It is most appropriate at this season when California is just beginning
to harvest its "golden crop" to open wide our eyes and find the message
of these beautiful fruit bearing trees. For the Christ, who's mind was
quick to pronounce a curse on idleness in the parable of the barren fig
tree, would no doubt have been just as alert to have emphasized worthy
success by speaking a parable of the orange tree, had there been orange
groves in Palistine then as there are today.
But there were no citrus trees in the Holy Land when He walked its
highways and crossed through its orchards. Hence the religious worker of
today has the advantage over the founder of our faith of a visual
acquaintance with this luxuriant tree. Indeed this fruit has, because of
its color, become the most attractive of all fruits in modern life, so
universally in demand that it seems to me that the orange itself has and
is still seeking interpreters. So if, with Ruskin, we can only "open our
eyes and see things"--see through and back of things, I am sure that we
will clarify the vision of our souls and find emphasized some abiding
truths in a new parable of the orange tree.
It would be informing to speak of the first orange fruit found in
America--to tell in detail how the Spanish explorers gave the citrus
fruit to the Indians of Florida, who in eating it dropped the seeds in
the soil, making possible the wild orange groves now beautifying the
valley of the Indian river. For this is the romantic story of the origin
of the orange tree in America.
Or it would be keenly interesting to every Californian to read about the
arrival of the Franciscans in the southern part of our State, who
established twenty missions in the rear of each of which was a garden
where the orange, olive and fig were planted and bore fruit. Because
this explains the inception of the industry in our great commonwealth
and puts into our hand the key which unlocks the entrance to these
modern gardens of Hesperides--these orange belts now scattered
throughout our State.
Or in this day when scholars are feverish to learn the origin of things,
we could speak of the world's first orange trees which were found in
India. From the two original spices--the bitter and sweet--which were
first discovered there, we could trace the evolution of the one hundred
different varieties of the citrus fruit which are found in the world
today, the original fruit being imported by merchants from India into
China in the ninth century and into Europe in the fifteenth century, and
then finding its way to America during the period of Spanish
exploration.
But we prefer to be interpretive, to come closer home than this. We
prefer to consider these fruit bearing orchards as an object lesson
immediately at hand and to think of the labor and activity of the people
co-operating with nature's forces that have made this golden crop about
to be harvested possible. Thus recognizing at once the suggestion coming
so eloquently from these trees that, the fundamental secret of all
growth in character as well as in nature is adaption to environment and
service, not the passive submission of Calvinism alone, nor the
uncontrollable egotism of an unrestrained Arminianism, but the union of
both, the working of God with man--spiritual co-operation, the most
helpful phrase in modern religious thought. So with this primary
principle as a premise let us try to interpret in detail the new parable
of the orange tree. For the man that has learned its parable has found,
as Dr. McClaren would say, the secret of a fine soul culture.
Some days past as I stood upon an elevation commanding a view of that
great area of eight thousand acres of orange groves, spreading off into
the distance with its wide expanse of tree tops blended into a
continuous luxuriant green and its myriads of ripening oranges nestling
in the deep green back ground, like countless numbers of gold fish at
the surface of a sea or like circular stars in some new sky, these were
the three suggestions that came to me as I tried to learn its beautiful
parable.
First, the secret of a refined Christian character is an abiding sense
of the reality of God, as revealed in Christ. For the finest spirits,
the deepest minds and the most arresting personalities from Gladstone
and Lincoln down to the ordinary citizen, have been those that have
drawn their inspiration and thought from hidden sources. Just as the
fruit and leaves of these trees receive their rich color from the
sunbeams and absorb their health from the moisture coming from the heart
of God's hills, so the cultured souls of history have received their
winsome illumination of personality from a light that shineth neither by
land nor sea.
We realize that these trees could not grow where there is limited
sunshine and a restricted water supply. Neither can men find moral
maturity and health until they possess that type of mind which is
characterized by spiritual reality. We know that California's far-famed
orange orchards would not be possible without incessant sunlight; and
that our golden fruit would never again pass through the Golden Gate to
the markets of the world, if the sun did not appear to shower down upon
our orchards its magic beauty gathered in its own paradise beyond the
gates of the morning. But Tennyson, who had a sane knowledge and
appreciation of the Sun of Righteousness, was also well aware of the
secret of a beautiful life when he said of those who had not discovered
it,
"For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not bands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?"
At first I could not understand why the owners cultivated their orchards
so incessantly. But when I was told by one of the experts that continual
pulverizing of the soil made the moisture more accessible to the roots,
permitted the oxygen of the air to find its way to the tree, and
liberated the nitrogen in the soil so that it would be absorbed, then I
saw clearly that there was a scientific reason for the constant
harrowing; and felt that it might be very practical to demand that we
deepen our convictions so that we can go into the fields of human life
equipped with the mighty contagion of something to say that will go
deeper than the ears, to harrow the inner life of patronizing listeners.
