Bearing much Fruit

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 21, 1864

Bearing much Fruit.

GREAT stress is laid here upon the word "much;" but how much is it? The word is comparative. What would be much with one person would be very little with another. The single hour which the overworked seamstress snatches from her ill paid labor to devote to her prayer-meeting or her tract-distribution is more than whole days devoted to God's service by the moneyed man of leisure. And her dollar—given at the cost of a supperless night's rest or a fireless room—really outshines the one thousand "greenbacks" which the millionaire flings into charitable treasuries from his enormous heap. The thorough teaching of a mission-school class by some pious mechanic is a full match, in God's sight, with the delivery of one of those colossal sermons with which Chalmers used to "make the rafters roar." It costs quite as much labor for one to teach three boys as it did for the other to teach three thousand men.

"Much fruit" means simply the giving to Christ the best we have got. It is the lading of every bough on life's tree—be that tree a giant or a dwarf. He who, in the humblest walk of life, walks according to the Bible, employs his time, controls his words, directs his choices, and regulates his conduct so as to glorify his Saviour, and make his religion clear and legible to all about—such an one bears much fruit.