his fruit in his season.

There is something beautiful in this. A word spoken in season how
good it is; how even a seasonable look will encourage or restrain,
reprove or comfort! The promise reminds one of those in John about
the living water thirsty ones drink, and are not only refreshed, but
become channels through which rivers of living water are always
flowing, so that other thirsty ones in their hour of need may find
seasonable refreshment. But the figure in the Psalm is not that of
water flowing through us as through a channel; but that of fruit, the
very outcome of our own transformed life--a life of union with CHRIST.

It is so gracious of our GOD not to work through us in a mere
mechanical way, but to make us branches of the True Vine, the very
organs by which Its fruit is produced. We are not, therefore,
independent workers, for there is a fundamental difference between
fruit and work. Work is the outcome of effort; fruit, of life. A bad
man may do good work, but a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. The
result of work is not reproductive, but fruit has its seed in itself.
The workman has to seek his material and his tools, and often to set
himself with painful perseverance to his task. The fruit of the Vine
is the glad, free, spontaneous outcome of the life within; and it
forms and grows and ripens in its proper season.

And what is the fruit which the believer should bear? May it not be
expressed by one word--Christliness? It is interesting to notice that
the Scripture does not speak of the fruits of the SPIRIT, in the
plural, as though we might take our choice among the graces named,
but of the fruit, in the singular, which is a rich cluster composed
of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, etc. How blessed to bring forth
such fruit in its season!

IV. Continuous Vigour.--"His leaf also shall not wither." In our own
climate many trees are able to maintain their life throughout the
winter, but unable to retain their leaves. The hardy evergreen,
however, not only lives, but manifests its life, and all the more
conspicuously because of the naked branches around. The life within
is too strong to fear the shortened day, the cold blast, or the
falling snow. So with the man of GOD whose life is maintained by
hidden communion through the Word; adversity only brings out the
strength and the reality of the life within.

The leaf of the tree is no mere adornment. If the root suggests to us
receptive power in that it dr