Usefulness

“And when He saw a fig tree in the way, He came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.” — Marr. xxi. 19.

It has been customary to allege that this event presents a marked exception to the usual course of Christ’s life. Every other display of His power has been immediately and obviously associated with the highest interests of humanity. Christ employed the miracle, so to speak, as a chariot of fire in which He rode forth to accomplish a mission of benevolence. Christ never used His power merely for the sake of using it. Power was an instrument, not an end. It was displayed rather in the service of man than in attestation of His own personal Godhead. The quieted sea, the rent grave, the loosened tongue, the unsealed eyelid, all show that when Christ put forth His power it was to ameliorate, to redeem, to save mankind. Yet here is an apparent exception to His beneficent course. A fig tree is blasted by the lightning of His disappointed eye. That fig tree is transformed into a melancholy exception to all the surrounding vegetation. Spring is forbidden to awaken that branded root from its sleep of death; winter is to sit on its desolated branches all through ‘ the shining, singing summer, and for ever it is to be spoken of as the tree that disappointed the hungering Messiah!

We shall see how little we are fitted to determine what are really exceptions in a great life. We are not yet equal to the straightforward, unstumbling reading of this profoundest human history. We stand aghast before the scathed tree, and as the withered leaves crunch under our feet, we ignorantly exclaim, “This is an exception; this is not in harmony with the gentleness of Jesus; this must have been a mischievous prank of the demon-gods that loathe all beauty; this hideous patch does not suit the prevailing pattern of the Saviour’s life; it is the interpolation of an enemy.” This is how man talks when the reading is not all straightforward; when the ink is not all’one colour; when the type is not all one size. What can we possibly know of what are essentially exceptions in a life so profound, so many-sided, so mysterious, so divine as Christ’s? It is but a word here and there that we can bring within the circle of our twilight intelligence; and yet, as though we could read the stars, we hand in a blurred and self-stultifying bill of exceptions to that wondrous life. Can the less contain the greater? Can the primrose, a plaything of the joyous summer, interpret all the voices that ring out from the oak? or can it read the storied struggles with the storm that are treasured in the gnarls of that king of trees? What can the butterfly tell of the landscape over which it flits for a moment? What can to-day hold of the ages that have built the history of creation? We mistake the seeming for the reality. We think there is nothing in the epistle but the address which brought it to our door. My object is to show that this is no exception to the Saviour’s life. This note is in tune with the whole melody. It may be a variation, indeed, but it rises out of the main current, and, after an expression strikingly peculiar to itself, rejoins the great line, and swells it into sublimer bursts!

This little story is a great symbol. It is set up in the ages as a warning for ever. The story itself is written in fire, but the moral is penned with the immortal ink of tears.

1. What can be more decisive, for example, than its method of conveying Christ’s view of uselessness? Christ is never found approving of uselessness; but, contrariwise, altogether condemning and reprobating it. He shuts the door in the very face of sluggish virgins, and orders off into darkness the man who wrapped up his possibilities in a napkin. I ever find Him calling sloth wickedness, and declaring that the man who will not walk into heaven shall be thrown into hell.

Let us be clear about this matter of uselessness,

Apart from definitions and distinctions we shall flounder. Error in definition has set fire to nations, and roused idiot kings to arms! Deadlier still has been its result in moral considerations; it has flung brilliant minds off the pivotal centres, and sent them plunging through the darkness of despair. Let me suggest a definition of usefulness that may rid us of

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encumbering difficulties. That only is useful which 2

fulfils the divine idea of its creation; in other words, that only is useful which 7s what it was meant to be. I submit that all the issues of the case are more —

or less involved in this definition. You do not deem K

a watch useless because it will not give you your latitude and longitude at sea. You do not say that a rose is useless because you cannot cook it, and bring it to the test of your knife and fork. Everything must be judged by the idea it was intended to represent or fulfil The purpose determines everything. A principle so simple as this, one would think could never be forgotten; yet hardly a sun sets without seeing it disregarded or miserably perverted. Every man carries his own favourite idea of usefulness, and with that he makes short work of all the questions which engage human consideration. One of man’s merriest pastimes is to determine the usefulness of his neighbours. It is Oe

no business of his to deal with varieties of tempera- 4...

