A Leaf from the Tree of Life
7 E may also learn that the humblest and most timid faith in Jesus Christ will save. Itisa grand thing to believe in Jesus Christ with all your heart, and soul, and strength; it is delightful never to doubt, but to go from strength to strength until you come to full assurance of understanding; but if you cannot thus mount up with wings as eagles you will be saved if you come limping to Jesus. If you have but a mustard-seed of faith you are saved. She who in the press touched but the hem of the Saviour’s garment found that virtue flowed out of Him and came to her. Pluck a leaf of this tree by thy poor - trembling faith, and if thou darest not take more than that yet shall it make thee whole.
After we have been saved from our sin by faith in Jesus Christ it is very wonderful how everything about Christ will help to purge the blood, which as yet is not.cleansed. Study His example, and as you look at the lovely traits of His character, His gentleness, and yet His boldness, His consecration to our cause and His zeal for the glory of God, you will find as you value His excellences they will exercise a curative power over you. You will be ashamed to be selfish, you will be ashamed to be idle, you will be ashamed to be proud when you see what Jesus was. Study Him, and you will grow like Him. If we take His precepts, and I hope we prize them as highly as we do His doctrines, there is not a command of our
* Rev. xxii.
Lord but what posseses a sacred power, by the application of the Holy Spirit, to cure some fault or other of our character. Do thou as He bids thee, and thou shalt be made whole. Why, there is not a word that ever fell from those dear lips but what bears healing in it for some one or other of the thousand ills that have befallen our humanity. It is a sweet thing to get even a broken text from His mouth. His least words are better than the best of others. Lay a word from Him, like a grain of medicine, upon your tongue, and keep it there all day. With what a flavour it fills the mouth! How sweetly it perfumes the breath! It is a grand thing to bind a promise round your arm; how strong it makes each sinew! How forceful for the battle of life! It is a blessed thing to take His cheering words, which are fragrant as “a cluster of camphire,” and carry them in the bosom, for they chase away sadness and inspire dauntless courage. A word of His, being H7zs, and recognised as Hzs, and coming home to the heart as Fits, brings healing to head and heart, conscience and imagination, desire and affection. A leaf of the tree of life is a medicine fitted to raise the dead. Do you not know its power by a joyful experience? Blessed be God, some of us know it right well, and can bear glad witness to its matchless power!
“The leaves of the trees were for the healing of the nations.” Not this or that malady; the medicine is universal in its curative power. Take this medicine, then, to any man, whoever he may be, and let it be applied by the Spirit of God, and it will heal him of whatsoever disease he has, because the Gospel strikes at the root of all diseases.
This medicine heals disease because it searches into the innermost nature. Some medicines are only for the skin; others will only touch a few organs, and those not vital; but the leaves of the Gospel tree, when taken as medicine, penetrate the veins and search the heart. Their searching operations divide between the joints and the marrow, and discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. A wondrous medicine this! It searches the soul through and through, and never ceases itS operations till it has purged the entire manhood of every relic of sin, and made it completely clean. Lord, give us these leaves!
These leaves prevent the recurrence of disease by enabling the man henceforth to find good in all that comes to him. A person diseased, if healed, may, by the food which he shall afterwards receive, bring on the disease again. Place a man under certain conditions which cause him an illness; you may heal him, but if you lead him back to those conditions he may soon be ailing again. And here in such a world as this, even if Christ healed us to-day we should be sick to death to-morrow, if the medicine had not some wondrous continuance of power. And so it is; for all things that come to us after conversion are changed, bécause we are changed; “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.”
This wondrous medicine abides in the system as a source of health. “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life.” Other medicine taken into the system acts in its own manner, and there is an end of it, but this abides. These healing leaves change the life blood, affect the spirits, and make the nature other than it was before. Yonder in heaven those faces which look so bright and comely, fresher than new-born babes, owe their freshness to these healing leaves; and so until the glory life begins the abiding power of the healing leaves keeps the soul of the believer in perpetual health, and will keep him so world without end.
The leaves will heal all diseases: these leaves heal whole nations. They are suited to the peculiarities of differing nations. The Gospel has never been carried to a people who did not want it, or whom it did not suit. It has been found equally applicable to the ignorant Hottentot and the subtle Hindoo. No man has. been found too degraded for its operation, nor too civilised for its benefits. The Gospel has such abundant power that it heals nations, and “nations” is a large word, comprehending millions; but the leaves of this tree can heal countless armies of men.
It is a happy circumstance that an agent of such potency is diffusible by the simplest means. <A medicine consisting of leaves may be carried by the apothecary where he wills: it is no cumbrous matter. So may we carry the Gospel to the utmost ends of the earth; and we will carry it, and send it to every habitation. The winds shall waft it, the waves shall bear it wherever man is found. These leaves are not cumbrous like the stage properties of popery, but are readily scattered, and wherever they go no climate injures them. The cold of Greenland has not been too severe to prevent the Greenlander rejoicing in the Saviour’s blood; and the heat of the torrid zone has not been too intense to prevent believers from rejoicing in the Sun of Righteousness. The Gospel heals nations wherever the nations may be, and readily heals them of the direst miseries and the blackest crimes. It is the cure for poverty, by making men wise and economical; it is the cure for slavery, teaching men to love their fellows and respect the rights of all; it is the cure for drunkenness, weaning the drunkard from his filthy appetite, saving him from the spell which binds him. The Gospel is the only preventive for war. We shall need no blood-red soldiery when once the warriors of the Cross have won the day. This is the cure for those foul evils which are the curse of our social economies, which human laws too often increase instead of removing. This shall purge us from every form of knavery, rebellion, and discontent, and this only. God grant that its healing influences may drop upon the nations thick as leaves in Vallambrosa, till that Golden Age shall dawn in which the world shall be the abode of moral health!