15. That happy man, then, will become like
unto this tree when he shall be transplanted, as the thief was, into
the garden and set to grow beside the rills of water: and his
planting will be that happy new planting which cannot be uprooted, to
which the Lord refers in the Gospels when He curses the other kind of
planting and says: Every planting that My Father hath not
planted shall be rooted up St. Matt. xv. 13.. This
tree, therefore, will yield its fruits. Now in all other passages
where God’s Word teaches some lesson from the fruits of trees, it
mentions them as making fruit rather than as yielding fruit, as when it
says: A good tree cannot make evil fruits Ib. vii.
18., and when in Isaiah the complaint about
the vine is: I looked that it should make grapes, and it made
thorns Is. v. 2.. But
this tree will yield its fruits, being supplied with free-will and
understanding for the purpose. For it will yield its fruits in
its own season. And, pray, in what season? In the season,
of course, of which the Apostle speaks: That He might make
known unto you also the mystery of His Will, according to His good
pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself, in the dispensation of the
fulness of time Eph. i. 9.. This,
then, is the dispensation of time, by which is regulated the right
moment of receiving, in the case of the recipients, and of giving, in
that of the giver; for the giver has choice of the season. But
delay in point of time depends upon the fulness of times. For the
dispensation of yielding fruit waits upon the fulness of time.
Now what, you ask, is this fruit that is to be dispensed? That
assuredly of which this same Apostle is speaking when he says:
And He will change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like His
glorious body Phil. iii. 21.. Thus He
will give us those fruits of His which He has already brought to
perfection in that man whom He has chosen to Himself who is portrayed
under the image of a tree, whose mortality He has utterly done away and
has raised him to share in His own immortality.