ment, to balance idiosyncrasies, and to. interpret special purposes; but with the fool’s philosophy a that huddles into indiscriminate masses all orders and conditions of things, he settles business in the bulk, and under one lock keeps families, and even nations, in charge. I protest against this blind judgment. Read everything, I repeat, in the light of the purpose it was intended to subserve. The most influential newspaper would make a poor breastplate in the day of battle. A sermon, orthodox as a Pauline epistle, would make a singular Act of Parliament. The fleetest hound that ever sped across the mountains would present a very humble figure in attempting to soar with the eagle. You see, then, through such grotesque illustrations, how

- everything must be viewed with special reference to

the purpose it was meant to realize; and how careful we should be in coming to conclusions respecting the usefulness of any man, any preacher, any author, any worker, or any object whatsoever. Take the case in hand. This tree was meant to grow figs. It had a distinct and well-known object to realize. Its form might be faultless; its leaves might be abundant, healthy, and beautiful; but the ultimate purpose of the Creator was that it should grow figs, and whatever else it grew was not to be valued in the absence of the fruit. The fruit! The fruit alone was everything! Christ did not say, “This tree is an ornament to the fig-yard or the landscape, a shelter for the wandering bird, or a shade for the worn traveller.’ Not so. Christ looked for figs. What is the great principle involved? Is it not clearly this, that God seeks His own idea in every man? In this fact we find the profoundest solemnity of human life. Every man is intended to subserve a special end in life; though part of a whole, he is a distinct part, and has a work to do with his own hand. “So, then, every one of us must give account of himself to God.” As we look for figs on one tree, and grapes on another, and so on through all the fruits grown on earth, so God comes and searches every man, to know how far each has realized the peculiar intent of the Creator. The arithmetician is not expected to formulate poetry any more than the poet is expected to dream arithmetic. Every man in his own order, and God the judge of all. I like to dwell upon the reflection that each man, each family, each nation, has a peculiar and special function to fulfil. Otherwise, I should be confounded by the world’s mile on mile of brushwood; I should not know what to make of the den-population of leviathan cities; but I remember that there is one true Judge, whose smile is heaven, whose frown is hell. He will show by-and-bye what the smallest as well as the greatest was meant for, and until then we must leave many a problem. It is not enough to be a man; the responsibilities of manhood must be discharged. The foot must do the foot’s work, and leave the eye to look after its own business. A flower is useful, W though it does not grow fruit. Gladly I proclaim the usefulness of beauty. A flower has many a time opened the very heavens to my aching heart. It has spoken to me of purity, and simplicity, and frailty, and mortality, and dependence. Was it useless because it gave me neither corn nor wine? Truly not. It did its work, and no angel could do more. Christ did not blast this tree because no music issued from its branches; a thousand birds might have shaken it with music of unequalled sweetness, or a silence blank as the dumbness of the grave might have reigned there. This was not the question; that tree had a distinct end to realize; it did not realize it, and therefore premature and everlasting winter settled upon it, and thus it was made to the ages a warning against appearances without reality, against pretence without usefulness.

2. The story gives us not only Christ’s view of uselessness in the abstract, but of uselessness under the most aggravated circumstances. You do not denounce a Hottentot for his barbarism. He has never heard the voice of civilization, has had no opportunity of ameliorating his condition; he answers faithfully to all the influences which have operated upon him. So far all is right. The response has been correct. God will judge him on his own ground. You would not be disappointed with a fig tree that did not bear fruit in the open climate of England. You would feel a kind of pity for the expatriated plant. Even a leaf would be a joy to you; you would say, “The tree has done its best; a leaf is enough in this ungenial clime.” But would you judge a Hottentot and an Englishman by the same standard? Would you be content that a fig plant on the slopes of Bethany or Bethphage should thrive no better than on the banks of an English river or on the sunniest side of. an English hill? No, truly. Your standard of judgment changes with changing circumstances. You have one rule in barbarism and another in civilization. What would delight in England would disappoint on Olivet. Heighten the application of this principle, and you encompass the judicial government of God. In summing up the history of nations, God deals with them differently. There is one law of rectitude, but not one law of measurement, for all. “It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment” than for those who trifled with a fuller civilization, or shut their eyes to the noon blaze of gospel light.

Recur to the case in hand. This fig tree had 4 everything in its favour — it was at home, it was in the very land of figs, the sunshine and the air were

exactly adapted to their growth; yet the tree

failed. It might, so far as fruit was concerned, as well have been standing amid Siberian ice. Is not ae

this vividly symbolical of many a nation, and many

a family, and many a man? Look at the Jews.

