to sympathize with His believing people on earth. He knows their sorrows by experience. He can be touched with the feeling of their infirmities. He has had ex- perience of a body and its daily wants. He has suffered Himself the severe sufferings that the body of man is liable to. He has tasted pain, and weakness, and weari- ness, and hunger, and thirst. When we tell Him of these things in our prayers, He knows what we mean, and is no stranger to our troubles. Surely this is just the Saviour and Friend that poor aching, groaning, human nature requires !
We learn, in the second place, from these verses, the great danger of unfruitfulness and formality in religion. This is a lesson which our Lord teaches in a remarkable typical action. We are told that coming to a fig tree in search of fruit, and finding " on it nothing but leaves," He pronounced on it the solemn sentence, " No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever." And we are told that the next day the fig tree was found " dried up from the roots." We cannot doubt for a moment that this whole transaction was an emblem of spiritual things. It was a parable in deeds, as full of meaning as any of our Lord's parables in words.*
* There are two difficulties connected with the story of the with- ered fig tree, which weigh considerably on some minds, and therefore deserve notice.
1. It is a difficulty with some persons that our Lord should have pronounced any curse at all on the fig tree. They say, that it looks like needless destruction of an innocent and unoffending creature, and out of keeping with the spirit of Deut. xx. 19.
Such objectors appear to forget that the withering of the fig tree was not a mere empty exhibition of power, like the pretended miracles of Mahomet and other false prophets. It was a mighty typi- cal act, teaching deep spiritual lessons, lessons of such importance aa
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But who were they to whom this withered fig tree was intended to speak ? It was a sermon of three-fold ap- plication, a sermon that ought to speak loudly to the consciences of all professing Christians. Though withered and dried up, that fig tree yet speaks. — There was a voice in it for the Jewish Church. Rich in the leaves of a formal religion, hut barren of all fruits of the Spirit, that Chuch was in fearful danger, at the very time when this withering took place. Well would it have been for
might well justify the destruction of one of God's unintelligent crea- tures, in order to convey them. Remembering this, we have no more right to object to it, than to object to the daily offering of a lamb under the Mosaic law. In that offering the life of an innocent and unoffending creature was daily taken away. But the great end of daily setting before the eyes of man the one sacrifice for sin, justified the taking away the life of the lamb. Just in the same way we may justify our Lord's taking away the life of the tree.
2. It is a difficulty with some persons that the account of St. Mark contains the words, " the time of figs was not yet." They ask to be told why our Lord should have gone to the tree seeking fruit, when the season for figs had not yet arrived ?
The answers to this difficulty are various. The simplest of them appears to be as follows. " The time of figs, as a general rule, had not yet come. But our Lord seeing a fig tree covered with leaves, unlike the other fig trees, had a right to suppose that figs were to be found on it, and therefore came to it." — It is no small recommendation of this view that it supplies an exact illustration of the state of the Jewish Church, when our Lord was upon earth. The time of figs was not yet, that is, the nations of the earth were all in darkness, and bore no fruit to the glory of God. — But among the nations, there was one covered with leaves, that is the Jewish Church, full of light, knowledge, privileges and high profession. — Seeing this fig tree full of leaves, our Lord came to it seeking fruit, that is, He came to the Jews justly expecting them to have fruit according to their outward profession. — But when our Lord came to this leafy Jewish fig tree, He found it utterly destitute of fruit, faithless and unbelieving. — And the end was that He pronounced sentence on it, gave it over to be destroyed by the Romans, and scattered the Jews over the earth.