The True Test

The tree is known by its i’ruit.” — MATT. xii. 33.

‘T’^HERE are various kinds of knowledge; nor, not withstanding the adage, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” is there any kind or measure of it without its value. I would sit at the feet of the humblest man to learn what he knew and I did not. The most important thing, however, to know, is one’s self, although, I may remark, no man can know his own character aright, without first making himself acquainted with that of God. It is in his light that we see light clearly. Hence it was not till Job had obtained full and clear views of the holiness, purity, and providence of God, that he formed a just estimate of himself — exclaiming, I had heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.

To an ingenuous youth who sought his advice as to the course of study he should pursue, and what knowledge he ‘should seek first to obtain, an old Greek sage replied, Know thyself! No Christian could have given a better answer. What a miserable thing it is for a man to know how to make money, and make it too — to know science so well that he is familiar with the secrets of nature, can measure the distance of a star, and follow a wandering comet on its fiery track — to know statesmanship so well that his country, in a crisis of her affairs, might call him to the helm, as before all others the pilot that could weather the storm, — and yet not to know whether he is at peace with God; whether, should he die to-night, he is saved or lost; is going to heaven or to hell! I under value no knowledge; but were I lying in jail under sentence of death, and, having got no answer to my application for mercy, did not know whether I was to be spared or to be hanged to-rnorrow, what would I care about the discovery of a new planet or new metal, a change of ministry, the rise or fall of prices, the rise or fall of kingdoms 1 The one question which would interest me, now awakening my hopes and now my gloomiest apprehensions, would be this: Am I saved 1 or, What shall I do to be saved? But we all lie under sentence of condemnation — death has passed on all men, because all have sinned. And so, though through a Christian profession we have a name to live, yet we may in fact be dead — dead in the eye of the law; and in such circumstances, I say with the Greek, that, to know ourselves, to know what we are and where we are, is of all knowledge the most important If there shall be nor more salvation out of Christ on a day of judgment than there was found out of the ark on that day when the avenging waters pursued the shrieking crowd to the tops of the highest hills, and washed off the last living man from the last dry spot of land, how important for us to know whether we are in Christ — united to him, not in name and by profession only, but by faith, in deed, and in truth! To try this, we have a plain and infallible test in these words of our Lord, The tree is known by its fruit. On this subject I remark —

I. It is possible to ascertain our real state and character.

In the Southern Hemisphere, where the plants and animals present some remarkable resemblances to those which lived and died and were entombed in the rocks before man’s appearance on the earth, a strange creature lives, that seems half bird, half quadruped; and, rooted to the rocks of our own shores, in the briny pools that are left by each receding tide, we find objects, in point of colour and form, beautiful as any of the ornaments of our gardens — of such a character, that many would be puzzled to settle whether they are most nearly, as flowers of the deep, allied to the sea-weeds which wave over them, or to those animals which, in every shape and size, from shrimps to whales, have their home in the ocean. In the fields of nature are birds that always walk and never fly, and quadrupeds that always fly and never walk; plants that, sensitive like animals, shrink from the touch, and animals that, fixed like a tree to the rock, live, die, and decay on the spot of their birth; flowers that might be readily mistaken for butterflies, with painted, fluttering wings, just alighted on the plant, and insects which it is impossible at first sight to distinguish, some from green, and others from withered leaves. He who, though a God, not of confusion, but of order, delights in variety, has so linked together the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and also their various departments, that many objects might be placed in the hands of a peasant, nor could he tell whether they were plants or animals, or to what section of these two great kingdoms they belonged. There is no such difficulty when we attempt to settle the question whether we belong to the one or the other of those two grand classes into which all mankind, kings and beggars, men and women, white skins and dark skins, may be divided. A broad line, like the gulf that separates heaven from hell, divides saints and sinners. Addressing the latter, a saint of God may say, as Abraham did to the rich man in torment, “Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot •” yet, thank God, he can add, Unlike yon gulf which no bridge of mercy spans, you can pass to us that would come from thence.

