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to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city", and the `perfecting' of the
spirits of just men in 11: 16; 12: 23.
It was toward this goal that the Apostle urged the Hebrew believers to `go on unto
perfection'. The `weight' which they were counseled to `lay aside' would include those
things mentioned in 6: 2, a passage we have already seen in close connection with Esau
and his vain seeking for repentance (6: 4-6; xii.16, 17).
By assembling the different passages together in the epistle to the Hebrews where an
inheritance is in view, we realize something of the purport of chapter 1: 4. He, the Lord,
is the great Inheritor, and all who follow in His steps, who run with patience the race set
before them, will not only be saved by grace, but `inherit' salvation, `inherit' promises,
and `reign' as well as live with Him in glory.
What the glory of the world was over which the angels had authority we can only
guess; we know however, that as surely as Christ has by His finished Work obtained a
more excellent name than they, so surely will the inheritance that is His excel in glory.
This is once again the outworking of that principle which we have seen all along, the
principle of the Pleroma.
No.10.
Behold the fig tree, and all the trees.
pp. 104 - 108
The reader may at times have wondered why the whole issue of life and death should
have `hung upon a tree' in the garden of Eden, and as the choice of this emblem
manifests something of the wisdom and knowledge of the Lord, it may not be amiss if we
turn our attention to the place that `trees' occupy in the working out of the purpose of the
ages.
It is only within our own times that the extensive importance of trees to the well being
of the world has been recognized as the following extracts will show:
"Every moment that he draws breath here below man is dependent on the grass of the
field for his very being. Sir Thomas Browne knew this and pointed it out in Religio
Medici. `All flesh is grass, is not only metaphorically, but literally true; for all those
creatures that we behold are but the herbs of the field digested into flesh in them, or more
remotely in ourselves'. In the fourth chapter of this present book, Mr. Baker puts the
same thought into a few words `Thus the tree, with the help of plant life, controls the
food supply and life of man and of the animal kingdom'.
A great deal of Mr. Baker's writing in all his books has been concerned with the
disasters that follow when man forgets that he is not the world's master, but one of many
tenants. The tenants are animate and inanimate--or so we chose to call them, though the
animation of a tree is an inescapable thing, and some trees take on the proportions of
majestic personality. But, call them what we may, the further we go into the matter the
more deeply we apprehend that men and trees, grass and birds, the beasts of the field and
all living things are held in a balance that may not lightly be disturbed . . . . . We find in