Greatest
Thing in the
World
How
Fruits Grow
By:
Henry Drummond
Were
rest my subject, there are other
things I should wish to say about
it, and other kinds of Rest of
which I should like to speak. But
that is not my subject. My theme
is that the Christian experiences
are not the work of magic, but
come under the law of Cause and
Effect.
And I have
chosen Rest only as a single
illustration of the working of
that principle. If there were
time I might next run over all
the Christian experiences in
turn, and show how the same wide
law applies to each.
But I think
it may serve the better purpose
if I leave this further exercise
to yourselves. I know no Bible
study that you will find more
full of fruit, or which will take
you nearer to the ways of God, or
make the Christian life itself
more solid or more sure. I shall
add only a single other
illustration of what I mean,
before I close
Where does
Joy come from?
I knew a
Sunday scholar whose conception
of Joy was that it was a thing
made in lumps and kept somewhere
in Heaven, and that when people
prayed for it, pieces were
somehow let down and fitted into
their souls. I am not sure that
views as gross and material are
not often held by people who
ought to be wiser. In reality,
Joy is as much a matter of Cause
and Effect as pain.
No one can
get Joy by merely asking for it.
It is one of the ripest fruits of
the Christian life, and, like all
fruits, must be grown. There is a
very clever trick in India called
the mango-trick. A seed is put in
the ground and covered up, and
after divers incantations a
full-blown mango-bush appears
within five minutes. I never met
any one who knew how the thing
was done, but I never met any one
who believed it to be anything
else than a conjuring-trick.
The world
is pretty unanimous now in its
belief in the orderliness of
Nature. Men may not know how
fruits grow, but they do know
that they cannot grow in five
minutes.
Some lives
have not even a stalk on which
fruits could hang, even if they
did grow in five minutes. Some
have never planted one sound seed
of Joy in all their lives; and
others who may have planted a
germ or two have lived so little
in sunshine that they never could
come to maturity.
Whence,
then, is Joy? Christ put His
teaching upon this subject into
one of the most exquisite of His
parables.
I should in
any instance have appealed to His
teaching here, as in the case of
Rest, for I do not wish you to
think I am speaking words of my
own. But it so happens that He
has dealt with it in a passage of
unusual fulness.
I need not
recall the whole illustration. It
is the parable of the Vine. Did
you ever think why Christ spoke
that parable? He did not merely
throw it into space as a fine
illustration of general truths.
It was not simply a statement of
the mystical union, and the
doctrine of an indwelling Christ.
It was that; but it was more.
After He
had said it, He did what was not
an unusual thing when He was
teaching His greatest lessons. He
turned to the disciples and said
He would tell them why he had
spoken it. It was to tell them
how to get Joy.
“These
things have I spoken unto
you,” He said, “that My
Joy might remain in you and that
your Joy might be full.” It
was a purposed and deliberate
communication of His secret of
Happiness.
Go back
over these verses, then, and you
will find the Causes of this
Effect, the spring, and the only
spring, out of which true
Happiness comes. I am not going
to analyse them in detail. I ask
you to enter into the words for
yourselves.
Remember,
In the first place, that the Vine
was the Eastern symbol of Joy.
It was its fruit that made glad
the heart of man. Yet, however
innocent that gladness—for
the expressed juice of the grape
was the common drink at every
peasant’s board—the
gladness was only a gross and
passing thing.
This was
not true happiness, and the vine
of the Palestine vineyards was
not the true vine. Christ was
“the true Vine.” Here,
then, is the ultimate source of
Joy. Through whatever media it
reaches us, all true Joy and
Gladness find their source in
Christ. By this, of course, is
not meant that the actual Joy
experienced is transferred from
Christ’s nature, or is
something passed on from Him to
us.
What is
passed on is His method of
getting it. There is, indeed, a
sense in which we can share
another’s joy or
another’s sorrow. But that
is another matter. Christ is the
source of Joy to men in the sense
in which He is the source of
rest. His people share His life,
and therefore share its
consequences, and one of these is
Joy. His method of living is one
that in the nature of things
produces Joy.
When He
spoke of His Joy remaining with
us He meant in part that the
causes which produced it should
continue to act. His followers,
that is to say, by repeating His
life would experience its
accompaniments. His Joy, His kind
of Joy, would remain with
them.
The medium
through which this Joy comes is
next explained: “He that
abideth in Me the same bringeth
forth much fruit.” Fruit
first, Joy next; the one the
cause or medium of the other.
Fruit-bearing
is the necessary antecedent; Joy
both the necessary consequent and
the necessary accompaniment. It
lies partly in the bearing fruit,
partly in the fellowship which
makes that possible.
Partly that
is to say, Joy lies in mere
constant living in Christ’s
presence, with all that that
implies of peace, of shelter, and
of love; partly in the influence
of that Life upon mind and
character and will; and partly in
the inspiration to live and work
for others, with all that that
brings of self-riddance and Joy
in other’s gain.
All these,
in different ways and at
different times, are sources of
pure Happiness. Even the simplest
of them —to do good to other
people—is an instant and
infallible specific. There is no
mystery about Happiness whatever.
Put in the
right ingredients and it must
come out. He that abideth in Him
will bring forth much fruit; and
bringing forth much fruit is
Happiness.
The
infallible receipt for Happiness,
then, is to do good; and the
infallible receipt for doing good
is to abide in Christ. The surest
proof that all this is a plain
matter of Cause and Effect is
that men may try every other
conceivable way of finding
Happiness, and they will fail.
Only the right cause in each case
can produce the right
effect.
Then the
Christian experiences are our own
making? In the same sense in
which grapes are our own making,
and no more.
All fruits
grow—whether they grow in
the soil or in the soul; whether
they are the fruits of the wild
grape or of the True Vine. No man
can make things grow. He can get
them to grow by arranging all the
circumstances and fulfilling all
the conditions. But the growing
is done by God.
Causes and
effects are eternal arrangements,
set in the constitution of the
world; fixed beyond man’s
ordering. What man can do is to
place himself in the midst of a
chain of sequences. Thus he can
get things to grow: thus he
himself can grow. But the grower
is the Spirit of God.
What more
need I add but this—test the
method by experiment. Do not
imagine that you have got these
things because you know how to
get them. As well try to feed
upon a cookery book.
But I think
I can promise that if you try in
this simple and natural way, you
will not fail. Spend the time you
have spent in sighing for fruits
in fulfilling the conditions of
their growth.
The fruits
will come, must come. We have
hitherto paid immense attention
to effects, to the mere
experiences themselves; we have
described them, extolled them,
advised them, prayed for them
— done everything but find
out what caused them.
Henceforth
let us deal with causes. “To
be,” says Lotze, “is to
be in relations.” About
every other method of living the
Christian life there is an
uncertainty. About every other
method of acquiring the Christian
experiences there is a
“perhaps.” But in so
far as this method is the way of
nature, it cannot fail.
Its
guarantee is the laws of the
universe, and these are “the
Hands of the Living
God.”
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