Unless Scripture is a mockery and its figures have no meaning whatever, it is not impossible, nor should it even be difficult, to determine our spiritual state, now and at once. Who has any difficulty in settling whether it is day or night: whether he enjoys sound health or pines on a bed of sickness: whether he is a free man or a slave ] No man could mistake a Briton, sitting under the tree of liberty which was planted by the hands of our fathers and watered with their blood, for the negro who stands up weeping in the auction mart, to be sold with his master’s cattle, or crouches in the rice swamp, bleeding under his master’s lash. Degraded by a system that curses both man and master, the black man may be content to eat the bread and wear the brand of bondage. Still he, as much as we do, knows the difference between fetters and freedom; he feels that he is a slave, and I feel that I am free: even so may we know whether we belong to the class of saints or to that of sinners — for sin is darkness, sickness, bondage. What plainer evidence of this could be desired than these words, “The tree is known by his fruit.” That is a fact with which we are all familiar. To stock the garden with fruit-trees, I repair to the nursery, but not in spring when all are robed alike in green; nor in summer when the bad equally with the best are covered with a flush of blossoms: it is when the corn turns yellow, and sheaves stand in the stubble fields, and fair blossoms are gone, and withered leaves sail through the air and strew the ground — it is in autumn I go to select the trees, judging them by their fruit. And as certainly — may I not say as easily? — as the tree is known by his fruit, may we know our spiritual- state and character, if we will only be honest, nor act like the merchant who, suspecting his affairs to be verging on bankruptcy, shuts his eyes to the danger; takes no stock, and strikes no balance.

How otherwise could any man lay his head in peace on his pillow: go to sleep when he did not know but that the next time he opened his eyes it should be in hell? This would be a dreadful state in which to pass our life. In such circumstances, where were the pleasures of piety, the peace of God that passeth under standing, the triumphs of a Christian’s dying hours? If death be, as some say, and as it must be if it is impossible to know our state, “a leap in the dark,” what madness his who stands on the brink of another world, not shrinking, trembling, hesitating, but singing, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? I do not aver that all God’s people enjoy a full assurance of salvation. Still, unless a man can, by the witness of God’s Spirit with his own, attain to some good hope that he has passed through grace from death to life, that the sentence of condemnation has been annulled, that his sins have been forgiven, that he has been reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus Christ, that a crown and mansion are waiting for him above the skies, how, in the name of reason, could he rejoice and be exceeding glad 1 The thing is impossible. He could not; any more than the

The Trus Test. 169

seaman can when his ship is driving on a lee shore and he has dropped his last anchor, until, brought up, she swings round on the very edge of foaming breakers, rides on the top of the billows, and with her bow to the storm. His anchor holds, and he knows that he is safe: and, blessed be God, we also have hope as an anchor of the soul both sure and steadfast, which entereth into that which is within the veil.

II.. Our religious profession is not always a test of our state.

i. It may be a test in certain circumstances. - Look, for example, at two men on parade! They wear the same dress and arms: and both, the result of drill and discipline, have acquired such a martial air that you cannot tell which is the hero and which the coward. But change the scene! Leave the parade ground for the field of battle! and when, as bugles sound the charge, I see, through clouds of smoke and amid the clash of arms, the sword of one flashing, and his plume dancing in the very front of the fight, while his comrade, pale and paralysed with fear, is only borne forward in the tumult like a sea-weed on the rushing billow, — how easy now to tell beneath whose martial dress there beats a soldier’s heart? Or take, for another example, two houses that stand on the banks of the same stream. Under a cloudless sky, amid the -calm of the glen in a summer day, with no sound falling on the ear but the blcatings of the flock, the baying of a sheep-dog, the muffled sound of a distant waterfall, the gentle murmur of the shallow waters over their pebbly bed, each house in its smil ing garden offers, to one weary of the din and dust of cities, an equally pleasant and, to appearance, an equally secure retreat. But let the weather change: and after brewing for hours, from out the darkness that has deepened into an ominous and frightful gloom, let the storm burst! Suddenly, followed by a crash like that of falling skies, a stream of lightning, dazzling the eye, glares out: and now the war of elements begins. Peal rolls on peal: flash follows flash: and to the roar of incessant thunders is added the rush of a deluge, and the hoarse voices of a hundred streams that leap foaming from hill and rock down into the bed of the river. Red, rolling, swelling, it bursts its dykes, overflows all its banks, and, attacking the foundations of both houses, breaches the walls of one, and at length tumbles the whole fabric, all of a heap, into the roaring flood: and while the houseless family that had fled from its rocking walls gather, shivering, on a neighbouring height to see where once stood their pleasant home only the rush and hear only the roar of wraters, — how easy, as we look on the other, erect, and defiant in this wide-spread sea, to know that the one had been built on sand, but the other founded on a rock.

