The Tree and Its Branch

“He that trusteth in his riches shall fall: hut the righteous shall flourish as a branch.” — xL 28.

the world to be scorched by drought, as completely as it was deluged by water in Noah’s day. Vegetable life disappears. Trees, shrubs, and plants remain where they were; but they are the sapless monuments of a former glory. Every root is rottenness, and the stiffened blossoms will at a touch of the finger go up like dust. The circulation is arrested, the life-sap is exhaled, and the vegetation of a world lies dead upon its surface. On hill or dale the observer’s weary eye can find no green or growing thing to rest upon. On every side are the withered remnants of what once were trees, but no life. The branches are very many and very dry — dry as the bones of the unburied dead.

Can these dry branches live? No; they cannot. Moisture now would not restore them. Rain may preserve living plants, but cannot quicken the dead.

As you stand gazing on the desolation — weeping over a barren world, a new sight attracts your eye. From heaven a living tree descends. It is planted in the unmoistened dust — the living among the dead. It grows by its own life, in spite of the earth’s barrenness. It spreads over the land. The hills are veiled by its shade. It stretches its boughs on the one hand to the sea, and on the other to the river. This heavenly plant is a root in a dry ground, but not a dry root. While all earth’s own growth lies withered around, it is full of sap and nourishing.

But now another wonder: the withered branches begin to grow into that living root. One and another that have no life in themselves are successively grafted into it, and as soon as they are in it, live. No hand is seen to touch them, yet they move. Like the hewing of the stone out of the mountain, the process in accomplished “without hands.” Branch after branch they begin to quiver where they lie, like the bones under Ezekiel’s preaching, and by a mysterious power are drawn towards the tree of life and let in. The branches which abide on their own old stock continue dry, and at an appointed time are cast into the burning; but the engrafted branches are not dependent now on earth and air; they draw their life-sap from a fountain that never fails; they have life, and they have it more abundantly than any that this world’s soil ever sustained.

The vision is of man’s fall, and Messiah’s mission. A native human righteousness nourished once on earth. The head of this material creation, like all its other parts, was very good as it came from its Maker’s hands. Man was made in God’s image. Trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, flourished in that garden which is now a wilderness: but the blight of sin came over it, and all moral life died; “There is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Is there any hope that this desert will revive and blossom like the rose 1 No; this is not the languor that will be refreshed by a shower. This is death. There can be no revival here, except by a new creation. These dry branches cannot of themselves live. Sin has cut sinners off from the Life, and a great gulf keeps the severed members away. We could not make our own way back to God, but he has come to us. He that is mighty lias done great things for us. In amongst the dead came the living One. “In Him was light, and the light was the life of men.” In Him the withered grow green, the dead become alive. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.” Standing within the circle of his own disciples, Jesus said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (John xv. 5).

Here lies the secret of spiritual life among men. The righteous — and some such there have been even in the darkest periods of the world’s history — the righteous “flourish as a branch.” They lean not on their own stem, and live not on their own root. From the beginning the same Jesus to whom we look was made known to faith. The manner and measure of making known truth to the understanding were in those days widely different; but the nature and the source of spiritual life were the same. They stood “afar off,” but they looked unto Jesus. The medium of vision was diverse, but the object was identical. As to knowledge, the ancient disciples were children, whereas disciples now are grown men; but life was as true and vigorous in the Church’s infancy as it is in the Church’s age. There was in those ancient times a medium of union to the Redeemer: and blessed are all they that trust in Him. The branch will flourish when it is in the living tree.

But though all the real branches live, all do not equally flourish. Whatever girds the branch too tightly round, impedes the flow of sap from the stem, and leaves the extremities to wither. Many cares, and vanities, and passions warp themselves round a soul, and cause the life even of the living to pine away. When the world in any of its forms lays its grasp round the life, the stricture chokes the secret channels between the disciple and his Lord, and the fruit of righteousness drops unripe. It is only as a branch that Christians can flourish in this wilderness; they have no independent source of life and growth. It becomes them, therefore, to be careful above all things to keep clear the communion between themselves and the root of their new life in the Lord. Ivy has climbed from the ground, and gracefully coiled itself round a majestic bough. Beautiful ornament! you say; it would be barbarous to cut it through, and tear it off. We dispute not the beauty of the parasite, and we have no enmity to elegance: we only desire to keep everything in its own place. According to the order which the Scripture prescribes, let us have first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and then, if we can get them, other things. Whether is its own life or the elegance of its ornament the chief thing for the branch? Let us not hear of any addition to its beauty, which may endanger its life. Granted that this adjunct adorns; the question remains, does it kill? If it strangles the living, I would ruthlessly tear off its tendrils: without compunction I would cast its green mantle in the dust. Let me have a flourishing and fruitful branch, although its stalk should seem bare, rather than a sapless stick within a wrapping of treacherous ornament.

By this short process should many questions be settled, which become the weapons of this world’s god, and wound the consciences of incautious Christians. Gain, honours, accomplishments, company, are bought too dear, when they obstruct tLe flow of grace from its fountain. We speak not against the refinements of society, butybr the preservation of the soul’s life. When bodily interests are in the balance, we generally judge righteously between rival claims. The order of arrangement is first life, next health, and last adorning. The same principles faithfully applied to higher issues would carry us safely through. Life spiritual as an independent tree, is not possible: and seeing that we can have life only as a branch has it, the first care is to be in the living tree; the second is to let nothing warp round the branch which would diminish its freshness; and then ornaments, hung loosely on, may be allowed to take their place. The first thing is to be “found in Him;” the next is to cast off everything that hinders us from receiving “out of his fulness;” and when these two are satisfied, let the embellishments that pertain to the world be content with the fragments that remain.

Even those who are branches in the tree of life may be impeded in their growth; but those who are not in union with the tree cannot grow at all. “He that trusteth in his riches shall fall.” I have seen a row of branches profusely covered with leaves and blossoms, stuck by children in the earth around a miniature garden. They appeared more luxuriant than those that were growing on the neighbouring trees, but they withered in an hour, and never revived. Behold the picture of a man who has gained the world and neglected the Saviour! The earth into which he plunges his soul has nothing to satisfy its craving, or sustain its life. All the gains and pleasures of time cannot contribute a drop of moisture to refresh a drooping soul in the hour of its greatest need. “The portion of Jacob is not like them” (Jer. x. 16).