The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
— Song of Solomon 2:13
In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
— Isaiah 17:11
But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet.
— Isaiah 14:19
Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people: let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it. For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter. Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree. For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment. The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea. And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.
— Isaiah 34:1-7
Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
— 1 Peter 2:1-3
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
— 2 Peter 3:18
Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
— James 5:7
Winter Afore Harvest, Or, The Soul’s Growth In Grace, by J. C. Philpot. The following contains an excerpt from his work.
For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches. They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth: and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.
— Isaiah 18:5-6
This season, then, of first convictions may be called the early spring, the March of the soul. The weather is still cold and the winds chilling and cutting, and the bud dares not yet open its bosom, though it is pushing on in growth and vigour. The brown scales are still wrapped over it, and though swelling and enlarging, it remains as yet closed up in itself.
But after some time, longer or shorter as He sees fit, but generally bearing a proportion to the degree and depth of the convictions, the God, I believe, usually bestows some gleam of His smiling countenance on the soul. The cause of this glimpse of love is unknown to the soul that enjoys it. But its effects and the feelings to which it gives rise cannot be hid. The change, the revolution, which this smile creates is well nigh as great as the first awakening. With it commences that manifested growth, that opening of the bud, which I have called the Spring of the soul. The bud when it first pushes through the bark contains in itself the flower, the fruit, and the seed. These are not added to it afterwards, but however covered up or concealed, are in it, an essential part and portion of it, from the beginning.
Thus, when the Holy Ghost quickens the soul, He plants within it, a new creature, perfect in all its parts. The child in its mother’s womb has all the limbs of a man. Nor do newborn babes of grace differ from little children, young men, or fathers, in the number of their graces, but only in the growth and development of them. Thus in the newborn soul there is hope, which keeps it from despair; love, which at times gleams out of terror; and faith, which cleaves hard to the promise, in spite of unbelief. These buds, indeed, not being called forth by the beams of the sun, but being chilled and checked by the north wind that goes over the garden Cant. 4:16, could not expand themselves, and were scarcely seen. But the first rays of the warm sun, the first genial breezes of the south wind that quieteth the earth Job 37:17, awaken, as it were, into a new existence these hidden, unopened buds.
The buds on all trees are formed many months before they burst forth into open leaf. The storms, and sleet, and frost do not destroy them, as in the elect, despair never swallows up hope, nor enmity love, nor unbelief faith. But they cannot unfold and expand their blossom, nor burst into growth, until “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.” Then is the season “when the fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell” Cant. 2:11-13. Under this gleam, then, of sunshine, this first smile of a heavenly Father’s love, the bud begins to open and unfold its bosom to meet the genial ray.
The first bud that expands itself to the sunshine is that of faith. But was not faith in the soul before? Yes, doubtless. And did not faith act upon and realize the things that are not seen? Most assuredly. Faith entered into the soul at the same moment as the first beam of supernatural light. Some persons are of the opinion that there is no faith in the soul whilst it is under the law, and that when deliverance comes, faith comes with it. To support their opinion they quote this text, “But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” Gal. 3:25, where “faith” means not the grace of faith, but the object of faith—that is, Jesus Christ.
Others assert that there is no faith but the full assurance of faith, and that all that falls short of this is no faith at all. But I would ask, “Is there any difference between a soul dead in sins and one quickened into spiritual life? Are there not fears, terrors, convictions, pangs, cries, groans, and a host of feelings in the one which are not in the other? Whence arises this sense of guilt and wrath, this remorse for the past, and terror of the future?” I answer because divine faith credits the divine testimony. Before the soul was quickened into spiritual life the holiness and justice of God were the same, His wrath against sin and the curse of His righteous law were the same. But the soul did not feel them. Why not? Because the word was not “mixed with faith in them that heard it” Heb. 4:2. A divine principle was needed to credit the divine testimony. He had heard these things by the hearing of the ear in the dead, outward letter. He had not seen them by the seeing of the eye, by an inward revelation. If the soul did not believe the word which entered it, did not credit the commandment which came to it Rom. 7:9, how could it fall beneath the power of it? It did not formerly care for eternal realities, because it did not believe them by a divine faith. But now it receives, credits and believes the testimony of God, and this very faith is the cause of its alarm. If it could cease to believe, it would cease to feel.
