002. The Pomology of the Bible; or, God Among the Orchards

The Pomology of the Bible; or, God Among the Orchards

Gen_1:11 : ’93The fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind.’94

It is Wednesday morning in Paradise. The birds did not sing their opening piece, 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’92s manufactory 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 pomological productions came on Wednesday’97first the flowers, and then the fruits. The veil of fog is lifted, and there stand the orchards. Watch the sudden maturing of the fruit! In our time, pear trees must have two years before they bear fruit, and peach 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 best to destroy the fruits for six thousand 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 affluence of production which it may take thousands of years more of study of the science of fruits to reproduce.

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’97that fruit diet is healthier than meat diet, and that the former must precede the latter. The reason there are in the world so many of the imbruted and sensual is that they have not improved by the mighty, unnoticed fact that the orchards of Paradise preceded the herds, the aviaries, and fishponds. Oh, those fruit-bearing trees on the banks of the Euphrates, and the Gihon, and the Hiddekel! I wonder not that the ancient Romans, ignorant of our God, adored Pomona, the Goddess of Fruits, and that all the sylvan deities were said to worship her, and that groves were set apart as her temples. You have thanked God for bread a thousand times. Have you thanked him for the fruits which he made the first course of food in the menu of the world’92s table’97the acids of those fruits to keep the world’92s table from being insipid, and their sweets to keep it from being too sour?

At the autumnal season, how the orchards breathe and glow, the leaves removed, that the crimson, or pink, or saffron, or the yellow, or brown may the better appear, while the aromatics fill the air with invitation and reminiscence. 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 fire 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’97the storm, the droughts, the winters, the insectivora. What must the first orchard have been? And yet it is the explorer’92s evidence that on the site of that orchard there is not an apricot, or an apple, or an olive’97nothing but desert and desolation. There is not enough to forage the explorer’92s horse, much less to feed his own hunger. In other words, that first orchard is a lost orchard. How did the proprietor and proprietress of all that intercolumniation 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’97bushels on bushels’97and 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. Go right down through the business marts of the great cities and find among the weighers and clerks and subordinates men who once commanded the commercial world. They had a whole orchard of successes, but they wanted just one more thing’97one more house, or one more country seat, or one more store, or one more railroad, or one more million. They clutched for that and lost all they had gained. For one more tree they lost a whole orchard. There are business men all around us worried nearly to death. The doctor tells them they ought to stop. Insomnia or indigestion or aching at the base of the brain or ungovernable nerves tell them they ought to stop. They really have enough for themselves and their families. Talk with one of them about his overwork, and urge more prudence and longer rest, and he says: ’93Yes, you are right; after I have accomplished one more thing I have on my mind, I will hand over my business to my sons and go to Europe, and quit the kind of exhausting life I have been living for the last thirty years.’94 Some morning you open your paper, and, looking at the death column, you find he has suddenly departed this life. In trying to win just one more tree, he lost the whole orchard.

Yonder is a man with many styles of innocent entertainment and amusement. He walks, he rides, he plays tenpins in private alleys, he has books on his table, pictures on his wall, and occasional outings, concerts, lectures, baseball tickets, and the innumerable delights of friendship. But he wants a key to the place of dissolute convocation. He wants association with some member of a high family as dissolute as he is affluent. He wants, instead of a quiet Sabbath, one of carousal. He wants the stimulus of strong drinks. He wants the fascinations of a profligate life. The one membership, the one bad habit, the one carousal robs him of all the possibilities and innocent enjoyments and noble inspirations of a lifetime. By one mouthful of forbidden fruit he loses a whole orchard of fruit unforbidden. You see what an expensive thing is sin. Sooner or later it is appalling bankruptcy. 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 would have, though it cost them all Paradise.

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 this Edenic story, for I have seen the same thing in this year of our Lord 1899. I could call them by name, if it were politic and righteous to do so, the men who have sacrificed a paradise 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. My friends, there is just one sin that will turn you out of paradise if you do not 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 Eve stood on her tiptoe and took in her 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 take that warning from Adam’92s orchard and stop before you are put out for that one thing alone.

