A FRUIT tree sprang up from a seed in the corner of a certain man’s field. It grew rapidly and put forth branches. Great was the man’s delight when he saw these bearing blossoms.

“Now I shall have fruit of my own,” he said.

Autumn came and the fruit appeared, but as it ripened, instead of growing round and rich and mellow, it grew knotted and hard and bitter to the taste.

“’Tis because it is young and the soil where it stands thin and poor,” the land-owner said.

Then he loosened the ground around its roots and enriched and watered it, and afterward waited for spring. Spring came, and again the tree put forth blossoms and bore fruit, more abundantly than before; but it was worthless and unfit to be eaten.

Another winter passed and spring returned once more, and one sunny morning, as the land-owner stood looking at his tree and repining over it, there came a gardener by that way.

“What troubles you?” he said, seeing the man’s sad face.

“My tree has proved worthless,” replied the other. “Yet I have done all that could be done to it, and still it bears only evil fruit.”

At this the gardener took out his pruning-knife and opening it, he came to the tree and at one stroke severed its top, with all its spreading boughs, so that they fell down on the ground, as fit only for the burning. Then he made a deep cleft in the stock of the tree, and into this he inserted a young shoot that he carried with him. Next he anointed, with clay, the wound that his knife had made, and wrapped it about carefully, and, turning to the land-owner, said:

“Be patient; give it time. All yet will be well.”

Another season came. The new shoot put forth buds; it blossomed, and then (after the gardener had grafted it, but not before) the tree brought forth good fruit.

There is a life which is ours by natural inheritance, and another which comes only as a free gift. Though both are housed in the same body, they are received at different times and have each a separate existence and destiny.