Testimony of Healing December 17, 1904 Issue

A Lesson from the Trees

ELIZABETH C. WICKERSHAM.

Recently while traveling I looked from my car window out into a noble orchard adjacent to the track where our train was waiting. There were many fine trees laden with fruit, and two, standing side by side, especially attracted my attention. Every branch of one was covered with red ripe apples, while the other, springing from the same soil, watered by the same beneficent showers, and gladdened by the same warm sunshine, had spindling, crooked branches, with scant and imperfect foliage, and no fruit whatever.

On looking closely, I noticed that on one side of this tree there was a large hole, and within were evidences of decay and death. The whole heart of the tree was rotted, and the trunk, being thus lifeless and impoverished, had little life-giving nourishment for the branches, and therefore they neither blossomed nor bore fruit. Soon, as I thought, the husbandman will be coming, and will say. "Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit ... and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground."

After my return home, I was walking through one of our beautiful parks, and I felt a sense of sadness come over me as I saw the trees stripped of their leaves. Picking off a branch I noticed that the sap had returned, as it seemed, to the trunk, there to be stored, enriched, and resupplied to the branches in due season, and then there was unfolded to me my lesson. In all these phenomena as thus understood, I saw a prophetic order. Now that winter was approaching, the trunk must be made strong and well nourished, so that it may be able to resist the fury of storm and wind, and every leaf, twig, and branch must give back its quota of nourishment into the parent stem, there to be husbanded, so that in the coming spring it may again furnish abundance of food to the branches, which will thus be furnished for their blowing and fruitage. Jesus' teaching, "It is more blessed to give than to receive," must be manifested by the branches as well as the vine, and through this mutual reciprocity all are blessed and noursihed and strengthened.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Is Matter Slowly Dying?