Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

THE

BARREN FIG-TREE CUT DOWN;

ALSO

THE HEALING BALM

ADMINISTERED TO THE DISEASED SOUL;

TWO LECTURES.

A NEW YEAR's GIFT,

FOR JANUARY 1, 1806.

LECTURE I.

LUKE xiii, 6, 7, 8, 9.-He spake also this parable: A certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he, answering, said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well, and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.

THE mode of instruction among the nations of the east, and particularly among the Jews, was chiefly by parable: The speaker, in order more deeply to arrest the attention of his audience, employed some object which was familiar to their senses as the representation of moral or spiritual truth, and thus, through the medium of their bodily organs, he conveyed important instruction to their hearts. Sages among the heathen, prophets under the Old Testament, and our Divine Redeemer, while "he tabernaeled" in our world, usually conversed in this manner. The sower of the natural seed is employed to represent the Son of Man as a prophet preaching righteousness in the great congregation; the field to point out

the word; the good seed to denote the children of the kingdom, and the tares, the children of the wicked one; the enemy sowing these tares is designed to represent the devil; the harvest the end of the world, and the reapers the holy angels. In some instances the meaning of the parable was obvious at its first delivery, in others more obscure and difficult in its application, to exercise the faith and patience of the hearers. Among all the parables uttered by our Lord, few contain instruction more important and awful than the one which we have read as the subject of our present meditations.

Commentators in general, and with great propriety, apply this parable to the Jewish nation. They were as a fig-tree, planted in the vineyard of Jehovah, being early taken into a covenant relation with himself, brought into the sacred enclosure of his church, and distinguished with many and important privileges. "He gave his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel, he hath not dealt so with any nation." To them "pertained the adoption and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God and the promises: The three years" mentioned in the seventh verse are usually considered as relating to the period of our Lord's ministry among the Jews, the time which intervened between his baptism by John and his sufferings and death on Calvary. The great husbandman is represented as expecting "fruit those

three years," because their advantages were peculiarly great: "God, who at sundry times, and in diverse manners, spake in times past to the fathers by the prophets," at that time addressed them by his own Son. The Lord of glory, clothed with human nature, labored personally among them; afforded the most luminous example of piety to God and good will to men; spake the oracles of his Father with a zeal, and purity, and power such as "man never spake,' and enforced the doctrines of his mouth with many and splendid miracles of his hands: But where was their fruit amidst opportunities so rare and precious? When the great husbandman "looked these three years that this vineyard should bring forth grapes, it brought forth wild grapes." This nation returned enmity for love; the more they were entreated, the more they opposed, and instead of embracing the doctrines delivered by the compassionate Saviour, they exclaimed, with a rage more than infernal, crucify him, crucify him, and at last imbrued their hands in his blood. When we apply the three years mentioned in the parable to the personal ministry of our Lord among the Jews, the sentence afterwards denounced, cut it down, alludes to their rejection as a nation. "Wrath came upon them to the very uttermost" for crucifying the Lord of glory, and obstinately resisting his gospel as afterwards preached by the apostles. "And when they opposed them

« AnteriorContinuar »