ship God in sincerity of heart; so shall he bless thee in all things, and keep thee to the end.
March Sixteenth.
RIPE AND UNRIPE FRUIT.
"My soul desired the first ripe fruit."—Micah vii. 1.
IT is evidently apparent from the language of the Prophet Micah, as contained in this chapter, that he laments the absence of all spiritual religion, both in the church generally and in the minds of the people; for he says, "Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grape gleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desireth the first ripe fruit. The good man is perished out of the earth, and there is none upright among men." When there is none upright among men, true religion has faded away, and the garden of the soul, which should be luxuriant in both fruits of love and flowers of wisdom, will have become a barren and dreary desert. To give a clear explanation of ripe and unripe fruit, and why the soul should desire the former, and indeed the fruit that is first ripe, it should be known that, in Scripture, heavenly states of mind, relative to affection and thought, are outwardly represented by the varied objects in nature. This is in agreement with the apostolic rule of Scripture interpretation: "The invisible things of God are seen and understood by the things that are made." (Rom. i. 20.) This will appear the more evident, by observing the things of the vegetable kingdom, and watching their progressive growth from