But I turn from Adam’92s orchard to Solomon’92s orchard. With his own hand he writes: ’93I made me gardens and orchards.’94 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’92s trowel smoothed the mortar over their gray surfaces. No orchard of olden or modern time, probably, ever had its thirst so well slaked. The largest of these reservoirs is five hundred and eighty-two feet long, two hundred and seven feet wide, and fifty feet deep. These reservoirs Solomon refers to when he says: ’93I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees.’94 Solomon used to ride out to that orchard before breakfast. It gave him an appetite and something to think about all day. Josephus, the historian, represents him as going out ’93early in the morning from Jerusalem to the famed rocks of Etam, a fertile region, delightful with paradises and running springs. Thither the king, in robes of white, rode in his chariot, escorted by a troop of mounted archers chosen for their youth and stature, and clad in Tyrian purple, whose long hair, powdered with gold dust, sparkled in the sun.’94 After Solomon had taken his morning ride in those 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 picked or ridden under. And, wishing to praise the coming Christ, he says: ’93As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved.’94 And wishing to describe the love of the Church for her Lord, he writes: ’93Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love,’94 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 the aged man: ’93The almond tree shall flourish.’94 The walnuts and the pomegranates and the mandrakes and the figs make Solomon’92s writings a divinely arranged fruit-basket.

What mean Solomon’92s orchards and Solomon’92s gardens? for they seem to mingle, the two into one, flowers under foot, and pomegranates over head. To me they suggest that religion is a luxury. All along the world has looked upon religion chiefly as a dire necessity’97a lifeboat from the shipwreck, a ladder from the conflagration, a soft landing-place after we have been shoved off the precipice of this planet. As a consequence, so many have said: ’93We 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.’94 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’92s orchard mean? Luxury! They mean that our religion is the luscious, the aromatic, the pungent, the arborescent, the efflorescent, the foliaged, the umbrageous. They mean what Edward Payson meant when he declared: ’93If my happiness continues to increase, I cannot support it much longer.’94 It means what Bapa Padmanji, a Hindoo convert, meant when he said: ’93I long for my bed, not that I may sleep’97I lie awake often and long’97but to hold communion with my God.’94 It means what the old colored man said, when he was accosted of the colporteur: ’93Uncle Jack, how are you?’94 ’93I is very painful in my knee, but, thank my heavenly Master, I’92m cause to be thankful. My good Master jus’92 gib me nuf to make me humble.’94 ’93And do you enjoy religion as much now, Uncle Jack, as when you could go to church and class-meeting?’94 ’93Yes, ’91joys him more. Den I truss to de people, to de meetin’92s, to de sarment; and when I hear de hymn sing and de pray, I feels glad. But all dis ain’92t like de good Lord in de heart’97God’92s love here.’94 It means sunrise instead of sundown. It means the Memnon statue made to sing at the stroke of the morning light. It means Jesus Christ at the wedding in Cana. It means the ’93time of the singing of birds is come.’94 It means Jeremiah’92s ’93well of gladness.’94 It means Isaiah’92s ’93bride and bridegroom.’94 It means Luke’92s ’93bad boy come home to his father’92s house.’94 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 joy 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.

An old and poor musician played so well one night before his king, that the next morning, when the musician awoke, he found his table covered with golden cups and plates, and a princely robe lying across the back of a chair, and richly caparisoned horses were pawing at the doorway to take him through the street in imposing equipage. It was only a touch of what comes to every man who makes the Lord his portion, for he has waiting for him, direct from his King, robes, banquets, chariots, mansions, triumphs; and it is only a question of time when he shall wear them, drink them, ride in them, live in them, and celebrate them.