They lived in close proximity to Heaven. They were like high mountains, which receive the first light of the sun and his last baptism of fire. They were God’s peculiar people. Around them were the impregnable walls of divine defence; upon them were shed the splendours of special dignity; among them lived the prophets who cleft the ages, and the singers of hope that charmed the world out of its deepening despair; higher still, in their midst the redeeming God became incarnate. Yet that fig tree bore no fruit. Jerusalem was as a city of plagues; her princes within her were roaring lions; her judges were ravening wolves; her prophets were light and treacherous persons; her priests polluted the sanctuary and did violence to the law. Here, then, is not mere uselessness, but uselessness under the most aggravated circumstances. The richest influences of heaven were thrown away upon the treacherous multitude, and they who should have borne the most abundant fruit were barren as the grave.

The field of practical application is immeasurable. The penetrating appeal comes swiftly and irresistibly to every one of us. Take a man who has had every advantage from his youth up. His infant hands were clasped in prayer by the fondest of mothers. “Chief among the names he was taught to love was the name of Jesus. His every step in life has been watched and blessed by a yearning solicitude he can little comprehend. In his widest wandering, the influences of parental intercession were round about him as golden bands. The warmest of summers has brooded over him; the gentlest and purest of breezes have breathed around him; the dew of the morning and the evening has lain thickly upon him; yet fruit there is none; leaves, plenty. He can never satisfy a hungry traveller; he never elicits the blessing of gratitude, but continually provokes the malediction of disappointment. He ought to have been a tree of blessing in his family. Hunger should have fed upon his abundant fruit; but the tree is a withered and blackened thing in the midst of a royal and golden summer.

So much have circumstances to do with the formation and employment of character, that I cannot but revert to the caution that we should not dogmatically pronounce upon one another’s usefulness, Judging some of you from an external angle, I might conclude that your lives are useless, yet in methods unknown to me you may be most useful. A man is not to be deemed useless simply because we do not see how he works, or at what he aims. I have heard godly and earnest men denominate everybody useless who is not in the Sunday school; and others, intoxicated with the congou of an annual tea-drinking, describe their brethren as indolent because they do not fritter

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as away their time on half a dozen committees. Let me protest against this groundless and thoughtless crimination of one another. There are many

shining Christians who are no more qualified to

teach in a school than to navigate a squadron or command an army. There are men born to be public teachers; they carry their certificate with them; they are unsealed epistles, known and read of all men. Others are intended to do a work not so demonstrative, but not less profound or essential. Some work best under the stimulus of applauding throngs, and others best in the deep shade of secrecy. Honour to all! Christ knows what He made us for, and according to His own idea He will conduct the final adjudication.

3. I say that He will conduct the final adjudication, and that leads me to the solemn yet animating fact that the examination and destiny of mankind are in the hands of Christ. It is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men. This principle holds good throughout our entire social life. In proportion to the wisdom, the integrity, the exaltation of the judge, is the certainty of being treated magnanimously, and pronounced upon with tender justice and just tenderness. Were my life dependent upon the judgment of an assembly, upon any single sermon, I should beg to be heard by the princes in Israel, by the ripest sages, the profoundest thinkers, the mightiest orators. I should receive more merciful consideration from them than from unthriving sucklings and beardless tyroes. Carrying this principle forward to its highest development, I call it an animating and consoling fact, that our final judgment is with the Almighty. Jesus knows what human life is. “We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” He knows the power of the arch-enemy, the subtlety of his heart, the range of his arm, and the precision of his stroke! “He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust.” With thrilling tenderness are God’s dealings with the Jews set forth, — “But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned He His anger away, and did not stir up all His wrath. For He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again.” I dare not be judged by man. He would be too hard upon me. He would be too eager to show his righteousness. I know, indeed, that Jesus is a lion as well as a lamb. I know that long ere time pealed its hours upon the human world, His frown fell upon the apostate angels, and that ever since they have been withered trees in the garden of the universe. Yet I know the gentleness, and patience, and tenderness of His deep, deep heart!

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Did not that heart love me unto death? Was not its blood poured out as an atonement for my sin? Did it not yearn over me as mother never yearned over her firstborn? Then, too, I remember how He himself lived on this fallen globe. He knows how cold it is, how many demons prowl over it, how tempestuous are the storms that beat upon it, how man is the worst enemy of man, how we fight and devour one another! All this He knows; and when He comes to make judgment, it shall not be forgotten.