But whence comes it to pass that faith acts in so different a manner when the Sun of righteousness breaks in upon the soul? Simply because faith credits just such a testimony only as is revealed to it. Faith may be compared to a hand. My hand feels just according to the nature of the object which I grasp. I touch things hot or cold, rough or smooth, hard or soft. The hand is the same, and I touch the object in the same way; but I feel differently according to the different nature of the object. Or faith may be compared to the eye, which receives different impressions according as it looks upon different things; if upon things agreeable, impressions that are pleasant, if upon things disagreeable, impressions that are painful. But the eye is the same, and the mode of seeing is the same. Thus faith is the hand as well as the eye of the soul.
If God reveal to the conscience His wrath against sin, faith is the hand to receive and the eye to see this divine testimony. If God reveal to the soul pardon and mercy in Christ, the same hand opens to receive, the same eye uncloses to see the heavenly manifestation. Paul recounts Heb. 11 the exploits of faith, such as subduing kingdoms, working righteousness, obtaining promises, stopping the mouths of lions, and performing many things of very different and dissimilar kinds. But he never tells us that the faith itself was different, or that Abel, Enoch, Noah, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, and the other saints, of whom the world was not worthy, had all a different faith according to their different exploits. When the horror of great darkness fell upon Abraham, and God said to him, “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs” Gen. 15:13, the faith whereby he credited this divine testimony was the same as that by which he believed in the God, when He said, “So shall thy seed be” Gen. 15:5, and He counted it to him for righteousness. Nay, Abraham’s faith never was so strong as when it acted most in the dark, and bade him stretch forth his hand to slay his son. There is but “one faith,” as well as but one God and one baptism. And therefore Paul says that “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith” Rom. 1:17; that is, the righteousness of God in the law to faith in the law, and the righteousness of God in the gospel to faith in the gospel.
But whilst the soul was labouring under deep convictions, faith was not seen, nor felt to be faith. Unbelief, doubts, fears, guilt, wrath, gloom, misery, all these heavy weights pressed faith down into the bottom of the slough. Faith could not lift up its head out of all the mud, and mire, and filth, under which it lay well nigh smothered. Its eyes were dim with weeping, a dreadful sound was in its ears, its arm seemed clean dried up, and its feet set fast in the stocks. The only sign of life was that it struggled upwards, and spread forth its hands in the midst of the waves, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim Isa. 25:11. But as the sun shines, the bud of faith expands to receive the fostering ray. Mercy now appears in the place of wrath, and infinite compassion instead of infinite justice. The thick veil which had been spread over the promises, invitations and encouragements, is taken off. The Scriptures appear a new book, the gospel a new sound, the doctrines of grace new truths, and the blood of Christ a new salvation. The soul wonders it never saw these things before, and nothing now seems more easy and simple than to believe in the lovingkindness of God. The stone has been rolled from the sepulchre, and Lazarus has come forth. The night has passed away, and the morning appears. The mists that hung over the landscape have broken off, and the good land, the land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills, lies stretched out to view. As faith credited before the divine testimony of wrath, so now it credits the divine testimony of mercy; and as the heaviness of the one before made it stoop, so the good word of the other now maketh it glad.
The second bud which expands to receive the warm sunshine is that of hope. It was, indeed, in the soul before. There is no new creation of this bud by the rays of the sun, but only an expansion, a development of it. In the midst of all the gloom and despondency which brooded over it, there was a secret something at the bottom of the soul which kept it from despair. When the floodgates of divine wrath are opened in the natural conscience of a reprobate, he is usually swept away by it into the blackness of darkness for ever. Saul falls upon his sword, and Judas hangs himself. In the natural conscience of a reprobate there is wrath in reality; and wrath, too, against the person as well as against the sin. In the spiritual conscience of the elect there is but wrath in apprehension; and that wrath against the sin, not against the person.
Thus the vessels of wrath call upon the mountains and rocks to fall upon them and hide them—their persons—from the wrath of the Lamb. The vessels of mercy cry, “Pardon our iniquity; for it is great.” Natural guilt drives the soul from God: “ et not God speak with us, lest we die” Exo. 20:19. Spiritual guilt drives the soul to God: “Cast me not away from Thy presence” Psa. 51:11;“ et us search and try our ways, and turn again to the God. et us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens” am. 3:40,41. A graceless professor never rides at anchor. He is moored to the shore by a silken thread. The first storm snaps his line, and drives him on the rocks of despair where concerning faith he makes shipwreck 1 Tim. 1:19. Thus of these castaways some are driven to the madhouse, and others to the halter; some pine away in their iniquities, and others curse God and die.