You think religion is a good thing for a funeral. Yes! But Solomon’92s 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. I like what Wellington said after the battle of Waterloo, and when he was in pursuit of the French with his advance-guard, and Colonel Harvey said to him: ’93General, you had better not go any farther, for you may be shot by some straggler from the bushes.’94 And Wellington replied: ’93Let them fire away. The battle is won, and my life is of no value now.’94 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 perdition blaze away; you may ride on in joy triumphant. Religion for the funeral! Yes; but religion for the wedding-breakfast; religion for the brightest spring morning and autumn’92s most gorgeous sunset. Religion when aspiration 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 to be put upon the returned wanderer’92s hand before the shoes were ordered for his tired feet? Are not shoes more important for our comfort than finger-rings? It was to impress the world with the fact that religion is a luxury as well as a necessity. ’93Put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet.’94 If in sermonic or exhortatory or social recommendations of religion, we put the chief emphasis on the fact that for our safety we must have it when the door of the next world is opened, poor human nature will take the risk and say: ’93I will wait until the door begins to open.’94 But show them the radiant truth’97that the table of God’92s love and pardon is now laid with all the fruits which the orchards of God’92s love and pardon and helpfulness can supply’97and they will come in and sit down with all the other banqueters, terrestrial and celestial. Fetch on the citrons and the apples and the walnuts and the pomegranates of Solomon’92s orchard!

But having introduced you to Adam’92s orchard and carried you a while through Solomon’92s orchard, I want to take a walk with you through Pilate’92s orchard of three trees on a hill seventy feet high, ten minutes’92 walk from the gate of Jerusalem. After I had read that our great-grandfather 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 one tree, somewhere, somehow, there would be provided an antidote for the poison. I said: ’93Where 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?’94 And I read on until I found the orchard, and its central tree as mighty for cure as this one had been for ruin; and as the one tree in Adam’92s 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’92s orchard a tree which, though stripped of all its leaves and struck through by an iron bolt, 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 around looked like the morning after an autumnal equinox, and careful lest he step on some of the fruit, he gathered up a basketful of it for the Galatians, crying out: ’93The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.’94 The other two trees of Pilate’92s orchard were loaded, the one with the hard fruits of obduracy, and the other with the tender fruit of repentance, but the central tree (how will I ever forget the day I sat on the exact place where it was planted!)’97the central tree of that orchard yields the antidote for the poisoned nations.

There is in old England, the hollow of a tree where a king hid, and there is in New England a tree in which a document of national importance was kept inviolate; and there have been trees of great girth and immense shade and vast wealth of fruitage, but no other tree had such value of reminiscence or depth of root or spread of branch or infinitude of fruitage as the central tree of Pilate’92s orchard. Before I pass from under it, I would like to drop on both knees and, with both hands outspread and uplifted, cry out with all the nations of earth and the hosts of heaven: ’93I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he arose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.’94

Now, in this discourse on the Pomology of the Bible, or God amid the Orchards, having shown you Adam’92s orchard, and Pilate’92s orchard, and Solomon’92s orchard, I now take you into St. John’92s orchard; and I will stop there, for, having seen that, you will want to see nothing more. St. John himself, having seen that orchard, discharged a whole volley of Come! Come! Come! and then pronounced the benediction: ’93The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.’94 Then the banished evangelist closes the book, and the Bible is done. The dear old Book opened with Adam’92s orchard and closes with St. John’92s orchard. St. John went into the orchard through a stone gate, the black basalt of the Isle of Patmos, to which he had been exiled. That orchard which he saw was 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. While much of the Bible account of heaven is to be taken figuratively and spiritually, it is plain to me that heaven has also a material existence. Christ said: ’93I go to prepare a place for you.’94 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 the precious stones, and all the bright metals, and all the music, 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 fruit in 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. If it mean twelve crops of the same kind of fruit, it declares abundance in heavenly joy, and they are both true. 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 plucking fruit 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 jasper 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 orchards 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, and all their beauty is adjourned until the blossoming of the next May-time. But twelve crops in the heavenly orchard, during that which we on earth call a year, means abundance perpetually.

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 ’93the 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 for ever and ever.’94 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’92s 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: ’93As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste’94: and there it may be found that today we learned the danger of hankering after one thing more and that religion is a luxury and that there is a divine antidote for all poisons and that we had created in us an appetite for heaven and that it was a wholesome and saving thing for us to have discoursed on the Pomology of the Bible, or God Among the Orchards.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage