FROM SEA TO TREE AND FRUIT

The following two chapters were prepared for special occasions commemorative of typical California life. The one on "The Olive in Biblical History" was written by the author in compliance to a request from "The California Ripe Olive Day Association" to be used in the observance of the first California Ripe Olive Day, March 31st, 1915, at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

The chapter on "The Modern Parable of the Orange Tree" was delivered as a special address at Porterville, California, just previous to the beginning of the harvesting of the golden fruit in that section, and is in keeping with "Orange Day" as observed at the Exposition.

And it is well for us to close the book with these chapters for the world view only helps us to appreciate the inland beauty more, and the valleys with their restricted vision only prepare us in return for the world enterprises again.

THE OLIVE IN BIBLICAL HISTORY

In the Old Testament times the olive was recognized as the "fruit of fruits." But during the hurry and rush of Western progress a gross oversight has been committed, especially on the part of the American people, in failing to fully appreciate its value; and as a result the olive has not as yet gained its true leadership here among the elect of the trees, composed of the orange, pear, apple, pomegranate, fig, and date.

But the oversight has been discovered by the pioneers of the olive industry in America, and the signs of the time indicate that the olive will be known here as it was in the Holy Land. And, with the unprecedented developments in the ripe olive industry, it has an opportunity of becoming even more favorably known than ever before.

By a careful study, recall the place that the olive held in the old Promised Land and you will get a faint idea of what we mean by the rediscovery of the olive in this new Promised Land situated here on the coast of our Western empire.

Where the olive originated, we do not know. Some think in Syria. Others are not afraid to say that it is as old as man himself. For not only did it grow previous to the flood, as is indicated by the dove bringing an olive leaf to the ark. But some actually maintain that it was one of the trees that grew in the Garden of Eden, wherever that may have been. And whether such an assertion is far-fetched or not, there is absolutely no reason why this wonderfully fruitful tree should not have been one of the very first trees appearing on the globe for the sustenance of human life.

But wherever it came from, of this Bible students are absolutely certain—that it was the most popular tree in the Promised Land. Indeed, it seems to have been one of the inducements that led the children of Israel escaping from Egyptian captivity to move toward Canaan, the Land of Promise with an irresistible expectancy. For the Promised Land that they were to enter is described—a description which would most accurately apply to our own California—vividly in the Bible as follows:

And not only were these freemen from Egypt encouraged by the fact that they would find the olive with other trees flourishing in the Promised Land; but they were also commanded, according to the author of Deuteronomy, to recognize its superior importance and cultivate it everywhere, in these clearly put words: "Thou shalt have olive trees through all thy coasts." And today the very names of different localities in Palestine, such as the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane—that is, Gath-Semen, which means the "oil press"—indicates the love of those people for the beautiful olive groves, which gently nodded at each other across roads and lanes when wooed by the winds, even as they do in California, this newer Land of Promise.

No one saw how conspicuously and romantically the olive was associated with the early Bible history of these people, as well as the prophet Jotham, who spoke the famous fable of the olive—in which he unmistakably infers that people should recognize it as the most important of the fruits—in these striking and beautiful words, found in the book of Judges:

The olive also held a most conspicuous place in the religious life of the peoples of the Promised Land. Indeed, in the building of Solomon's temple 480 years after the Babylonian captivity, the olive wood was honored by being used in completing the most sacred parts of the edifice. The cherubims, the sacred symbols of Divine wisdom, one on each side of the oracle and each with wings five feet long extending over the temple walls, were made of the olive tree.

In fact, the book of First Kings shows that the olive wood was built into most of the conspicuous parts of the temple, in these definite words:

Not only was the olive given a primary place industrially and religiously; but it was also pressed into service on festive occasions of joy, commemorating historic events. It was used at the great feast of the Tabernacles, in constructing the booths, made principally of olive branches, intermingled with branches from other trees. And when spring hangs her infant blossoms on California's thousands of olive trees, rocked in the cradle of the western breeze, we will not fail to understand why Nehemiah reminds us of the early Jews' deep appreciation of the olive branch as a symbol of joy, in these words:

And the Psalmist himself must have been inspired by the joy that came from the prosperity of these olive groves, when he wrote, in the one hundred and twenty-eighth Psalm:

Indeed, with the Greeks and Romans, the Israelites found that there was no tree that could be used for so many purposes as the olive—its fruit for food, its wood for costly decorations, its branches and blossoms for festive occasions, and its oil for medicine and light. For not only was the olive itself used, but the oil was also used for the anointing of the bodies of the sick, the captive and the dead. And the oil was likewise valued for illuminating purposes in the lamps and vessels in the tabernacle. And how highly they regarded it, we can fully understand by reading these words from Leviticus:

There was no spot in all of Palestine that Christ loved to frequent more than the Mount of Olives, to which he retired for meditation and rest. And why was this? It may have been because of the general outlook that he gained upon nature; which is doubtless true in part. But it was not the primary nor exclusive reason why He resorted to the Mount of Olives. For if there are tongues in trees, as well as sermons in stones, I thoroughly believe that those beautiful olive groves must have said something to His observing mind. What was it? Why did He go to the Mount of Olives?

Perhaps it was because the olive is the symbol of peace. As Ovid said, "In war the olive branch of peace is in use." So the olive groves which the poet Browning says "have the fittest foliage for dreams," may have helped Him in coming from the turmoil of Jerusalem to regain calm and self-control for a warring soul.

Or, as He walked through the orchards, noticing that each tree was sympathetic to the rest and that each appeared to be a neighbor to the rest, He may have been inspired by thoughts similar to those of the eloquent naturalist who said, "The trees live but to love and in all the groves the happy trees love each his neighbor." And as a result He found it more possible to return to His work with a quickened love for His fellow-men.

Or perhaps suggestions for chivalrous meekness came to Him as He observed the gray foliage of the trees modestly glistening in the sunlight. It might have helped Him to say, "Blessed are the meek."

It may have been that the inspiration of timeless time, the power of eternal years, was awakened in His thought by the knowledge of the marvelous age of those trees. He may have known that well cared for trees will live for three hundred years and even longer. For so great is the olive's hold on life that even when a dying tree is cut down close to the ground, its vigorous root will give birth to still another tree.

Or it may have been that the Mount of Olives, clothed with green beauty, like many of our own olive-planted foothills, helped Him more to find the spiritual inspiration of nature than a trip to some other, bald and naked, mountain; helped Him to say:

All these inferences may be true and doubtless are in part. But—if I dare say it—it seems to me that the primary lesson that Christ learned in frequenting the Mount of Olives was the importance of fruitfulness of life. For the predominant characteristic of the olive is fruitfulness. So much so that Spencer in his "Faerie Queen" speaks of the warlike birch—"the beech for shafts," "the ash for nothing ill," "the willow for forlorn paramours;" but always and every time, he speaks of the olive as the "fruitful olive."

And this is the reason why the olive should wave its branches over the other trees. For, like manna, it is a composite growth—a food, a fruit, a medicine. Always fruitful for a three-fold end; and never failing to be prolific, the trees bearing even for centuries.

And this is why the prophet Jotham reports the trees as first urging the olive to become king; and why he felt disappointed when the olive tree, in the beginning, refused, saying:

For, according to the fable, the trees after consulting the fig and vine were finally compelled to temporarily enthrone the worthless bramble as king, even as Israel had selected the most incompetent man for ruler, instead of choosing the most efficient statesman who was available.

But justice and good judgment would not long tolerate the rule of a worthless potentate. So they ultimately succeeded in enthroning a worthy king, in throwing away the bramble and finally crowning the olive to wave its branches modestly but worthily over the other fruit-bearing trees.

THE MODERN PARABLE OF THE ORANGE TREE

It is most appropriate at this season when California is just beginning to harvest its "golden crop" to open wide our eyes and find the message of these beautiful fruit bearing trees. For the Christ, who's mind was quick to pronounce a curse on idleness in the parable of the barren fig tree, would no doubt have been just as alert to have emphasized worthy success by speaking a parable of the orange tree, had there been orange groves in Palistine then as there are today.

