God's Holy Spirit on His part, and through faith, working by love, on our part.

Again there is the outward and visible, answering to the leaves which do their work in the open air before our eyes. This is the outward conduct of the Christian's life in respect of his neighbours, who see him and have to deal with him, and the manner of his communication with the means of grace supplied to him by the visible ordinances of the Church, and the quality of his stewardship of the opportunities of the world around him. All these (we well know, it is to be hoped, from good experience) afford us continual supplies of spiritual nourishment, if properly used. Thus, as to the Church, we draw upon the outward ministration of God's Word and Sacraments. But did we confine ourselves to this, and not join with it the forementioned inward means, and in their proper fulness, we should be mere formalists, like the Pharisees, and should be exactly in the circumstances of the leafy and showy, but barren fig-tree. Thus again as to our example to our neighbours, we receive from it influence and encouragement, which if we turn to worldly interests. and to love of the praise of men, we are again as

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