So, though the profession does not prove the possession of religion in a time of peace, shew me a man,

The True Test. 171

like the house standing its ground against the sweep of floods, or the soldier following his colours into the thick of battle, who holds fast the profession of his faith in the face of obloquy, of persecution, of death itself, and there is little room to doubt that his piety is genuine — that he has the root of the matter in him. I care nothing for Hosannas when accompanied by crowds who cast their clothes on the dusty road and rend the air with acclamations — Jesus, enjoying a gleam of popularity, seems marching to a crown — the tongues that cry, Hosanna! to-day, changing their note, may cry, Crucify him! to-morrow. But who, not turning with the turning tide, like the blessed women that lamented and bewailed him, follows our Lord to the cross, goes without the camp bearing his reproach, is tested in a fire which only gold can stand. What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? These are they, is the reply, which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him night and day in the temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more: neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

2. The profession of religion is not a test of the reality of religion in our times.

I should be sorry to believe that no man could be a lover of Jesus Christ who did not go to the table of communion to commemorate his death. Some go there who should not: and some, restrained from the enjoyment of that blessed ordinance by unsound views of its nature, or of their own qualifications, do not go who should. I would be sorry also to believe that a man cannot be a true, unless he is also a bold Christian, and makes a fearless profession of piety. Elijah did indeed buckle on his armour and stand forth alone — openly confronting the vengeance of the crown and hatred of the people. Yet, concealed from the public eye, and unknown even to this brave defender of the faith, God had seven thousand men in Israel with knees that had never bowed to Baal, and mouths that had never kissed him. In later times Nicodemus sought an interview with our Lord under the cloud of night, and Joseph of Arimathea was a believer some time before he openly avowed it. Like flowers which close their leaves whenever it rains, or birds that seek shelter and their nests when storms rise, there are Christians so timid by natural constitution, that they shrink from scorn, and could as soon face a battery of cannon as the jeers and laughter of the ungodly.

Granting this, still it is true, that where there is no profession of serious religion, we have little reason to expect its reality. We may say of it what Solomon said of the contentious woman who proclaims her presence in house or hamlet by her loud, sharp tongue, Whosoever hideth her hideth the wind, and hideth the ointment of his right hand, which bewrayeth itself. Out of the abundance of the heart, as our Lord says, the mouth speaketh. What is in will be out; there being always some seam through which the water will leak, some chink through which the light will shine. A look, a word, will disclose the secret; and sometimes a devout man by his silence more even than by his words will proclaim himself. So that, as no man could enter a company with ointment in his hand, but, however close he held his fist, the fragrance would oose through his fingers, a true, hearty, genuine piety will reveal itself notwithstanding that an attempt may be made to conceal it, and that the humble saint has none of that courage which won for Knox, from the lips of an enemy, this brave eulogium, There lies one who never feared the face of man.

But if a man can have no piety who makes no profession of it, it is still more plain that the scoffers have none, who ridicule zealous Christians, as hypocrites or fanatics, Pharisees or fools. Such profane scoffers have no more love to Christ than had the iron-hearted and iron-handed men who pressed the thorns into his bleeding brow, and casting over his mangled form an old purple robe, made a mock of the Lord of glory. Whether it has been a cup of water, held to the dying lips of a poor saint, or a sneer flung at a disciple’s head, Jesus shall say, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Perhaps there never was a time when the mere profession of religion was a less satisfactory test of its reality than at present. There have been dark and evil days, and these not long gone, when religion was, if I may so express myself, at a discount: piety was not fashionable: profane swearing and deep drinking were the accomplishments of a gentleman; the man who assembled his household for prayer was accounted a hypocrite, the woman who did so a fool: missionary societies were repudiated by the courts of the Church, and eyed with suspicion by the officers of the Crown; Robert Haldane was denied an opportunity of consecrating, his fortune to the catise of Christ in India; Carey and Marshman, while seeking to convert the Hindoos, were driven from the British territories, and had to seek protection from a foreign Power; and such as formed missionary associations launched them on society with the anxieties and prayers of her who, cradling her infant in an ark of bulrushes, committed him to the waters of the Nile and the providence of her God. Power, rank, fashion, science, literature, and mammon were all arrayed in arms against everything that appeared in the form, and breathed the spirit of a devoted piety.