Am I making all this a ground of presumption? Truly not! I would make the very tenderness of Jesus my most powerful appeal to your fear! Will you grieve one who has done so much for you? Will you smite the heart that emptied itself in sacrifice that you might be saved? Speak! Say, will you? By so much as He loved us, by so much will He avenge our disregard of His mercy. What can the impenitent sinner do, when the cross itself is turned into a seat of judgment?

4, In view of all these considerations, you can understand the urgency with which I call for usefulness of life. You can also. understand why I plead for caution in denouncing this tree or that. Only yesterday I noticed an instance singularly bearing upon this part of the subject. Dr. Guthrie, most genial and eloquent of men, has actually gone up to a tree and cursed it, and, lo! the tree has not withered away! That great preacher, on the occasion referred to, actually cursed the tobaccoplant! Yet, what think you? I should like to tell this in a whisper, but a whisper is impossible in this prodigious edifice, — in the very next sentence he candidly confessed that he himself took snuff. You see what he did! He cursed the tobacco side of the plant, but not the snuffside, - and for that reason the plant did not shrivel into a cinder! You see how easy it is to go up and down the world, attempting to wither trees we really do not like, and how easy, as in the case of the illustrious preacher, to interpose between the axe and our favourite tree, exclaiming, in piteous tones, “Let it alone this year also!” No, sirs! We -moust be honest all round. The church must not be partial in its verdict upon bad things. We must have honesty; and when the church purges herself from iniquity and inconsistency — when she really means what she says — she will with lightning-eye and thunder-breath pronounce upon the world’s upas, and the upas of the world will wither away! Let us brand all bad trees. Then we shall be truly useful. Can there be a more melancholy object than a useless man — a man of barren intellect, pined heart, fruitless life? Men are so multitudinous now, that the very vastness of the number misleads us as to the value of the individual. Reduce the appalling number — x

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Ty HIDDEN SPRINGS.

reduce it to the least possible degree; and with a solitary man on the face of the globe, what are the higher intelligences to deem of him, if no aspiration stir his heart, no impulse excite his hand to labour? It is a fool’s plea that there are so many workers that others may afford to be idle. A philanthropist ever finds a sphere of usefulness in the necessities of the man who stands next to him. In order to be useful, we need not cross

perilous seas, or encounter the dangers of foreign

climes. Begin just where you are. Lift up your home as far towards heaven as mortals are permitted to ascend. Throw around the dulness of business the halo of faith in higher transactions. Turn the eye of the orphan towards the great Father, and lay the widow’s weak hand on the arm of the all-supporting God. There is sphere enough for the exhaustion of all your energies. So long as iniquity abounds and sorrow weeps, not a man amongst us needs stand in the world’s market-place, saying, “No man hath hired me.” Christ hires us all, demands us all, and will help us all! He himself was the greatest worker. Not an idle moment interrupted the urgency of His life; the daybreak found Him at labour, the stars beheld Him at prayer! “Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus.” And what is the spring of our usefulness — what is its motive, and what its sustentation? The answer is at hand: “The love of Christ constraineth us.”

But for this ever-nerving love, our work would’

degenerate into toil. This love makes us joyous, long as the day lasts; and until sleep seals our eyelids it sings to us of more work and more recompence. Vital and enduring philanthropy, apart from this constraining love, is an impossibility. There may without it be a philanthropy of many leaves, but little fruit. There is a leaf-philanthropy; there is also a fruit-philanthropy. Christ’s life, considered throughout as a mediation, shows us the exact line on which genuine and profound philanthropy must proceed. He worked from the centre to the circumference; and even if He began, as He often did, with the outer man, it was that He might the more effectually penetrate to the core, and do a vital work in the heart. Spring does not work from the branch to the root, but from the root to the branch. So with all true usefulness. The roots of manhood are in the heart, and any work that does not penetrate in that direction can only end in a cumbrous or gorgeous artificialism. Make the tree good, and you make the fruit good. I tremble for some of you. Leafage plenty — fruit none! You know not how to appease the world’s moral hunger. Many a fainting one has come to you, hoping for the enlivening word, but that word has not been declared. I tremble for you; and I would tell you of my I

N trembling with many tears! He who wastes life’s spring and life’s summer cannot have anything in life’s autumn; and as for the impending winter, no power can avert it, and, once come, it will never melt and brighten into another probationary spring!