counteraction of this innate and expanding corruption is to be found in the new birth unto righteousness; the being born of the Spirit, as well as of water, and thus entering into the kingdom of God. She has thus linked together a sign, and a thing signified; a symbol, and a substance; water which purifies the body; and grace which renovates the soul. And if we have only the first without the second, wherein is our "original or birth state" altered by baptism, except that we have a name to live and are dead? Either has been bestowed as congrace nected with, consequent upon, or confirmatory of baptism, or else the tree remains unchanged; and the proof is, that it does not produce those "fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God." Alas! are there not too many among the young of either sex, who, though planted by baptism in the garden of the Lord, are only as the tree that beareth leaves but hath no fruit; some in the full maturity of

M

manhood, who did promise well in the spring time of life, but of whom we may say, that "their fruit withereth, and they are twice dead:" and some who, even upon the very verge of the grave, in decrepitude and decay, stand like the autumnal tree in the sere and yellow leaf, or rather like the blasted trunk, already scathed by the lightning, and waiting but another flash to precipitate it into the fathomless abyss of ruin and perdition, where it shall be for ever consuming, and yet for ever unconsumed! Oh then let us, while we may, "make the tree good, and his fruit good." We know indeed that this is the work of grace, but grace works by means; and what are those means but earnest prayer, meditation on the word, the communion of the body and blood of Christ, and the consequent remembrance, even in the world, of Him whom we thus commemorate that " He died and rose again for us, so should we, who are baptized, die from sin, and rise again unto righteousness, living not

as

We

unto ourselves, but unto Him that died for us, and rose again." For in living to Him we live also to ourselves. bring forth fruit that shall remain for the human tree feeds on its own fruit, whether it be grapes of gall and clusters of wormwood, giving forth bitterness and generating death; or whether it be that which by its sweetness honoureth God, and by its strength refresheth man; on its own fruit it feeds, and must feed throughout eternity. "As the tree falls so shall it lie;" and let us determine at once how it shall lie, for it may even now be tottering to its fall; and in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, and throughout all eternity, THE

TREE IS KNOWN BY ITS FRUIT!

XIII.

The Comparison of Man with a Tree that bears Fruit.

HE "common people," we are told, "heard Christ gladly." One reason of this was, without all doubt, that He

spake to them in a language which they understood. He availed Himself continually of images and illustrations, taken from the modes of life with which those who heard him were most conversant, more especially the pastoral, the agricultural, the rural; the straying or returning sheep; the growing or the perishing corn; the barren or the fruitful tree. We have already traced, in the preceding Essay, one instance of this last illustration, in the character of the Tree

as determined by that of the Fruit; but our Lord establishes a complete analogy between the spiritual or hidden man of the heart, and the natural plant or tree, when He declares to us, "Every plant which My Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up." It may not be unimproving, therefore, to trace this correspondence throughout the four following periods or stages:

1. In the PLANTING; 2. In the GROWING; 3. In the PROMISE OF THE BLOSSOM; and 4. In the PERFECTION of the FRUIT.

1. When we hear, from the lips of the Lord Himself, that every plant which My Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up, we recognize, under this figurative mode of expression, precisely the same truth which He spoke plainly and without a figure. "No man can come To Me except the Father, which hath sent Me, draw him." It is clear, accordingly, that no outward act, no ministration or instrumentality of man, as regarded in itself, no ordinance even of