SERMON XVIII.

IMPROVEMENT.

"The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall grow like the cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing."-PSALM XCii. 12.

THE Bible is always telling Christian people to go forwards-to grow-to become wiser and stronger, better and better day by day; that they ought to become better, and better, because they can, if they choose, improve. This text tells us so; it says that we shall bring forth more fruit in our old age. Another text tells us that "those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength;" another tells us that we "shall go from strength to strength." Not one of St. Paul's Epistles but talks of growing in grace and in the knowledge of God, of being filled with God's Spirit, of having our eyes more and more open to understand God's truth. Not one of St. Paul's Epistles but contains prayers of St. Paul

that the men to whom he writes may become holier and wiser. And St. Paul says that he himself needed to go forward that he wanted fresh strength-that he had to forget what was past, and consider all he had done and felt as nothing, and press forward to the prize of his high calling; that he needed to be daily conquering himself more and more, keeping down his bad feelings, hunting out one bad habit after another, lest, by any means, when he had preached to others, he himself should become a castaway. Therefore, I said rightly, that the Bible is always bidding us go forwards. You cannot read your Bibles without seeing this. What else was the use of St. Paul's Epistles? They were written to Christian men, redeemed men, converted men, most of them better I fear than ever we shall be; and for what? to tell them not be content to remain as they were, to tell them to go forwards, to improve, to be sure that they were only just inside the gate of God's kingdom, and that if they would go on to perfection,.they would find strength, and holiness, and blessing, and honour, and happiness, which they as yet did not dream of. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," said our blessed Lord to all men. "Be ye perfect," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, and the Ephesians, and all to whom he wrote; and so say I to you now in God's name, for Christ's sake, as

citizens of God's kingdom, as heirs of everlasting glory, "Be you perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect."

Now I ask you, my friends, is not this reasonable? It is reasonable, for the Bible always speaks of our souls as living things. It compares them to limbs of a body, to branches of a tree, often to separate plants, as in our Lord's parable of the tares and the wheat. Again, St. Paul tells us that we have been planted in baptism in the likeness of Christ's death; and, again, in the first Psalm, which says that the good man shall be like a tree planted by the water-side; and, again, in the text of my sermon, which says that "those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing."

Now what does all this mean? It means that the life of our souls is in some respects like the life of a plant; and, therefore, that as plants grow, so our souls are to grow. Why do you plant any thing, but in order that it may grow and become larger, stronger, bear flower and fruit? Be sure God has planted us in IIis garden, Christ's Church, for no other reason. Consider again-What is life but a continual growing, or a continual decaying? If a tree does not get larger and stronger, year by year, is not that a sure sign that it is unhealthy, and that decay has begun in it, that it is unsound

at heart? And what happens then? It begins to become weaker and smaller, and cankered and choked with serf and moss till it dies. If a tree is not growing, it is sure in the long run to be dying; and so are our souls. If they are not growing, they are dying; if they are not getting better they are getting worse. This is why the Bible compares our souls to trees-not out of a mere petty fancy of poetry, but for a great, awful, deep, world-wide lesson, that every tree in the fields may be a pattern, a warning, to us thoughtless men, that as that tree is meant to grow, so our souls are meant to grow; as that tree dies, unless it grows, so our souls must die unless they grow. Consider that!

How are our souls

But how does a tree grow? to grow? Now here, again, we shall understand heavenly things best by taking and considering the pattern from among earthly things which the Bible gives us the tree, I mean. A tree grows in two ways. Its roots take up food from the ground, its leaves take up food from the air. Its roots are its mouth, we may say, and its leaves are its lungs. Thus the tree draws nourishment from the earth beneath and from the heaven above; and so must our souls, my friends; if they are to live and grow, they must have food, both from earth and from heaAnd this is what I mean:

ven.

Why has God given us senses, eyes, and ears, and

understanding? That by them we may feed our souls with things which we see and hear, things which are going on in the world round us. We must read, and we must listen, and we must watch people and their sayings and doings, and what becomes of them, and we must try and act, and practise what is right for ourselves; and so we shall, by using our eyes, and ears, and our bodies, get practice, and experience, and knowledge, from the world round us-such as Solomon gives us in his Proverbs-and so our eyes, and ears, and understandings are to be to us like roots, by which we may feed our souls with earthly learning and experience. But is this enough? No, surely. Consider, again, God's example which He has given us

-a tree. If you keep stripping all the leaves off a tree, as fast as they grow, what becomes of it? It dies, because without leaves it cannot get nourishment from the air, and the rain, and the sunlight. Again, if you shut up a tree where it can get neither rain, air, nor light, what happens? The tree certainly dies, though it may be planted in the very richest soil, and have the very strongest roots; and why? because it can get no food from the sky above. So with our souls, my friends. If we get no food from above, our souls will die, though we have all the wit, and learning, and experience, in the world. We must be fed, and strengthened, and satisfied, with the grace of God from above-with the Spirit of