Trees of the Forest

SUPPOSE that in your wanderings to and fro you come upon another tree which is said to be the oldest in the forest. We all of us have a veneration for age. Antiquity has many charms. I scarcely know, if antiquity and novelty should run a race for popular favour, which might win. Nowadays we are pestered by a class of men who would fain fascinate our nation to error by the charms of antiquity. They will tell us that a certain ceremony, though no: trace of it is to be found in Scripture, must be venerable because practised in the fourth century; and they imagine that worship in buildings which were founded by Saxons and garnished by Normans, must. be peculiarly acceptable with God. To be ancient, is it not a great advantage? As cleanliness is next to godliness, surely antiquity must be next to orthodoxy. Yet if there be no Scripture to warrant it an ancient ceremony, it is only an ancient farce. There are some things which are so old as to be rotten, worm-eaten, and fit only to be put away. Many things called ancient are but clever counterfeits, or wherein they are true they are but the bones and carcases of that which once was good when life filled it with energy and power. There is an “old way which wicked men have trodden,” as well as a good old way in which the righteous walk. We cannot be certain that a thing is out because it is old, for Satan is old, and sin is old,

* Cant. ii.

and death is old, and hell is old; yet none of these things are right and desirable on that account. No, Jesus Christ our Lord, since the day in which we have known Him by faith, has quieted our conscience, has calmed our fears, has given us joy and peace through believing, and we are not to be seduced from Him by all the antiquated falsehoods which may weave their spells around us. Old even to decay may be the trees in which other travellers delight, but as for us, we choose the tree of heavenly fruit — the apple tree is our choice, Jesus is our Beloved. Ritualists may glory in their fourth century doctrines, their fathers, their councils, and their ancient customs; the Bible is primitive enough for us, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is venerable enough for us; we are content with Him, and want no more. To us the main thing is to find food for our souls, the bread that never perishes, the fruit which will quench our desperate thirst. We have found it in the Saviour, and from the Saviour we will not depart.

It may be that in the midst of the forest, while you are hungry and thirsty, you come upon a strangely beautiful tree: its proportions are exact, and as you gaze upon it from a distance you exclaim: “How wonderful are the works of God!” and you begin to think of those trees of the Lord which are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted. You stand under it and look up among the majestic boughs and the spreading branches, and you again admire the beauty of Nature as it comes from the hand of the Most High. But beauty can never satisfy hunger, and when a man is dying of thirst it is vain to talk to him of symmetry and taste. He wants

food. This reminds us that nowadays there be some who try to satisfy the souls of men with beauty. Look at their processions; who would not be charmed with their varied costumes, their spangled banners, their gilded crosses, and their melodious hymns? Listen to their choir; is not the singing perfection? If you want a concert on the Sabbath day, and do not like to attend a theatre, you can find it in the cathedral, and in many a parish church, and please the Lord almost as well; if you want to have your senses gratified and cannot conscientiously attend an opera on Sunday, you can have ear and eye gratified at church — ay, and the nose as well in some places; and these amusements they mistake for religious exercises. Compared with the plainness of worship which we follow, our casting out of everything like symbol, our abhorrence of everything that would take away the mind from God Himself and fix it upon secondary objects — compared with all this, their worship is enchanting indeed to the carnal mind, and we do not wonder that those who are led by taste should follow after it.

But oh, if a man once hungers after the bread of heaven, his taste for finery will be reduced to a very secondary position as a governing power of his mind. If once the soul craves after God, after peace, pardon, truth, reconciliation, holiness, it will seek the Lord Jesus, the apple tree, and forget the other trees, however shapely they may be. “These bear no fruit for me,” says the hungry soul. The awakened conscience listens to the chant as it is echoed among the massive pillars, and watches the smoke as it rises like a cloud among the arches of the roof, and he cries, “What are chanting and smoketo me? I want a Saviour.” He sees the procession, and after he has gazed upon it he says, “What are these mummeries to me? I want washing in the blood of Christ.” As the incense smokes to heaven he says to himself, “O for the incense of the Saviour’s merit; what are these gums of Araby to me if they should burn all day long?” He turns away, sick and faint in heart, from all the gew-gaws and outward trappings of modern popery, and he cries, “O God, thou art a Spirit, and they that worship Thee must worship Thee in spirit and in truth. I want Thee, O my God; J want spiritual life within myself, that I may commune with Thee, and where can I find it but in my Saviour? He gives it to me; He is the only fruit-bearing tree amongst the trees of the wood.”