But an elect vessel of mercy can never be wrecked on such shoals as these. To his own apprehensions, his hope may perish from the God am 3:18, and “be removed like a tree” Job 19:10. But it is not really lost out of his heart. He still holds faith, and has not put away a good conscience. There is a “Who can tell?” struggling for life. As Jacob said of Esau, “Peradventure he will accept me;” and as the servants of Ben-Hadad reasoned with their master, “We have heard that the kings of Israel are merciful kings…peradventure he will save thy life,” so the newborn soul under spiritual convictions hopes against hope. This anchor holds him firm. And though he often fears his cable will snap, yet the anchor, being within the veil, linked on to the throne of God by the golden chain of eternal love, can neither break nor drive.
But hope in a storm and hope in a calm, hope in the bud and hope in the flower, though they differ not in nature, differ greatly in degree. Night and day do not alter the reality of things, but they widely alter their appearance. Hope shut up in a dungeon and looking through the prison bars, and hope walking abroad in the sunshine differ much in feeling, though they do not differ in kind. But we must not cut off hope’s head, nor bury him alive in his cell, because he is shut up, and cannot come forth. Neither must we say that hope is only born on the same day that he comes out in his holiday attire.
But some would treat hope as badly as they treat faith, and allow him neither place nor name, birthright nor inheritance in the regenerated soul until deliverance comes, though it belongs especially to the poor Job 5:16, dwelleth in the heart that is sick Pro. 13:12, and is the portion of those whose mouth is in the dust am. 3:29. Such wise master-builders would allow the soldier no helmet 1 Thess. 5:8, the sailor no anchor Heb. 6:19, and the prisoner no stronghold Zech. 9:12. But if he is joined to the living he has hope; and the hope of a living dog is better any day than the vain confidence of a dead lion Eccl. 9:4.
But under the genial ray of God’s smiling countenance the bud opens, and hope bursts forth. And as it expands it looks upward to heaven, and rises towards its Author and Finisher, its Source and its End. All true grace looks upward, whilst counterfeits look downward. Thus true hope centres in God; false hope centres in self. “Hope thou in God,” said David to his soul Psa. 42:11. “And now, God, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee” Psa. 39:7. “That they might set their hope in God…and not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation” Psa. 78:7,8. But false hope is a hope in self, that is to say, natural self. It is therefore compared to a rush, which grows out of the mire, and withereth before any other herb; and to the web which the spider spins out of its own bowels Job 8:11-14. I never yet found anything in self—I mean natural self—which raised up a living hope. I have known plenty of things to cause despair, such as pride, lust, covetousness, unbelief, infidelity, enmity, rebellion, hardness and carelessness. I have found in self mountains of sin to press out the life of hope, torrents of evil to sweep away the foundations of hope, and clouds of darkness to hide the very existence of hope. But I have never yet found in vile self, deceitful self, filthy self, black self, and hateful self, any one thing to beget or keep alive a spiritual hope. If I could, I should fall under that terrible sentence, whose sweeping edge cuts off thousands: “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the God“ Jer. 17:5.
But what a mighty revolution takes place in the soul when the bud of hope bursts forth into flower! It was well nigh covered up with despair, as the bud is hidden by the green leaves that close around it; but it springs up out of despair, and the green leaves part asunder. Darkness, guilt, terror, heaviness, gloom, melancholy, forebodings of death and judgment brooded over the soul, like the unclean birds over Abraham’s sacrifice. But hope, as Abraham of old, has driven them away. And now hope mounts upward to God. Hope has nothing to do with earth, but leaves flesh and self and the world, the servants and the asses, at the foot of the mount Gen. 22:5, that it may have communion with Jehovah Jireh. Thus hope feeds upon the unseen things which faith realizes.
Both faith and hope are engaged on the same things, but not in the same way. Faith credits, hope anticipates; faith realizes, hope enjoys; faith is the hand which takes the fruit, hope is the mouth which feeds upon it. Thus a certain promise is made to Abraham that he shall have a son by Sarah. This was a revelation of divine possibility in human impossibility Mark 10:27, of supernatural power in creature helplessness Rom. 4:19-22, to credit which revelation is the essence of spiritual faith. By faith Abraham realized this promise; by hope he enjoyed it. It was an unseen thing, an event to come to pass at twenty-five years’ distance, but faith made it present, and as such hope fed upon it. When Abraham held in his arms the newborn Isaac, the pleasure was only a fuller enjoyment of what he had before tasted. He now enjoyed in reality, in possession, what he had previously tasted in prospect, in anticipation.
