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in which it was planted proved to be barren and lacking in proper nourishment.

A tree growing in poor soil can not bear, because it requires all the strength it can extract from the soil to barely sustain its life. It takes all the virtue there is in the soil to support the head and foliage so that the fruit is literally starved out.

There are church-members who branch into Christian profession but who are rooted in the world. Such will bring forth nothing but leaves. (Text.)

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FRUIT-BEARING

Suppose the tree should say: "My roots are strong, my boughs elastic and tough, firm against the stroke of wind and storm. Look at my bark, how smooth and fresh; and where is there a tree whose tides of sap are fuller or richer? What leaves, too, are these that I have woven out of the threads of sun and soil! Little wonder that the birds build nests in my branches, while the cattle find shade beneath my boughs." Well, this is a good argument—for an apple-tree—but a poor one for a man. The hungry farmer-boy does not leap the fence on his way to the apple-tree looking for apple-sap or apple-boughs or apple-leaves—he is looking for apples. And God has built this world, not for the root moralities that support man. Industry is good—it is good not to lie and not to steal, and not to kill and not to perjure, but these beginnings are fundamental only, the man must go on from the leaf to the fruit. The fruit is truth in the inner parts, justice, measured by God's standard, and mercy that tempers justice, love, joy peace, long-suffering gentleness, goodness, faith that trusts, and will not be confounded. (Text.)—

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FRUIT LIKE THE TREE

Tho I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and tho I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. In so giving and so doing, I would be acting merely in a way analogous to the jackdaw that would expect to be turned into a peacock by sticking a few peacock's feathers into its black coat. This maneuver would not convert the jackdaw into a peacock; it would be still a jackdaw even after it had covered itself all over with peacock's feathers. Let it first turn, if possible, into a peacock, and then peacock's feathers will grow naturally upon it; its black coat will then soon be radically changed. To adopt the simile of our Lord, first make the tree good, and then its fruit will be good; you can not produce heaven's fruit until the tree be first planted in heaven.—, "Heaven and Hell Here."

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FRUITFULNESS

The chayote is in many particulars the most remarkable plant in the vegetable kingdom. It is entirely immune from fungi, and is the only plant known which insects do not attack. Altho it bears fruit, it is a vine. Its growth is surprizingly rapid. It is a perennial and clambers about, clings to and covers fence, barn, tallest tree—anything. It will often bear as many as five hundred fruits, some of them weighing no less than three pounds. It blossoms and ripens fruit every month in the year. It is palatable and nutritious. Its flowers are rich in nectar and a prolific source of honey. (Text.)

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Fruits, First—See.

FULFILMENT DISAPPOINTING

It is the way with all ambitions not to satisfy when they are achieved. Here is a poem by Grantland Rice teaching this truth:

The little boy smiled in his sleep that night, As he wandered to Twilight Town; And his face lit up with a heavenly light Through the shadows that drifted down; But he woke next morning with tear-stained eye

In the light of the gray dawn's gleam, And out from the stillness we heard him cry, "I've lost my dream—my dream!"

And he told us then, in his childish way, Of the wonderful dream he'd known, He had wandered away from the land of play To the distant Land of the Grown; He had won his share of the fame and fight In the struggle and toil of men; And he sobbed and sighed in the breaking light, "I want my dream again!"

As the years passed by the little boy grew Till he came to the Land of the Grown; And the dream of his early youth came true— The dream that he thought had flown;