In the forest we shall come upon some very wonderful trees. I have seen instances in which branches are curiously interlaced with one another; the beech sends forth a long drooping bough, and lest it should not be able to support itself, another bough strikes up from below to buttress it, or descends from above and clasps it, and the boughs actually grow into one another. Strange things may be observed in the undisturbed woods, which are not to be seen in our hedgerow trees, or discerned in our gardens; trees have odd habits of their own, and grow marvellously if left to their own sweet wills. I have stood under them and said, “How can this be? This is singular indeed! How could they grow like this? What wondrous interlacings, and intertwinings, and gnarlings, and knottings!” Yes, but if a man were hungry and thirsty, he would not be satisfied with curiosities.

As we are wandering in the forest and are still hungry, I hear someone saying, “Ah, here is the place for food; you need not boast of your apple tree: the ground is covered with meat beneath this noble tree.” I look up, — it is autumn time, — and I see a huge tree loaded with beech nuts, which fall like rain. “Here is the place for food.” Was that a human voice I heard? No, it was the gruntings of a herd of swine. See how content they are — how happy; how they are munching the mast as it falls from the trees. Yonder is a grove of oaks, all shedding their acorns, and how delighted the swine are! How they fatten upon the spoil! “Will you not come here?” they seem to say as they munch in comfort; “will you not come here? Do not tell us about trees which bear no fruit; there is fruit enough here, surely?” Even thus I hear a voice from the Exchange : — “Here are the trees which bear us golden apples, come hither and be filled.” I hear it from those who cater for public amusements : — “Here are the fruits which can delight the soul. Here is the place to spend a happyday.” And so I hear it from the gay followers of vice : — ‘“This dalliance, this dante, this flowing bowl, this sweet-sounding viol, these are real joys.” Yes, to you, to you who choose them. Beech nuts and acorns are good enough for swine. To you who can find comfort, solid comfort, in the gain of merchandise, or in the pleasures of sin, or in the delights of pomp, these things are good enough; but a man, a God-made man, a man into whom God has put a new heart — not a swine’s heart, but a man’s heart — wants apples, not acorns, wants spiritual food, food for an immortal nature, and there is no such food to be found short of the Lord Jesus Christ, for He, and He only, is the apple tree among the trees of the wood.

The spouse spoke of the tree which she most desired; the wonder was that she found it. It was an apple tree, but it was not in a garden, a fruit tree, but not in a vineyard; it was ‘among the trees of the wood.” Who would know of so great a rarity as an apple tree in a wood if he were not first told of it? So Jesus Christ at this present day is not known to all mankind. It is a most unhappy thought that probably the majority of the human race have not heard of the Saviour at all, and a very large proportion have never head of Him except through misrepresentations. Only a small minority of our fellow men know anything about the Saviour.

‘* What millions never knew the Lord!
What millions hate Him when He’s known.”

Even in our own country you will not find it a difficult thing to meet with persons who are totally ignorant of Christ. Try it, and you shall find in country towns and in hamlets men grown up who could not give you an answer to this question — “How is it that the death of Jesus saves the soul?” Nay, who do not even. know the fact that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. “Well,” say you, “we know the rural districts are ignorant.”. Yes, but they are far superior in light to parts of London. You can readily find children in our streets, and what is worse, artisans in our workshops, to whom the bare name of Jesus may be known, but anything like the doctrine of His substitutionary atonement is a thing of which

they have not heard. Living in the light they abide in darkness, amid a thousand lamps they see not. One of the problems which may most surprise us is the existence of such dense ignorance in persons who live in intimate connection with instructed people. If you want the grossest ignorance, probably you would not find it in Pekin or Timbuctoo, but in London or New York. Where the greatest light is, there the shadows are deepest. Men nearest to the church are often furthest from God. You cannot easily find an apple tree in a great forest. If you were put down in the middle of a forest and told there was an apple tree there, you might wander for many a day before you discovered it, and often go over your own footsteps, lost in endless mazes, but you would not find the object of your search; and so, though there be a Saviour, men have not found the Saviour, and there may even be souls here present who long for that which Jesus is able to give, and yet have not discovered Him. You know all about Him in the letter of His Word, but you cannot find Him spiritually, and I hear you cry, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him.” I know I am speaking to some such. You have been going up and down for months with your prayers, and your tears, and your good works; you have been trying to do all you can to save yourselves, but you find your own actions to be barren trees, and you know that there is an apple tree somewhere, but you cannot find it. Ah, poor soul, you are like the Ethiopian eunuch; when he was asked if he understood what he read, he gave the answer, “How can I unless some man should guide me?” Do you not wonder that the spouse found her apple tree among the trees of the wood? The fact is, none ever find it except they are led there, and none can lead a soul to that apple tree but the eternal Spirit of God.

