Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1897 — THE BIBLE ORCHARD [ARTICLE]

THE BIBLE ORCHARD

DR. TALMAGE’S SERMON ON THE FRUITS OF PARADISE. The First Orchard Described in Its Beauty and Perfection-The Lesson of Its Creation Before Fish and Birds— Solomon’s Orchards and Gardens. Our Weekly Sermon. Dr. Talmage finds the divine hand in all the dominions of the natural world, and this sermon presents religion in its most radiant attractiveness. The text is Genesis i.. 11, "The fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind." It is Wednesday morning in Paradise. The birds did not sing their opening pieqe nor the fish take their first swim until the following Friday. The solar and lunar lights did not break through the thick, chaotic fog of the world's manufacture until Thursday. Before that there was light, but it was electric light or phosphorescent light, not the light of sun or moon. But the botanical and pomologies! productions came, on Wednesdayfirst the flowers and then the fruits. The veil of fog lifted, and there fitand the orchards. Watch the sudden maturity of the fruit. In our time pear trees must have two years before they bear fruit, and teach trees three years, and apple trees five years, but here instantly a complete ■orchard springs into life, all the branches bearing fruit. The insectile forces, which have been doing their worst to destroy the fruits for 6,000 years, had not yet begun their invasion. The curculio had not yet stung the plum, nor the caterpillar ’hurt the apple, nor had the phylloxera plague, which has devastated the vineyards of America and France, assailed the grapes, nor the borer perforated the wood, nor the aphides ruined the cherry, nor the grub punctured the nectarine, nor the blight struck the pear. There stood the first orchard, with a perfection of rind, and an exquisiteness of color, and a lusciousness of taste, and an affluertcc of production which it may take thousands of years more of study of the science of fruits to reproduce. The Fruit Diet. Why was the orchard created two days before the fish and birds and three days before the cattle? Among other things, to impress the world with a lesson it is too stupid to learn—that fruit diet is healthier than meat diet, and that the former must precede the latter. You have thanked God for btead a thousand times. Have you thanked him for the fruits which lie made the first course of food in the menu of the world’s table —the ■acids of those fruits to keep the world’s table from being insipid, and their sweets to keep it from being too sour? What an expensive thing is sin. It ■costs a thousand times more than it is worth. As some of all kinds of quadrupeds and all kinds of winged creatures passed before our progenitor that he might announce a name, from eagle to bat and from lion to mole, so I suppose there were in paradise specimens of every kind of fruit tree. And in that enormous orchard there was not only enough for the original family of two, but enough fruit fell ripe to the ground and was never picked up to supply whole towns and villages, if they had existed. But the infatuated couple turned away from all these other trees and faced this tree, and fruit of that they wilt have though it cost them all paradise.

As you pass through the orchard on these autumnal days.and look up through the arms of the trees laden with fruit you hear thumping on the ground that which is fully ripe, and throwing your arms around the trunk you give a shake that sends down a shower of gold and tire on all sides of you, Pile up in baskets and barrels and bins and on shelves and tables the divine supply. But these orchards have been under the assault of at least sixty centuries—the storm, the droughts, the winters, the insectivora. What must the first orchard have been? And yet it is the explorer’s evidence that on the site of that orchard there is not an apricot, or an apple, or an olive —nothing but desert and desolation. In other words, that first orchard is a lost orchard. How did the proprietor and the proprietress of all that interdolumniation of fruitage let the rich splendor slip their possession? It was, as now, most of the orchards are lost —namely,by wanting more. Access they had to"all the fig trees, apricots, walnuts, almonds, apples—bushels on bushels—and were forbidden the use of only one tree in the orchard. Not satisfied with all but one, they reached for that and lost the whole orchard. The Edenic Story Repeated. • This story of Eden is rejected by some as an improbability, if not an’impossibility, but nothing on earth is easier for me to believe than the truth of this Edenic story, for I have seen the same-thing in this year of our Lord, 189". I could call them by name, if it were polite and righteous to do so, the men who have sacrificed a paradi^on earth and a paradise in heaven for one sin. Their house went. Their library went. Their good name went. Their field of usefulness went. Their health went. Their immortal soul went. Mj’ friends, there is just one sin that will turn you out of paradise if you do hot quit it. You know what it is, and God knows, and you had better drop the hand and arm lifted toward that bending bough before you pluck your own ruin. When Adam stood on tiptoe and took in his right hand that one round peach or apricot or apple, satan reached up and pulled down the round, beautiful world of our present residence. Overworked artist, overwrought merchant, ambitious politician, avaricious speculator, better lake that warning from Adam’s orchard and stop before you put out for that one thing more. But I turn from Adam's orchard to Solomon’s orchard. With his own hand he writes, “I made me gardens and orchards.” Not depending on the natural fall of rain, he irrigated those orchards. Pieces of the aqueduct that watered those gardens I have seen, and the reservoirs are as perfect as when thousands of years ago the mason's trowel smoothed the mortar over their gray surfaces. No orchard of olden or modern time, probably, ever had its thirst so well slaked. Solomon used to ride out to that orchard before breakfast. It gave him an appetite and something to think about all the day. After Solomon had taken his morning ride in these luxuriant orchards he would sit down and write those wonderful things in the Bible, drawing his illustrations from the fruits he had that very morning plucked or ridden under, and wishing to praise the coming Christ he says, "As the apple

~ tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved.”' And wishing to describe the love of the church for her Lord, he writes, “Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love,” and desiring to make reference to .the white hair of the octogenarian, and just before-having noticed that the blossoms of the almond tree were white, he says'of tlieaged man, “The almond tree shall flourish.” The walnuts and the pomegranates and the mandrakes and the figs make Solonidn’s writings a divinely arranged fruit basket. Religion a Luxury. What mean Solomon’s orchards and Solomon’s -gardens, for they seem to mingle, the two into one, flowers underfoot and pomegranates overhead? To me they suggest that religion is a luxury. All along the world has looked upon religion chiefly as a dire necessity—a lifeboat from the shipwreck, a ladder from the conflagration, a soft landing place after we hate been shoved off the precipice of this planet. As a consequence so many have said, “We will await preparation for the future until the crash of the shipwreck, until the conflagration is in full blaze, until we reach the brink of the precipice.” No doubt religion is inexpressibly important for the last exigency. But what do the apples and the figs and the melons and the pomegranates and the citron and the olives of Solomon’s orchard mean? Luxury. They mean" that our religion is the luscious, the aromatic, the pungent, the arborescent, the efflorescent, the foliaged, the umbrageous. Worldly joy killed Leo X. when he heard that Milan was captured. Talva died of joy when the Roman senate honored him. Diagora died of joy because his three sons were crowned at the Olympian games. Sophocles died of joyi-over his literary successes. And religious joy has been too much for many a Christian and his soul has sped away on the wing of hosannas. The Reply of Wellington.

You think religion is a good thing for a funeral. Oh, yes! But Solomon’s orchard* means more. Religion is a good thing now when you are in health and prosperity and the appetite is good for citrons and apples and apricots and pomegranates. Come in without wasting any time in talking about them and take the luxuries of religion. Happy yourself, then you can make others happy. Make just one person happy every day and in twenty years yoft will have made 7,300 people happy. I like what Wellington said after the battle of Waterloo a.nd when he was in pursuit of the French with his advance guard and Col. Harvey said to him, “General, you had better not go any farther, for you may be shot at by some straggler from the bushes.” And Wellington replied: “Let them fire away. The battle is won and my life is of .no value now.” My friends, we ought never to be reckless, but if, through the pardoning and rescuing grace of Christ, you have gained the victory over sin and death and hell, you need fear nothing on the earth or under the earth. Let all the sharpshooters of ]>erdition blaze away. You may ride on in joy triumphant. Religion for the funeral. Oh, yes! But religion for the wedding breakfast. Religion for the brightest spring morning and autumn’s most gorgeous sunset. Religion for the day when the stocks are up just as much as when stocks are down. Religion when respiration is easy as well as for the last gasp; when the temperature is normal as well as when it reaches 104. It may be a bold thing to say, but I risk it, that if all people, without respect to belief or character, at death passed into everlasting happiness, religion for this world is such a luxury that no man or woman could afford to do without it. Why was it that in the parable of the prodigal son. the finger ring was ordered put upon the returned wanderer's hand before the shoes were ordered for his tired feet? Are not shoes more important for our comfort than finger rings? Oh, yes! But it was to impress the world with the fact that religion is a luxury as well as a necessity. Show the radiant truth, that the table of God’s love and pardon is now laid with all the fruits which the orchards of God’s love and pardon and helpfulness can supply, and all will come in and sit down. Oh, fetch on the citrons and the apples and the walnuts and the pomegranates of Solomon’s orchard. The Orchard of Pilate. But having introduced you to Adam’s orchard and carried you awhile through Solomon’s orchard, I want to take a walk with you through Pilate’s orchard of three trees on a hill seventy feet high, ten minutes’ walk from the gate of Jerusalem. After Thad read that our great-grand-father and great-grandmother had been driven out of the first orchard, I made up my mind that the Lord would not be defeated in that way. I said to myself that when they had been poisoned by the fruit of that one tree, somewhere, somehow, there would be provided an antidote for the poison. I said: “Where is the other tree that will undo the work of that tree? Where is the other orchard that will repair the damage received in the first orchard?” And I read on until I found the orchard and its center tree as mighty for cure as this one had been for ruin, and’as the one tree in Adam's orchard had its branches laden with the red fruit of carnage, and the pale fruit of suffering, and the spotted fruit of decay, and the bitter ’fruit of disappointment, I found in Pilate’s orchard a tree which, though stripped of all its leaves and struck through by an iron bolt as long as your arm, nevertheless bore the richest fruit that was ever gathered. Like the trees of the first orchard, this was planted, blossomed and bore fruit all in one day. Paul was impulsive and vehement of nature, and he laid hold of that tree with both arms and shook it till the ground all round looked like an orchard the morning after an autumnal equinox, and, careful lest he step on some of the fruit, gathered up a basketful of it for the Galatians, crying out, “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” The other two trees of Pilate's orchard were loaded, the one with the hard fruits of obduracy and the other with the tender fruit of repentance, but the center tree —bow will I ever forget the day I eat on the exact place where it was planted!—the center tree of that orchard yields the antidote for the poisoned nations. St. John’s Orchard. Now, in this discourse of the pomology of the Bible, or God amid the orchards, having shown you Adam’s orchard and Solomon’s orchard and Pilate’s orchard, I now take you into St. John’s orchard, and I will stop there, for, having seen that, you will want to see nothing more. St. John himself, seen that orchard, discharged a whole volley of Come! Come! Come and then pronounced the benediction: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” Than

