In these Eastern lands all that is wanted to turn the desert into a paradise is irrigation. In the human heart what is wanted to bring forth fruit is, first, the reception of God's gifts and help. That goes dead in the teeth of a great deal of what we call' culture,' and for want of believing it, and acting on it; much of the so-called culture is only elaborate vanity. It is no use trying to grow fruits in the desert until, as the men who made the Suez Canal did, you first of all bring the sweet water,' and then you will get your garden. Productivity, to use long words, begins with receptivity. You must first take in what God sends upon you before you can bring forth what God asks from you. The earth that drinketh in the rain' is the earth that bringeth forth the fruit.'
What is this rain that cometh oft, the reception of which is the indispensable preliminary to all true fruitfulness? If there be, as I suppose there is, some echo and reminiscence here of Isaiah's word about' the rain coming down and the snow from heaven,' then the metaphor points to the Word of God that goeth forth out of His mouth.' And though I by no means take that to be the exclusive or even the principal application of the symbol, I cannot help dwelling upon that view for a moment. And in that aspect it comes to be this, if a Christian man wants to be fruitful let him begin by receiving, with interest and attention, into his heart the truth in God's word. One main reason for the defects of our modern Christianity is that the average Christian man cares so little about his Bible; and has no real deep grip of, nor absorbed interest in, the great truths that it sets forth. No man gets any good out of a book or of a truth to which he does not attend with awakened interest and quickened curiosity. Look how you read your newspapers, and how interested you are in some trashy fiction, and contrast that with the way in which you read your Bibles. Do you drink in this Word, do you long to know more of the deep harmonies, of the profound mysteries, of the flashing illumination which it brings to all hearts that long for it? Can you say I have desired Thy testimonies more than all hidden riches'? My brother, there will be but few and shrivelled and immature fruits upon our lives unless they are planted by the rivers of water,' that is to say, as the psalm interprets it, unless we meditate on His law day and night.'
But there is a wider application to be given, as I take it, to the figure. The rain which cometh oft upon' the fruit-bearing earth, is a symbol for the whole sum of divine influences affecting mind, heart, conscience, will, and the whole inner man. From God there is ever streaming down upon His world, and especially upon His Church, spiritual influences reducible to no external agency, which find their way into the inmost heart. These come, not like the inadequate symbol of my text, in occasional showers, but they come rather as the rays come from the sun, by continual pulsating outwards, and perpetual efflux. So the prime requisite for fruit-bearing is the eager reception of all God's influences upon our spirits.
I venture to put what I have to say about this matter into four simple precepts. Desire them; expect them; welcome them; use them. So we shall drink them in.
Desire them. If there is a continual flowing out from God, by reason of His very nature, of these gracious influences to enlighten and to strengthen and to purify, then to desire them is to possess them, and without desiring them there is no possession. The heart opens when it desires, and the water finds its way, as is the nature of water, into the narrowest chink that it meets as it flows. Wherever there is a tiny crack there will be a little stream, and the wider the opening the fuller the blessing. Desire brings God; and they whose hearts are opened are they whose hearts are filled. Do you want the rain that comes down? Have you any wish to be made any better than you are. Would it be inconvenient to you if there came to you the efflux of the divine power, that would make you ashamed of your present Christianity, and would lift you up into heights of consecration, of daily honesty, and transparent business purity which perhaps do not mark you at present? Dear brethren, if many Christian people would be honest with themselves they would more often find out that, in spite of all their prayers, which come from their teeth outwards, they do not want more of God's influences, and would feel it extremely inconvenient to be laid hold of by a sanctifying power that should deliver them from the sins that they like. Desire, and you possess.
Expect and you will get. God cannot disappoint, and never did disappoint, expectations which turn to Him with the consciousness of need and the yearning for supply. But we limit His gifts because we limit our expectations of them; and instead of widening these to the large infinitude of His bestowments, we shrink His bestowments to the miserable narrowness of our expectations. Suppose a king were to send out a proclamation that any man might come to his treasuries, and take away as many sacks full of gold as he liked, and the more the better; do you think he would consider himself most honoured by the man that brought a wagon or by him who brought a basket? We bring our little vessels to the great fountain, and we put it to shame by the smallness of the expectations with which we meet the largeness of the promises. Expect the gift, and the gift will answer and vindicate --ay! and put to shame--your expectation. Desire them; expect them.
Welcome them. There is a vulgar, old proverb that says, Put out your tubs when it is raining.' Be sure that when the gift is falling you fling your hearts wide for its acceptance. Such welcome will not be given unless there be a profound sense of need, an almost painful consciousness of deficiency and failure, and unless there be above all a firm and confident expectation and faith in His bestowments. If we desired eagerly the coming of the blessing, how our hearts would leap when the blessing came. It should be a tree of life, as the Book of Proverbs says about hopes fulfilled. But alas! alas! the bulk of professing average Christians of this day are liker the soaked and saturated soil of this summer, which takes in no more of the rain that falls, but lets it stagnate on the surface. Everybody that has ever watered a dry garden knows how the liquid treasure sinks in, and how every particle of earth seems to have a mouth to grasp it, and to make it its own. Do you welcome in that fashion, my brother, God's gifts so lavishly bestowed upon you, or do you let them lie on the surface stagnating and unprofitable as far as you are concerned? Desire them; expect them; welcome them.
Use them. Because in using them you will use them up, and that will leave room for more; and unto him that hath shall be given.' And he that has faithfully utilised the smallest measure of God's gift to him, receives a larger; just as you trust your children with halfpence before you trust them with shillings, and proportion the amount you have put in their hands to what you have seen of the wisdom of their use of the smaller amount.
So, dear friends, to sum it all up, here is the condition of all fruit-bearing. The prime characteristic of a Christian heart ought to be this hungering and thirsting after larger bestowments of God's influences. Alas! alas! for the professing Christians who are impervious to the rain that comes oft upon them. For God's gifts are never inoperative. In countries where the timber has been unwisely felled, and the hillside stripped, the rain has nothing to lay hold of, and nothing to do, and it sweeps down the mountain side in a tawny torrent, bearing away the little superfluous soil that still clings to the rocks, and after a while these stand up gaunt and bare, neither sunshine nor rain can stimulate vegetation on their naked precipitous face, but only crumble them into slow decay. So either we are welcoming God's influences into our hearts, and turning rain into fruit, or they are denuding the soil still more, and making us yet more infertile. The land' that drinketh in the rain' bears the fruit; the land that does not is thereby cursed into more barren barrenness.