Now, is it not a strange place for an apple tree to be found in — in a wood? We seldom hear of such a thing; an apple tree should grow in a garden. How should it be found ina forest? And is it not a strange thing that a Saviour should be found for us among men — not among angels? Ye shall search for a Saviour amongst “the helmed cherubim and sworded seraphim” as long as you will, but there is none there. The Saviour is found in a manger at Bethlehem, in a carpenter’s shop at Nazareth; amongst the poor and needy is He seen while He sojourns amongst the sons of men.

“As in some sere and unproductive wood One lovely, fruit-producing apple tree, Bright contrast to the ruin’d thousands round; So in this populous but vicious world, O thou Desire of nations, didst Thou stand.”

Now, there is something very sweet about this, because a wood is the very place where we most love to find Christ growing. If I had come upon an apple tree in the forest, and it had happened to be the time of ripe fruit, I should have felt no compunction of conscience in taking whatsoever I was able to reach, for a tree growing in the forest is free to all comers. Should there be a hungry one beneath its bough, he need not say, “May 1?” when his mouth waters at the golden fruit: he need not say, “It would be stealing; I am unfit to take it; I am unworthy of it.” Man, if there be an apple tree in the forest, no man can keep it for himself or deny your right to it, for each wanderer has a right to what fruit he can gather. The animals have rights of pasturage, and the birds have rights of nesting, and you have rights of feeding. Pluck away, man, and eat to thy full. The shadows and the fruits of forest trees are free to all who need. It was little wonder that when the spouse, all hungry and faint, did come upon this apple tree in the forest she acted as she did. Straightway she sat down under its shadow, with great delight, and its fruit was sweet unto her taste. She looked up at it; that was the first thing she did, and she perceived that it met her double want. The sun was hot, there was the shadow: she was faint, there was the fruit. Now, see how Jesus meets all the wants of all who come to Him. God’s anger, like the hot noon-day sun, falls ‘on me, how can I escape it? Thereis no escape from the anger of God except by an interposer. What is a shadow? Is it not caused by the interposition of the bough, or the rock, or whatever it may be, which comes between us and the sun? If we sit under a tree in the shadow, it is because the tree receives the heat, and so we escape from it. Jesus Christ’s great office is the Interposer, the Mediator, the Substitute, the Atonement, the Sacrifice, and when we hide beneath Him we are screened. God’s wrath cannot come on us, because it has come upon Him on our behalf. “When Christ my screen is interposed Between the sun and me,

My joyful heart and lips unclosed,
Adore the glorious tree.”

That is a beautiful picture in Solomon’s Song where the king is said to ride in his chariot of love. He takes his spouse with him, and they ride together in his palanquin, and it has over ita canopy. Did you ever notice what it is made of? It is said, “The covering thereof was of purple;” for truly the only interposition between us and the sun of God’s wrath is the purple canopy of the atoning blood. Is it not delightful to sit down beneath the scarlet canopy of the Saviour’s blood, and feel, “God cannot smite me: He has smitten His Son; payment He cannot demand the second time: if Jesus suffered in my stead, how can God make me suffer again for sin? Where were the justice of the Most High to punish an immaculate Substitute, and then punish men for whom that Substitute endured His wrath?” This is the cool, calm, holy shadow under which we abide.

But then, the spouse also found that she herself was thirsty, and that the fruit of the tree exactly met her case. Our inner life wants sustenance and food; now, in the Lord Jesus is life, and the bread of life. He is that bread which came down from heaven, whereof if a man eat he shall live for ever. The spouse, when she had begun to enjoy the provision and the shade, and had sat down under it as if she intended to say, “I never mean to leave this place; in this delicious shadow I mean to repose for ever,” then she also began to tell of it to others. She describes Christ as the apple tree, and gives her reason for so calling Him — * I sat down under His shadow with great delight, and His fruit was sweet to my taste.” Experience must be the ground on which we found our descriptions. If a preacher wants to preach with power, let him tell what he has felt, and tasted, and handled. It is of little use to say Christ is precious, unless you can add, “Thave found Him so.” Therefore the church brings.

in her own experience — ‘ Sweet shade! I there sat down as one at home, and there regaled my soul with most delicious fare.” She could not hold her tongue about her Beloved. She must speak; she could not retain the secret of this apple tree, and say to herself, “Others may go to it, and so perhaps when I go another time there may be nothing left for myself;” but she spread the news. She set it down in black and white in the inspired volume for an everlasting testimony that there is an apple tree among the trees of the wood, of which she had eaten, that so others might eat of it too, and enjoy the same sweetness for themselves.