The leaf of a tree is its clothing and adornment. I It is the fundamental type, as botanists tell us, of its whole structure. In a leaf, you may discern, if you look closely, a picture of the tree itself,-may see the comparative height of its stem, recognize its internal structure, measure the angle and study the pattern of its branches.

Spiritually, the leaf lies rather under reproach among us. From the fig-leaves, man's first of many inventions to cover his nakedness, to the tree which our Lord cursed for its having leaves but no fruit, they have become linked in our minds very much with the thought of emptiness and pretension-of something to be shunned rather than commended. The lesson to be enforced by them has thus come to be negative rather than positive- rather of warning than of encouragement. This is natural, perhaps, and to a certain extent right also. It is the lesson which the examples already referred to would surely impress upon us. Yet it is only a half truth and not the whole. It is an application, not the application, of this beautiful natural type, which has much more to convey to us even of warning, and from another side too, while it can speak encouragement also, and animate as well as search out the conscience.

Leaves are not unhealthy excrescences upon a tree, nor are they merely a beauteous covering. They have their use and their necessity. You may for a certain end contrast them with the fruit, and rightly, yet they are clearly in no wise adverse to the fruit, but the contrary. They imply it, and are necessary to it. Strip the leaves from a tree, and you have not benefitted the fruit; if done early and thoroughly, you have destroyed it; and the tree, if not suffered to retain its leaves, must die also. The leaves are both a glory and a necessity to it. For their use is, to expose the yet immature sap, the life-blood of the plant, as it comes up from the root, upon their broad and delicate surface to sun and air, that it may become (as only in this way it can become) fit material for its building up. Destroy, therefore, the leaf, all growth and development must stop until it be restored again. Suffer no leaf to be, the plant must die. It is thus many deep-rooted weeds can be extirpated from the surface by the continual cropping of their leaves alone.

Leaves imply fruit, though not always, as in that fig-tree which the Lord denounced. In it, the foliage fully developed-although the fig-season was not yet-was a profession that it was ahead of others of its kind, and that fruit was already there. Just so with the nation of Israel into the midst of which Christ had come-zealous for the law, and proclaiming itself Jehovah's servant, while in fact bringing forth no fruit for Him. This fruitless but leafy tree stands thus as the perfect type of empty profession.

And the leaf in its innermost meaning speaks of profession, which of course need not and should not be empty, and for which, where true, we have a better name. We call it, with the epistle to the Hebrews especially, "confession,"-a beautiful and noble word, and the value of which the leaf emphasizes for us in a remarkable way.

Look at it, as it waves its banner in mid-air, courting the observer's eye, as it witnesses to the tree upon which it grows. Not less, certainly, by its leaf than by its fruit (though there be a difference in the knowledge conveyed), is the tree known. And while the fruit is often hidden> and you must seek for it, with the leaf it is otherwise. Every branch flutters with its signals. The whole tree, from top to bottom, often shows little but the leaf. Easy enough it is thus to realize its significance.

But this place of the leaf connects itself with its office. That it may fill this aright, the sun must play on it, the breeze must fan it; the life-for "the life is in the blood," which for the plant the sap is-coming into publicity through the leaf, gains from it transforming, ripening influences. For this purpose is the breadth of the leaf, with its net-work of vessels spread over it,-the lungs of the plant, as it has been called,-for without this breathing of the fresh air continually, plant and animal alike will die.

It is surely quite possible to interpret this spiritually; and important the lesson must be too. May the Spirit of God grave it upon our hearts!

It is in the open confession of Christ that the life within ) us (that eternal life which consists in knowing the Father, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent) comes, so to speak, to the fresh air,-pronounces itself openly, and glorifies Him. You say, perhaps, that it is in the fruit rather:it is in the manifestation of Christian character, and of the graces which belong to it. Certainly I have no thought of denying the necessity of these, or that without them all profession of Christ must dishonor Him. But while this is true, what I was just saying is also true. The leaf is not the fruit, but we have seen how necessary to the fruit it is. So is the open confession of Christ to the production of properly Christian character and conduct. The "leaf" of confession is not the "root" of faith, nor the circulating "sap" of life either; but as the tree clothes itself with its foliage, so is there to be (corresponding to the internal) also an external putting on of Christ; and as the sap in the leaf meets the vivifying influence of sun and air, so will the open confession of Christ bring our lives under influences that correspond to this.

Let us listen to Scripture, and see if it does not say so plainly enough. "The righteousness which is of faith. . . what saith it ? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach; that, if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation" (Rom. 10:8-10).

Here, root and leaf, faith and confession, are plainly distinguished but the necessity of the latter is enforced as strongly as nature enforces her typical lesson. Who indeed would dare say so much, if the word of inspiration had not here so plainly stated it for us ? There it is :let no one take away from so solemn a statement.

Does it stand alone? No, assuredly it does not. Hear from the lips of our Lord another testimony:"Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father which is in heaven. And whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 10:32, 33). He repeats this in Luke 12:8, 9. The apostle in 2 Tim. 2:12 cites the latter part of this:"If we deny Him, He also will deny us." "Whosoever, therefore," says the Lord again, " shall be ashamed of Me and of My words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He cometh in the glory of His Father, with the holy angels" (Mark 8:38).

It is in heart-felt and open confession of Christ that we range ourselves with His followers, and separate ourselves from the world which has rejected Him; and the more fully and in every way this is clone,-the more completely we identify ourselves with Him, the more will He identify Himself with us. If we suffer for His name, the Spirit of glory and of God will rest upon us.

In a professedly Christian land it maybe thought there will be little of this; but that depends entirely upon how far His words are identified with Himself in our confession. Sad it is to say, and yet true, that but few proportionately of His people are out and out in their acknowledgment of their Lord. Absolute uprightness still costs much; and the fear of man, the desire of approbation, the dread of singularity, of a loss of influence, and what not, operate upon us in ways we would not like to admit to ourselves. The loss must be great, however, in real fruitfulness. And here we are prone to make the great mistake of imagining that we ourselves are the sufficient judges of what is fruit. "Let my beloved come into his garden," says the spouse of the Song of songs, "and taste his pleasant fruits." Christ is the Judge of what pleases Him, and "to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."

How beautiful is this open, whole-hearted putting on of Christ, when He is manifestly Lord of the whole man, and the life within us greets the air and sunshine ! " His delight is in the law of the Lord; and"-sure test and sign of it-"in His law doth He meditate day and night. And He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water which bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither,"-over his profession no blight shall come. The true confession of Christ builds up the soul in Him, confirming faith and developing fruit, as the function of the leaf it is to build up the tree, and make even the root itself strike deeper into the ground.