Thank God, it is not so now! He has touched the heart of the Egyptian, and she has adopted the out cast as her son. From holes and caves of the earth, religion has found her way into palaces and the mansions of the great and noble. Science has become a priestess at her altar. Literature has courted her alliance. Infidelity assumes even a Christian-like disguise. Iniquity, as ashamed, is made to hide her face. The tide has turned; and those who now make a profession of zealous and active piety, find themselves no longer opposed to the stream and spirit of the age. This is a subject of gratitude. Yet it suggests caution in judging of ourselves; and warns us to take care, since a profession of religion is rather fashionable than otherwise, that in making it we are not the creatures of fashion, but new creatures in Jesus Christ. When the crown sat on the head of Mordecai, and he himself sat on the royal steed, and Hainan walked at his bridle rein as he rode the streets of Shushan in royal state — heralds proclaiming, “Thus it shall be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour,” the Jew knew right well to what he owed the reverence paid him by many a supple Persian. And when religion rides through the land in triumph, many will bend the knee, shew her respect, and do her reverence, who would pass her in haughty scorn were she sitting at the porter’s gate. Hence the necessity for trying ourselves by such a test as my text suggests. The tree is known, ,not by its leaves, nor we by our professions; not by its blossoms, nor we by the promises

176 77/6’ True Test.

of which they arc lovely images; but by its fruit, and we by those things which the fruit represents — our hearts and habits, our true life and character. The tree is known by his fruit: moreover every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.

III. The true evidence of our state is to be found in our heart and habits. The tree is known by his fruit, — by their fruits ye shall know them.

We have often sat in judgment on others. It is of more consequence that we form a right estimate of ourselves — leaving others to God; for in the words ot an apostle, Who art thou that judge th another man’s servant 1 to his own master he standeth or falleth. In attempting to form a correct estimate of our own state and character, in the words of the Greek sage, to know ourselves, let us bring to this solemn task all the care and the conscientiousness with which a jury weigh the evidence in a case of life and death. They return from their room to the court to give in a verdict, amid breathless silence, which sends him whom they left pale and trembling at the bar to liberty, or to the gallows; yet, sacred as human life is, on our judgment here hangs a more momentous issue. A mistake there may send a man to the scaffold, but one here to perdition, — that involves the life of the body, this of the immortal soul. Judges sometimes find it difficult to know how to shape their charge, and juries how to shape their verdicts — the evidence is conflicting — not clear either way. The case is obscure, perplexing; perhaps a bloody mystery, from which no hand but God’s can raise the veil. But light and darkness, life and death, are not more unlike than the heart and habits of believers, on the one hand, and those of unbelievers, on the other; and with such a catalogue of the works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit as Paul has given us, how can it be difficult for a man to settle under which of these two classes his are to be ranked — with which they most closely correspond 1 The works of the flesh, says the apostle, are manifest, Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings: murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace: long-sufifering, gentleness: goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. A man may fancy himself possessed of talents which he has not, and a woman of beauty which she has not. But with all our strong bias to form a favourable and flattering opinion of ourselves, each “to think more highly of himself than he ought to think,” it seems as impossible for a man who is an adulterer, a fornicator, unclean, a drunkard, whose bosom burns with unholy and hateful passions, to imagine himself virtuous, as to mistake night for day, a bloated, fetid corpse, for one in the bloom and rosy

beauty of her youth. In regard to these tests, let me M also remark, we are to look for a correspondence between them and our hearts and habits: for no more. Few have plunged into such excess of wickedness as to have their lives characterised by all these works of the flesh j for there is a moderation in vice as well as in virtue; and some vices, as one class of weeds eradi cates another, unfit a man for indulging in other vices. Nor, on the other hand, are you to expect to find in any one all these fruits of the Spirit in luxuriant and equal abundance; still as he who is but a child in sin is still a child of the devil, he is a son of God who is but a babe in grace.