Thus true hope feeds upon present things, but upon present things only as pledges and foretastes of things future. It feeds upon Christ, the same yesterday, today, and for ever, and looks forward to no other salvation than that of which it now enjoys the foretaste. All other hope than this is a lie. To hope in the forgiveness of sin—of which there is no foretaste; in God—of whom there has been no manifestation; in salvation—of which there has been no pledge; in mercy—of which there has been no token; in everlasting happiness—of which there has been no inward enjoyment; is delusion and presumption. Of this building, ignorance digs the foundation, self-deceit rears the wall, and hypocrisy plasters on the untempered mortar. It is a refuge of lies, which the hail shall sweep away and the waters overflow.
The budding forth of hope and the opening of this heavenly flower, that only grows in the valley of Achor, the vale of trouble Hos. 2:15; Josh. 7:26, marg, is a season never to be forgotten. Well do I remember the place—a little garden, hidden by buildings, and overgrown with shrubs, where this flower opened in my soul. But the buildings could not hide it, nor the evergreens shade it, nor the damp close it. The bud opened, the flower burst forth, and at the same moment the eye looked up, and the mouth uttered, “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee.”
If time permitted, I might show how in this spring of the soul the bud of every grace expanded in a similar way. ove in the bud had scarcely strength to maintain its existence against the enmity of the carnal mind stirred up by the entrance of the aw. Like a tender graft it seemed as though it must wither away and die. But love in the flower is strong and vigorous. ove in the bud was not seen nor known to be love. The colour and beauty of the flower could not be gathered from the appearance of the bud. But love in the flower is known at once to be love. Like its divine Author, it cannot be hid Mark 7:24, but is known and read of all men. So amidst the legal repentance and the sorrow that worketh death, which were wrapped around it, godly sorrow, whilst in the bud, could scarce be seen. It lay crouching beneath the leaves, hidden and indistinct. But being looked upon by the sun, it looks in its turn upon Him whom it hath pierced, and mourneth for Him as one that mourneth for his firstborn.
Godly fear, again in the bud was darkened and obscured by the fear which hath torment. Slavish fear was so strong that it drew away all the sap from filial fear. Darkness and damp, lowering clouds and a threatening sky, cherished the former, whilst they checked and chilled the latter. But as the life of the one is the death of the other, godly fear, when it bursts into flower, soon outgrows the shoot of slavish dread. When Abraham makes a feast for Isaac, Ishmael is turned out of doors. Love which casts out the fear that hath torment is the very life of that spiritual fear which is a fountain of life to depart from the snares of death.
Prayer is another grace of the Spirit which opens and expands its bud in this springtime of the soul. It had always been in the soul from the first entrance of spiritual light. “Behold, he prayeth” Acts 9:11, was the mark of regenerated Saul. But hitherto it had consisted of little else but sighs and groans. Access to God, enjoyment of His presence, sensible communion, holy familiarity, praise and blessing, and similar feelings of nearness were scarcely known. It had hitherto been more cries forced out by terror than prayer drawn forth by love. It was more the howl of the criminal, the cry of the leper, the groan of the desperate, the broken, interrupted gasping of the drowning or the dying than the soft, solemn, gentle, calm stream of nearness and access to God. There are two kinds of spiritual prayer. There is the prayer under guilt, and the prayer under mercy; the prayer of a heart overwhelmed, and the prayer of a heart overflowing; the prayer of distance, and the prayer of nearness; prayer interrupted with sobs and groans, intervals of silence and fits of sullenness, like a mountain stream rushing amid rocks and stones; and prayer flowing calmly and gently into the bosom of God, as the river of the valley glides into the bosom of the sea.
During this spring of the soul, all things connected with spiritual religion are full of sweetness. The word of God is as honey and the honeycomb, the company of His children eagerly sought after, the Ordinances of His house highly prized, and the message of His ministers gladly received. Almost every sermon brings some blessing, every prayer some refreshment, and every chapter some instruction or some consolation. Thus the soul grows up like the calf of the stall. Having tasted that the God is gracious, it feeds on the sincere milk of the word, and grows thereby 1 Pet. 2:2,3.
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