How did you first begin to bear fruit? It was when you came to Jesus and cast yourself on his great atonement, when you rested everything on his finished righteousness. Ah! What fruit you produced then! Do you remember those early days? The vine flourished! The tender grapes appeared! The pomegranates budded forth, and the beds of spices gave forth their smell!

Have you declined since then? If you have, I charge you: remember that time of love, repent, and do your first works! Stay most in those practices you've proven by experience draw you nearest to Christ—because it is from him that all your fruits proceed. Any holy exercise that brings you to Jesus will help you bear fruit.

The sun is, no doubt, a great worker in fruit-creating among the trees of the orchard—and Jesus is still more so among the trees of his garden of grace!

When have you been most fruitless? Has it not been when you've lived farthest from the Lord Jesus Christ? When you've slackened in prayer? When you've departed from the simplicity of your faith? When your graces have engrossed your attention instead of your Lord? When you've said, "My mountain stands firm, I shall never be moved," and forgotten where your strength dwells? Has it not been then that your fruit has ceased?

Some of us have been taught that we have nothing outside of Christ by terrible abasements of heart before the Lord. When we have seen the utter barrenness and death of all creature power, we have cried in anguish: "From him all my fruit must be found, for no fruit can ever come from me!"

We are taught by past experience that the more simply we depend upon the grace of God in Christ, and wait upon the Holy Spirit, the more we shall bring forth fruit unto God.

Oh! To trust Jesus for fruit as well as for life!