the banished evangelist closes the book, and the Bible is done. The dear old book opened with Adam’s orchard and closes .with St. John’s orchard. St. John went into this orchard through a stone gate, the black basalt of the isle of Patmos, to which, he had been exiled. That orchard which he saw waa and is in heaven. One person will err in speaking of heaven as all material and another person describes heaven as all figurative and spiritual, and both are wrong. Heaven is both material and spiritual, as we are material and spiritual. WJiile much of the Bible account of heaven is to be taken and spiritually, it is plain to me that heaven has also a mateiial existence. Christ said: “I go to prepare a place for you.” Is not a place material? God, who has done all the world building, the statistics of stars so vast as to be a bewilderment to telescopes, could have somewhere in his astronomy piled up a tremendous world to make the Bible heaven true both as a material splendor and a spiritual domain. I do not believe God put all the flowers, and all tlie precious stones, and all the bright metals, and all the musie, and all the fountains, and all the orchards in this little world of ours. How much was literal and how much was figurative I cannot say. But St. John saw two rows of trees on each side of a river, and it differed from other orchards in the fact that the trees bore twelve manner of fruits. The learned translators of our common Bible say it means twelve different kinds of fruits in one year. Albert Barnes .says it means twelve crops of the same kind of fruits iu one year. Not able to decide which is the more accurate translation, I adopt both. If it mean twelve different kinds of fruit, it declares variety in heavenly joy, and they are both true. Variety? Oh, yes! Not an eternity with nothing but music; that oratorio would be too protracted. Not an eternity of procession on white horses; that would be too long in the stirrups. Not an eternity of watching the river; that would be too much of the picturesque. Not an eternity of plucking fruits from the tree of life; that would be too much of the heavenly orchard. But all manner of varieties, and I will tell you of at least twelve of those varieties: Joy of divine worship, joy over the victories of the Lamb who was slain, joy over the repentant sinners, joy of recounting our own rescue, joy of embracing old friends, joy at recognition of patriarchs, apostles, evangelists and martyrs; joy of ringing harmonies, joy of reknitting broken friendships, joy at the explanation of Providential mysteries, joy at walking the boulevards of gold, joy at looking at walls green with emerald, and blue with sapphire, and crimson with jaspar, and aflash with amethyst, entered through swinging gates, their posts, their hinges, and their panels of richest pearl; joy that there is to be no subsidence, no reaction, no terminus to the felicity. All that- makes twelve different joys, twelve manner of fruits. So much for variety. But if you take the other interpretation and say it means twelve crops a year, I am with you still, for that means abundance. That will be the first place we ever got into where there is enough of everything, enough of health, enough of light, enough of supernal association, enough of love, enough of knowledge, enough of joy. The crehards of this lower world put out all their energies for a few days in autumn, and then, having yielded one crop, their banners of foliage are dropped out of the air aud all their beauty is adjourned until the blossoming of the next May time. But twelve crops in the heavenly orchard during that which on earth we call a year mean abundance perpetually. The Heavenly Orchards. While there is enough of the pomp of the city about heaven for those who like the city best; I thank God there is enough in the Bible about country scenery in heaven to please those of us who were born in the country and never got over it. Now you may have streets of gold in heaven. Give me the orchards with twelve manner of fruits and yielding their fruit every month, and the leaves of the trees are for “the healing of the nations, and there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him, and they shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads, and there shall be no night there, and they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign forever and ever.” But just think of a place so brilliant that the noonday sun shall be removed from the mantle of the sky because it is too feeble a taper. Yet most of all am I impressed with the fact that I am not yet fit for that place, nor you either. By the reconstructing and sanctifying grace of Christ we need to be made all over, and let us be getting our passports ready if we want to get into that country. An earthly passport is a personal matter, telling our height, our girth, the color of our hair, our features, our complexion and our age. I- cannot get into a foreign port on your passport, nor can you get in on mine. Each one of us for himself needs a divine signature, written by the wounded hand of the Son of God, to get into the heavenly orchard, under the laden branches of which in God’s good time we may meet the Adam of the first orchard, and the Solomon of the second orchard, and the St. John of the last orchard, to sit down under the tree of which the church in the book of Canticles speaks when it says: “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons7~~l sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.” Copyright, 1897.