It is only often by a careful application of delicate tests that the chemist discovers a deadly poison or a precious metal; but how easy is it by a few simple questions to bring out our real character! Have you suffered a heavy wrong, for example, at the hands of another ] You remember it. But where 1 Is it at the throne of grace; and to pray with him whose blood fell alike on the head of foe and friend, Father forgive them, they know not what they do? Again, are you asked to contribute money to the cause of Christ 1 while some calculate how little they can give to satisfy their conscience and meet the expectations of society, do you calculate how much you can spare for that blessed Saviour who did not spare himself for you 1 Again, when tempted to sin, while some wish there were no hell to deter them from the unbridled enjoyment of its pleasures, do you rather long for that pure, blessed heaven, where there entereth nothing to hurt or to defile’? Again, when you see transgressors, is it with indifference, or with some what of the feelings of him who said, I saw transgressors and was grieved — rivers of waters ran down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law, O Lord1? Again, when you think of perishing souls, is yours the spirit of Cain, or of Christ 1 can you no more stand by with folded hands to see sinners perishing than men drowning? are you moved by such generous impulse as draws the hurrying crowd to the pool where one is sinking, and moves some brave man, at the jeopardy of life, to leap in and pluck him from the jaws of death? There is no better evidence that we have received the nature as well as the name of Christ, than an anxious wish to save lost souls, and a sympathy with the joy of angels over every sinner that is converted. Let me illustrate this by two examples — pictures drawn from life.

Years ago, and in a parish which I knew, there lived a woman notorious in the neighbourhood for profane swearing, habits of drunkenness, and manners rude j coarse as well as irreligious. She feared not God, neither regarded man; and trained up her children for the devil. One evening she happened to be within ear-shot of a preacher; and as he was emptying his quiver among the crowd, an arrow from the bow drawn at a venture was lodged in her heart. Remarkable example of free, sovereign, subduing grace! she was converted. Her case, as much as that of the thief on the cross, of the jailor at Philippi, of Saul on his way to Damascus, was one of instant conversion — day burst on her soul without a dawn. She hastened home. She found her family asleep, and saw in each child a never-dying soul, that her own hand had rocked into deeper, fatal slumbers. Seized with an intense desire to have them saved, she could not delay the matter till to-morrow; and so, rushing on the sleepers as if the bed beneath them had been in flames, she shook them, woke them, crying, Arise, call upon thy God! And there at the midnight hour, with her children kneeling round her, her eyes streaming with tears, her voice trembling with emotion, did that poor mother cry to God, that he would have mercy also on them, and pluck these brands from the burning.

Near by the dwelling where a mother roused her children from their beds to flee, not from a house on fire, but from the fire that is never quenched, stood the cottage of one whose joy over a converted sinner carried us away to the heavens, where angels rejoice over one sinner that repenteth. He had long been a Christian; not so his wife, from whose side he had often stolen in the dead of night to pray for her salvation. He continued instant in prayer. Mothers, sisters, all who carry others in their prayers to the throne of grace, Pray on! God’s time to answer — the time to favour her at length came. She was smitten; seized with anxiety; pierced with convictions; but she could find no peace. She walked in darkness and had no light; and giving herself up for lost, once said, for instance, when her husband and she had lain down for sleep, If you should die before to-morrow, it will be happy for you; if I should, farewell, an everlasting farewell — I shall open my eyes in torment! But the time of her redemption drew nigh. She had sown in tears, and was to reap in joy. A minister hearing of her distress, went to visit her. She was in the garden. Her husband left the house to call her. Who seeks me? she asked. Without forethought, as if the words had fallen from heaven on his lips, he replied, Jesus Christ seeks you! She started: an ashy paleness overspread her face: and, deeply affected, she followed him in silence to the house. There the man of God held up before her a bleeding, dying, loving, Saviour. Prayer followed, and praise followed prayer; for while they entreated God with strong crying and tears, the grave opened, and she that was dead came forth — to say, I confess that Jesus is the Lord, and to sing with Mary, My soul doth magnify the Lord; and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour; for he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden — he that is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is his name. And what did you do? I asked the husband. Do, sir 1 he replied; I sprang to my feet; I clasped her in my arms; I exclaimed, This is our marriage day; and unable to restrain my joy, I cried

Hosanna to the Son of David! Praise him, all ye his angels j praise him, sun, moon, and stars; praise him, all ye orbs of light!

By their fruits ye shall know them. Grapes do not grow on thorns, nor figs on thistles — nor such fruits in any but renewed hearts. So to feel proves what no profession can, that the same mind is in us that was in Jesus Christ: nor is there room to doubt that if you bear such saintly and heavenly fruit, you are one with him who, communicating the influences of the Spirit to his people, as the tree does its sap to the boughs, hath said, I am the Vine; ye are the branches. Abide in me, and I in you.