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likeness, whether we find it in the Bible, or elsewhere, is to be used as far as it goes; we are not to look for anything agreeing in all ways, but only in some respects, with that which it is meant to explain and teach.

It would not be going far from the likeness used in the text if we compared you, for a moment, to the fruits instead of the trees; for as the manner in which you think and speak, and act or behave, is likened to the fruit, so the child or the grown up person who does all this may (without saying what is not proper) be likened to fruit also. Jeremiah likens the good and bad people of Judea to two baskets of figs. Read Jeremiah, ch. xxiv. One basket of very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe; and the other basket of very worthless figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad.

Now, figs are not a common fruit in this country; perhaps you never saw any. It is a large fruit which abounds in the Holy Land, where the Hebrews once dwelt; but we have other very common fruits, both good and bad, to which the prophet, if he had dwelt in this land, might have compared the good and bad people of our country.

Shall I tell you to what fruit those boys or girls who are given to lying or swearing, to

filthy language and conduct, are like? They are like unsound apples, or rotten pears, "evil, very evil!" as the prophet said of the bad figs. They may look very fair, and red, and sound enough to outward show, but they are bad at

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heart; and remember, they are not less bad because there are many. The bad figs mentioned by the prophet were not the less bad because there was a basket full of them. Rather, they were each one the worse and more corrupt by being together.

Shall I tell you what quarrelsome, spiteful, proud, selfish children are like? They are like crab apples and wild plums in the hedges, which are harsh, and sour, and bitter to the taste, and which men dislike and throw away. Such tempers and habits are not the fruits of the graft; not fruits of the pious parent's care; not fruits of the Sunday-school lessons, and the Bible, and the grace of God; not the "fruits of the Spirit," for the "fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth," Eph. v. 9; but they are fruits of the wild stock. If you wish to be happy on earth and in heaven, you must have these, and the boughs that bear them, the evil thoughts from which they grow, pruned and cleared away.

Are not my young readers, and especially the little girls, wishing to guess what sort of fruit the writer, and all your true friends, would have you to be like? Perhaps you yourselves may sometimes wish to be dressed in the colours of the cherry, the orange, or the peach; but take it not amiss, and do not think it foolish, if we tell you, that we would rather see you looking like the nut, with a plain simple covering, but good within. You know there are different sorts of nuts, as the common hazel nut and the walnut; and there is besides a sort of nut which

perhaps you do not know, which comes from abroad, and is larger than one of my youngest readers could hold in both hands; it is called the cocoa nut. But all or most sorts of nuts agree in this, that they have a coarse brown shell and husk, yet are very good and white and sweet within. I am afraid some of us, at all ages, and of all ranks in the present day, take more care and pleasure about the shell than the kernel. But we wish, and you and your parents should wish, for the fruit itself to be good; and the earlier it is the better, and the happier. It is a useful hint which you should not forget, that the prophet Jeremiah, in the place I have named, says, of the very good figs, they are even like the figs that are first ripe;" meaning that the fruit which ripens earliest is, for the most part, the sweetest and the best.

"When we devote our youth to God,

'Tis pleasing in his eyes:

A flower, when offered in the bud,
Is no vain sacrifice."

But we have left the trees to compare you with fruits. It is time to go back to the likeness which the text offered us, and which is also found in other parts of Scripture.

There are a few more things to which I hope you will attend.

One is a thought taken from our Saviour's own words: "A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none," Luke xiii. 6. Here your heavenly Father is likened to one who has a garden full of fruit trees. Now, you know, of whatever sort they are, whether currant, or mulberry, or raspberry trees, and however young and small they are, if the gardener finds a tree bearing no fruit, year after year, but getting worse and worse, mossy and cankered, and withered, he roots it up, and casts it into the fire, and it is burned.

We pray to God that nothing like this may ever happen to either of you! You know, however, that the young sometimes die, and if they have lived long enough to know their duty, but still refuse to pray to God, to hear the words of Christ, and to believe in him, to forsake evil ways, and obey the word of God, and so die in their sins, what can you expect but that they will be punished? How can you hope to be happy in that bright and blessed heaven where the God of love dwells, and where Christ, your holy, harmless, gracious Saviour, “sitteth on the right hand of God," unless you learn

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