What is the real significance of FRUIT? Every physiologist knows that the fruit of a plant is simply an arrested and metamorphosed branch. This is proved by the fact that all the parts of the flower,-viz., the calyx, the corolla, and the pistil, will readily change into normal leaves, and the peduncle into a normal branch; and also by the gradual transition of leaves proper into floral parts. In very wet or warm springs, some of the flower-buds of the pear and apple are occasionally forced into active vegetative growth, so as to completely break up the flower, and change it into an ordinary leafy branch. It is also by no means uncommon to see a green branch covered with leaves, growing out of the heart of a fully expanded crimson rose, or from the summit of a large and perfectly formed pear, or from a ripe strawberry, or from the apex of the cone of the larch. . . All those cases in which the terminal bud goes on to grow, even through the flower and fruit, clearly prove that the flower or fruit which, according to the normal method, arrests all further development of the axis that bears it, is a mere metamorphosed branch. The bud of a plant which, under the ordinary laws of vegetation, would have elongated into a leafy branch, remains in a special case shortened, and develops finally, according to some regular law, blossom and fruit instead. Its further growth is thus stayed; it has attained the end of its existence; its life terminates -with the ripe fruit that drops off to the ground. Whereas the bud that does not produce a flower or fruit grows into a branch, lives for years, and may ultimately attain almost the dimensions of the main trunk itself, clothed with half the foliage of the tree.

In producing blossom and fruit, therefore, a branch sacrifices itself, yields up its own individual vegetative life for the sake of another life that is to spring from it, and to perpetuate the species. Every annual plant dies when it has produced blossom and fruit; every individual branch in a tree (which corresponds with an annual plant) also dies when it has blossomed and fruited. Delay in flowering prolongs life. By nipping off the flowers as soon as they appear, the duration of some plants may be greatly extended; by converting single blossoms into double, and thus preventing their seeding, annuals may even become perennials. . .

The great spiritual principle which every blossom shadows forth is self-sacrifice. The plant produces a flower, and consequently a fruit, for the purpose of imparting life-yea, more abundant life, -and in the production of flower and fruit it dies. It gives its own life for another's-one life for the sake of countless lives that are to spring from it in long succession, generation after generation. And is it not most instructive to notice that it is in this self-sacrifice of the plant that all its beauty comes out and culminates ? The blossom and fruit in which it gives its own life for another, are the loveliest of all its parts. God has crowned this self-denial and blessing of others with all the glory of color and the grace of form, the sweetness of perfume, and the richness of flavor.

And is it not so in the kingdom of grace? Christian fruit is an arrest and transformation of the branch in the True Vine. Instead of growing for its own ends, it produces the blossoms of holiness and the fruits of righteousness, for the glory of God and the good of men. The life of selfishness, self-righteousness, and self-seeking is cut short, and changed into the life of self-denial. The believer who is united to Christ considers the time past of his life sufficient to have wrought the will of the flesh, and henceforth lives no more unto himself, but unto Him that died for him and rose again. The Christian life begins in self-sacrifice:"If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself." We can bring forth no fruit that is pleasing to God until, besought by His mercies, we yield ourselves a living sacrifice to Him. . . . Fruit in the natural and spiritual worlds originates from self-sacrifice. This is the arrest of the natural bud, the metamorphosis of the self-pleasing branch-the passage, as in the case of St. Paul, through an ideal death, through the martyrdom of will and deed, to nobler action, to a heavenly life even, on earth.

And in this self-sacrifice all the beauty of the Christian life comes out and culminates. The life that lives for another in so doing bursts into flower, and shows its brightest hues, and yields its sweetest fragrance. As the common coarse green leaf changes into the delicately formed and brilliantly colored petals in the conversion of leaf-buds into flower-buds, so in the conversion of lovers of pleasures into lovers of God-the common things of life, the gifts and attainments of the natural man, are taken up into a higher experience, and beautified and ennobled. Nothing is lost in the transference, but all is changed and enriched. All is given to Christ, and all is received back a hundredfold. Solomon in all his glory is not arrayed like one of those human blossoms on the tree of life, that can say, " I am not my own, but bought with a price, and therefore bound to glorify God in my body and spirit, which are His."

Every spot on which the disciple talks with Jesus of His decease, and is bound by the cords of love to the same altar, is verily a Mount of Transfiguration. There the glory of the inner life bursts through, and irradiates even the outer garment. The face of Moses, when he descended from the mount, shone with a supernatural splendor, because he yielded himself up for the good of Israel. The face of Stephen became like an angel's when he gave up his life a witness for Christ, and in imitation of his Master's wondrous self-forgetfulness, prayed for his murderers:"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." And has not many an unknown man and woman been similarly transfigured when becoming one with Christ's Spirit in sublime self-abnegation? Have we not seen the glory of self-sacrifice ennobling even the aspect of the countenance, the expression of the eye, the carriage of the form, making the plainest and homeliest face beautiful and heroic? Who has not beheld, with a feeling almost of awe, some lowly root out of a dry ground blossoming into a miracle of beauty as he entered into the cloud with His Lord, and was baptized with His baptism? The pain of martyrs, the losses of self-sacrificing devotion, are indeed the blossoms of life,-"the culminating points at which humanity has displayed its true glory and reached its highest level." In the sacrifice of self-will in its bud and root to God, a glory and a bliss are opened up of which the selfish worldling is utterly ignorant and destitute. We "prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

" For who gives, giving doth win back his gift;
And knowledge by division grows to more;
Who hides the Master's talent shall die poor,
And starve at last of his own thankless thrift.

" I did this for another ; and, behold,
My work hath blood on it! but thine hath none:
Done for thyself, it dies in being done ;
To what thou buyest thou thyself art sold.

" Give thyself utterly away. Be lost. [own;
Choose some one-some thing ; not thyself, thine
Thou canst not perish, but thrice greater grown,-
Thy gain the greatest where thy loss was most.

"Thou in another shall thyself new find.
The single globule, lost in the wide sea,
Becomes an ocean. Each identity
Is greatest in the greatness of its kind.

" Who serves for gain, a slave, by thankless pelf
Is paid ; who gives himself is priceless, free,
I gave myself, a man, to God:lo, He
Renders me back a saint unto myself."

(Hugh McMillan:"The True Vine.")