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.)
(1168)
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.
(1169)
FRUIT LIKE THE TREE
Tho I bestow all my goods to feed the
poor, and tho I give my body to be burned,
and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
In so giving and so doing, I would be acting
merely in a way analogous to the jackdaw
that would expect to be turned into a peacock
by sticking a few peacock's feathers into its
black coat. This maneuver would not convert
the jackdaw into a peacock; it would
be still a jackdaw even after it had covered
itself all over with peacock's feathers. Let
it first turn, if possible, into a peacock, and
then peacock's feathers will grow naturally
upon it; its black coat will then soon be
radically changed. To adopt the simile of
our Lord, first make the tree good, and then
its fruit will be good; you can not produce
heaven's fruit until the tree be first planted
in heaven.—Alexander Miller, "Heaven and
Hell Here."
(1170)
FRUITFULNESS
The chayote is in many particulars the
most remarkable plant in the vegetable kingdom.
It is entirely immune from fungi, and
is the only plant known which insects do not
attack. Altho it bears fruit, it is a vine.
Its growth is surprizingly rapid. It is a
perennial and clambers about, clings to and
covers fence, barn, tallest tree—anything.
It will often bear as many as five hundred
fruits, some of them weighing no less than
three pounds. It blossoms and ripens fruit
every month in the year. It is palatable and
nutritious. Its flowers are rich in nectar
and a prolific source of honey. (Text.)
(1171)
Fruits, First—See First Fruits.
FULFILMENT DISAPPOINTING
It is the way with all ambitions not to satisfy when they are achieved. Here is a poem by Grantland Rice teaching this truth:
The little boy smiled in his sleep that night,
As he wandered to Twilight Town;
And his face lit up with a heavenly light
Through the shadows that drifted down;
But he woke next morning with tear-stained eye
In the light of the gray dawn's gleam,
And out from the stillness we heard him cry,
"I've lost my dream—my dream!"
And he told us then, in his childish way,
Of the wonderful dream he'd known,
He had wandered away from the land of play
To the distant Land of the Grown;
He had won his share of the fame and fight
In the struggle and toil of men;
And he sobbed and sighed in the breaking light,
"I want my dream again!"
As the years passed by the little boy grew
Till he came to the Land of the Grown;
And the dream of his early youth came true—
The dream that he thought had flown;
