ig-tree."[31]

Jesus, on approaching it (it seemed to be at a little distance from
their path), and finding abundance of leaves, but no fruit thereon,
condemns it to perpetual sterility and barrenness.

A difficulty here occurs on the threshold of the narrative. If, as we
have noted, and as St Mark tells us, "the time of figs was _not
yet_"--why this seeming impatience--why this harsh sentence for not
having what, _if found_, would have been unseasonable, untimely,
abnormal?

In this apparent difficulty lies the main truth and zest of the parable.
The doom of sterility, be it carefully noted, was uttered by Jesus, not
so much because of the _absence of fruit_, but because the tree, by its
premature display of leaves, challenged expectations which a closer
inspection did not realise. "It was punished," says an able writer, "not
for being without fruit, but for proclaiming, by the voice of those
leaves, that it had such. Not for being barren, but for being
false."[32]

Graphic picture of boastful and vaunting Israel! This conspicuous tree,
nigh one of the frequented paths of Olivet, was no inappropriate type,
surely, of that nation which stood illustrious amid the world's
kingdoms--exalted to heaven with unexampled privileges which it
abused--proudly claiming a righteousness which, when weighed in the
balances, was found utterly wanting. It mattered not that the heathen
nations were as guilty, vile, and corrupt as the chosen people.
Fig-trees were they, too--naked stems, fruitless and leafless; but then
they made no boastful pretensions. The Jews had, in the face of the
world, been glorying in a righteousness which, in reality, was only like
the foliage of that tree by which the Lord and His disciples now
stood--mocking the expectations of its owner by mere outward semblance
and an utter absence of fruit.

The very day preceding, these mournful deficiencies had brought tears to
the Saviour's eyes--stirred the depths of His yearning heart in the very
hour of His triumph. He had looked down from the height of the mountain
on the gilded splendours of the Temple Courts beneath; but, alas! He saw
that sanctimonious hypocrisy and self-righteous formalism had sheltered
themselves behind clouds of incense. Mammon, covetousness, oppression,
fraud, were rising like strange fire from these defiled altars!

He turns the tears of yesterday into an expressive and enduring parable
to-day! He approaches a luxuriant Fig-tree, boast