ts of righteousness, were
distinguished from the nations by the peculiar religious privileges
which they enjoyed: the favourable circumstances of the tree aggravated
the guilt of its barrenness.

Three successive years the owner came seeking fruit on this fig-tree,
and found none. In regard to the specified period of three years, I do
not think we gain much by a particular reference to the well-known
natural process by which the fig develops simultaneously the fruit of
this season and the germs of the next; for we do not know in this case
whether the germs were never formed, or fell off before they reached
maturity. I am not able to perceive that the number three has any
necessary reference to the peculiarities of the fig; I think the same
number would have been employed for the purposes of the spiritual
lesson, although a fruit tree of another species had been taken as an
example. Three years was a reasonable period for the owner to wait, that
he might neither on the one hand rashly cut down a tree that might soon
have become profitable, nor on the other permit a hopelessly barren tree
indefinitely to occupy a position which might otherwise be turned to
good account.

While the lesson of the parable bears upon the Church at large, both in
ancient and modern times, it is to individuals that it can be most
safely and most profitably applied. Most certainly we enjoy at this day
the advantages set forth under the figure of the favoured fig-tree.
Besides the life and faculties which we possess in common with others,
we have spiritual privileges which are peculiar to ourselves. Civil and
religious liberty, the Scriptures, the Sabbath, the Church, place us in
the position of the fig-tree within the vineyard, while other nations
are more or less like a tree rooted in the sand, or exposed on the
wayside. The God in whom we live has conferred these advantages upon us,
that we might bear fruit unto holiness; and if we remain barren,
notwithstanding all his kindness, he will give forth the decree to cut
us down. In some he finds bad fruit, and in some no fruit, and even in
the best, little fruit. He has not cast out the unfruitful, but has
tenderly spared them.

As the fig-tree greedily drank in the riches of earth and air, and
wasted all in leaves, so the unconverted in a land of Christian light
enjoy God's goodness and employ it in ministering only to their own
pleasures. The line of justice, stretched to the utmost,--to the