Editorial March 2, 1907 Issue

THE LESSON OF THE FIG TREE

Annie M. Knott

It sometimes happens that students of the Bible are perplexed by the seeming incongruity between Jesus' treatment of the barren fig tree (as recorded by Matthew and Mark) and his words spoken when enforcing this lesson, "When ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses." It is certainly difficult if not impossible to understand this incident, if it be taken apart from its setting. In the light of the context, however, and of the spiritual sense of the Scriptures gained from the study of the Christian Science text-book, the whole story is wonderfully illuminated.

In the 21st chapter of Matthew we read of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event which culminated when he cast out of the temple the representatives of a material sense of religion and healed "the blind and the lame" who came there seeking his ready aid. A study of the Gospels shows that material law was even then being invoked for the destruction of this "prophet of Nazareth," who refused to acknowledge its authority and whose wonderful works put to shame the fruitlessness of mere creedal religion with its forms and ceremonies. It was therefore necessary for him to leave the city each night to avoid arrest, and so he went over the hills to Bethany, where but a few weeks before he had raised Lazarus from the dead. On his way back to the city in the early morning, accompanied by his disciples, he was hungry, and seeing a fig tree "afar off," he went to it expecting to find fruit, as it was covered with leaves; but there was none, and he said, "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever." Later we are told that when they passed it, next morning, it was "dried up from the roots."

The authorities tell us that inasmuch as the tree was in full leaf, it was proper to expect fruit, as it seems that many varieties of the fig develop fruit before the leaves. In any case, the barren tree but represented the conditions which Christ Jesus had found in the synagogues all over the land, where there were many sick folk, but where he had been condemned for healing them, because he ignored a technicality as to the observance of the Sabbath. It also symbolized the conditions found in the temple, where forms and ceremonies had usurped the place of the spiritual fruits which alone could satisfy the needy.

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