'Nothing but leaves.' I have already said that we are told that the
habit of growth of these trees is that the fruit accompanies, and
sometimes precedes, the leaves. Whether it is so or no, let me remind
you that leaves are an outcome of the life as well as fruit, and that
they benefit the tree, and assist in the production of the fruit which
it ought to bear. And so the symbol suggests things that are good in
themselves, ancillary and subsidiary to the production of fruit, but
which sometimes tend to such disproportionate exuberance of growth as
that all the life of the tree runs to leaf, and there is riot a berry
to be found on it.
And if you want to know what such things are, remember the condition
of the rulers of Israel at that time. They prided themselves upon
their nominal, external, hereditary connection with a system of
revelation, they trusted in mere ritualisms, they had ossified
religion into theology, and degraded morality into casuistry. They
thought that because they had been born Jews, and circumcised, and
because there was a daily sacrifice going on in the Temple, and
because they had Rabbis who could split hairs _ad infinitum_,
therefore they were the 'temple of the Lord,' and God's chosen.
And that is exactly what hosts of pagans, masquerading as Christians,
are doing in all our so-called Christian lands, and in all our
so-called Christian congregations. In any community of so-called
Christian people there is a little nucleus of real, earnest,
God-fearing folk, and a great fringe of people whose Christianity is
mostly from the teeth outward, who have a nominal and external
connection with religion, who have been 'baptized' and are
'communicants,' who think that religion lies mainly in coming on a
Sunday, and with more or less toleration and interest listening to a
preacher's words and joining in external worship, and all the while
the 'weightier matters of the law'--righteousness, justice, and the
love of God--they leave untouched. What describes such a type of
religion with more piercing accuracy than 'nothing but leaves'?
External connection with God's Church is a good thing. It is meant to
make us better men and women. If it does not, it is a bad thing. Acts
of worship, more or less elaborate--for it is not the elaboration of
ceremonial, but the mistaken view of it, that does the harm--acts of
worship may be helpful, or may be absolute barriers to real religious
life. They are becoming so largely to-day. The drift and trend of
opinion in some parts of so-called Christendom is in the direction of
outward ceremonial. And I, for one, believe that there are few things
doing more harm to the Christian character of England to-day than the
preposterous recurrence to a reliance on the mere externals of
worship. Of course we Dissenters pride ourselves on having no
complicity with the sacramentarian errors which underlie these. But
there may be quite as much of a barrier between the soul and Christ,
reared by the bare worship of Nonconformists, or by the no-worship of
the Society of Friends. If the absence of form be converted into a
form, as it often is, there may be as lofty and wide a barrier raised
by these as by the most elaborate ritual of the highest ceremonial
that exists in Christendom. And so I say to you, dear brethren, seeing
that we are all in danger of cleaving to externals and substituting
these which are intended to be helps to the production of godly life
and character, it becomes us all to listen to the solemn word of
exhortation that comes out of my text, and to beware lest our religion
runs to leaf instead of setting into fruit.
It does so with many of us; that is a certainty. I am thinking about
no individual, about no individuals, but I am only speaking common
sense when I say that amongst as many people as I am now addressing
there will be an appreciable proportion who have no notion of religion
as anything beyond a more or less imperative and more or less
unwelcome set of external observances.