Let us remember that the loftier the top of the tree and the wider the spread of its shelves of dark foliage, if it is steadfastly to stand, unmoved by the loud winds when they call, the deeper must its roots strike into the firm earth.  If your life is to be a fair temple-palace worthy of God’s dwelling in, if it is to be impregnable to assault, there must be quite as much masonry underground as above, as is the case in great old buildings and palaces.  And such a life must be a life “hid with Christ in God,” then it will be strong.  When we strike our roots deep into Him, our branch also shall not wither, and our leaf shall be green, and all that we do shall prosper.  The wicked are not so.  They are like chaff—­rootless, fruitless, lifeless, which the wind driveth away.

IV.  Lastly, the God-bedewed soul, beautiful, pure, strong, will bear fruit.

That is the last lesson from these metaphors.  “His beauty shall be as the olive-tree.”  Anybody that has ever seen a grove of olives knows that their beauty is not such as strikes the eye.  If it was not for the blue sky overhead, that rays down glorifying light, they would not be much to look at or talk about.  The tree has a gnarled, grotesque trunk which divides into insignificant branches, bearing leaves mean in shape, harsh in texture, with a silvery underside.  It gives but a quivering shade and has no massiveness, nor symmetry.  Ay! but there are olives on the branches.  And so the beauty of the humble tree is in what it grows for man’s good.  After all, it is the outcome in fruitfulness which is the main thing about us.  God’s meaning, in all His gifts of dew, and beauty, and purity, and strength, is that we should be of some use in the world.

The olive is crushed into oil, and the oil is used for smoothing and suppling joints and flesh, for nourishing and sustaining the body as food, for illuminating darkness as oil in the lamp.  And these three things are the three things for which we Christian people have received all our dew, and all our beauty, and all our strength—­that we may give other people light, that we may be the means of conveying to other people nourishment, that we may move gently in the world as lubricating, sweetening, soothing influences, and not irritating and provoking, and leading to strife and alienation. The question after all is, Does anybody gather fruit off us, and would anybody call us ’trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified’?  That is lesson four from this text.  May we all open our hearts for the dew from heaven, and then use it to produce in ourselves beauty, purity, strength, and fruitfulness!

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AMOS

A PAIR OF FRIENDS

     ’Can two walk together, except they be agreed?’-AMOS III. 8.