For without the prophet whose harrowing words opens up a way to the
nerve of conscience and quickens the deeper emotions of the soul men
will not become eager to receive truth and the masses will remain
proselytes of mammon and low ideals. Indeed the irresistible characters
in religious service like the great singers are those who have had their
hearts broken; but at the same time and as a result, their interest in
righteousness deepened and their wills nourished and strengthened.
These trees are peculiarly beautiful and strong because they send their
roots into a well prepared soil thrilling with the liberated elements of
life and their branches into God's air to woo the purity of the
sunlight. And the young who are to lead us safely in the future are
those whose souls have been cultured by helpful and trying
experiences--those who have been taught to think deeply, to see far in
vision and to act bravely because the conviction of truth and
experience has liberated from the subconscious mind--or the subsoil of
their lives--those elements which send through the whole man the iron of
the prophet and the revealed wisdom of the apostle.
One of the strange characteristics about the orange is that the tree is
unusually sensitive and the fruit very hardy. Indeed the tree can be
blighted by a frost that will not injure deciduous fruits so that it
must be planted in localities protected by a warm climate and God's
hills, and often watched and tended like an infant child. But the orange
itself, which is so hardy, has an advantage over many other varieties of
fruits and can be shipped into any market in the world. For the citrus
fruit is not perishable in the same sense that the plums and peaches are
and after being removed from the trees may be kept for weeks with
advantage without being destroyed by decay or losing its beauty.
I say this is rather unusual. But, to mention the second lesson of the
parable, it is no stranger than the guiding of youth through the
formative years into a maturity, morally beautiful and capable of
vision. And it is only as the home and school, the church and state
watch over these sensitive periods, protecting the young from the
blights of the frosts of skepticism and sensuality that their lives will
mature into characters as golden and hardy as our native fruit. Sane,
honorable evangelism never excludes Christian nurture any more than the
sunlight obviates the necessity of soil cultivation.
The orange tree, it is true, does not tower in height and conspicuous
leadership like the giant Sequoias and Redwoods--although it is said
that the bitter specie of the tree occasionally acquires considerable
diameter and that the trunk of one near Nice still standing in 1789
became so large that two men could scarcely embrace it. The citrus tree
does not tower like Babel. But better yet, it simply bears fruit for
food--which the giants of the forest fail to do--like the strong men
who prefer only to be reliably useful.
And this third thought suggested by our object lesson is most apparent.
For with the instinct of good Americans we hasten to declare that the
sight of these trees all comparatively of the same height and vibrant
with the same beauty and glow of health does not suggest a monarchy, an
aristocracy or even a plutocracy but rather a successful democracy; not
only one of an equality of rights, because they all have access to the
same sunlight and soil, but also an equality of duty because they all
seek to bear fruit--a commonwealth in which every private citizen is
capable of being an uncrowned king. This must have been the lesson that
Ruskin interpreted from nature when he said: "A forest of all manner of
trees is poor, if not disagreeable in effect, a mass of one species of
trees is sublime."
And thus as I stood on the highest foothill overlooking these valleys,
these were the most important thoughts that were suggested to me by what
I saw--the necessity of these three qualities in the forming of mature
character, faith in God, the guidance and protection of friendship and
education for youth, and useful service, all of which condensed into a
single phrase means the co-operation of God with man in producing the
beautiful fruit of a refined, symmetrical life.
And then it dawned upon me that a number of other men had also learned
parables from the trees. For as I looked over that great expanse of
orchards to the south, detecting the irrigating streams flowing among
the trees, with patches of the barren desert appearing here and there in
striking contrast, the results of an abiding faith in God came to me in
the words of David:
"Blessed is the man that walked not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor
standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
"He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth
forth his fruit in his season, his leaf also shall not wither, and
whatsoever he doeth shall prosper."
And finally as I descended the foothill and came long side of an orchard
and saw a barren, scrubby trunk next to a splendid orange tree vigorous
and laden down with fruit, the words of Christ pressed to my lips for
utterance: "By their fruit ye shall know them. * * * A good tree cannot
bear evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bear good fruit."
It was then that I said to myself, why should not all men observe and
find the helpful parable in this favorite California tree. Because we
are more than mere animals we should rebel against hearing the terrible
parable of a barren fig tree pronounced on our lives. But if we profit
by the thoughts suggested by a modern parable of the orange tree, then
our spirit will be as beautiful and wholesome as the eternal green of
its leaves, our character as golden as its fruit and our deeds as
numerous as its blossoms, for often the new blossoms appear before the
ripe fruit has been picked from the branches.
* * * * *