But there were no citrus trees in the Holy Land when He walked its highways and crossed through its orchards. Hence the religious worker of today has the advantage over the founder of our faith of a visual acquaintance with this luxuriant tree. Indeed this fruit has, because of its color, become the most attractive of all fruits in modern life, so universally in demand that it seems to me that the orange itself has and is still seeking interpreters. So if, with Ruskin, we can only "open our eyes and see things"—see through and back of things, I am sure that we will clarify the vision of our souls and find emphasized some abiding truths in a new parable of the orange tree.

It would be informing to speak of the first orange fruit found in America—to tell in detail how the Spanish explorers gave the citrus fruit to the Indians of Florida, who in eating it dropped the seeds in the soil, making possible the wild orange groves now beautifying the valley of the Indian river. For this is the romantic story of the origin of the orange tree in America.

Or it would be keenly interesting to every Californian to read about the arrival of the Franciscans in the southern part of our State, who established twenty missions in the rear of each of which was a garden where the orange, olive and fig were planted and bore fruit. Because this explains the inception of the industry in our great commonwealth and puts into our hand the key which unlocks the entrance to these modern gardens of Hesperides—these orange belts now scattered throughout our State.

Or in this day when scholars are feverish to learn the origin of things, we could speak of the world's first orange trees which were found in India. From the two original spices—the bitter and sweet—which were first discovered there, we could trace the evolution of the one hundred different varieties of the citrus fruit which are found in the world today, the original fruit being imported by merchants from India into China in the ninth century and into Europe in the fifteenth century, and then finding its way to America during the period of Spanish exploration.

But we prefer to be interpretive, to come closer home than this. We prefer to consider these fruit bearing orchards as an object lesson immediately at hand and to think of the labor and activity of the people co-operating with nature's forces that have made this golden crop about to be harvested possible. Thus recognizing at once the suggestion coming so eloquently from these trees that, the fundamental secret of all growth in character as well as in nature is adaption to environment and service, not the passive submission of Calvinism alone, nor the uncontrollable egotism of an unrestrained Arminianism, but the union of both, the working of God with man—spiritual co-operation, the most helpful phrase in modern religious thought. So with this primary principle as a premise let us try to interpret in detail the new parable of the orange tree. For the man that has learned its parable has found, as Dr. McClaren would say, the secret of a fine soul culture.

Some days past as I stood upon an elevation commanding a view of that great area of eight thousand acres of orange groves, spreading off into the distance with its wide expanse of tree tops blended into a continuous luxuriant green and its myriads of ripening oranges nestling in the deep green back ground, like countless numbers of gold fish at the surface of a sea or like circular stars in some new sky, these were the three suggestions that came to me as I tried to learn its beautiful parable.

First, the secret of a refined Christian character is an abiding sense of the reality of God, as revealed in Christ. For the finest spirits, the deepest minds and the most arresting personalities from Gladstone and Lincoln down to the ordinary citizen, have been those that have drawn their inspiration and thought from hidden sources. Just as the fruit and leaves of these trees receive their rich color from the sunbeams and absorb their health from the moisture coming from the heart of God's hills, so the cultured souls of history have received their winsome illumination of personality from a light that shineth neither by land nor sea.

We realize that these trees could not grow where there is limited sunshine and a restricted water supply. Neither can men find moral maturity and health until they possess that type of mind which is characterized by spiritual reality. We know that California's far-famed orange orchards would not be possible without incessant sunlight; and that our golden fruit would never again pass through the Golden Gate to the markets of the world, if the sun did not appear to shower down upon our orchards its magic beauty gathered in its own paradise beyond the gates of the morning. But Tennyson, who had a sane knowledge and appreciation of the Sun of Righteousness, was also well aware of the secret of a beautiful life when he said of those who had not discovered it,

At first I could not understand why the owners cultivated their orchards so incessantly. But when I was told by one of the experts that continual pulverizing of the soil made the moisture more accessible to the roots, permitted the oxygen of the air to find its way to the tree, and liberated the nitrogen in the soil so that it would be absorbed, then I saw clearly that there was a scientific reason for the constant harrowing; and felt that it might be very practical to demand that we deepen our convictions so that we can go into the fields of human life equipped with the mighty contagion of something to say that will go deeper than the ears, to harrow the inner life of patronizing listeners. For without the prophet whose harrowing words opens up a way to the nerve of conscience and quickens the deeper emotions of the soul men will not become eager to receive truth and the masses will remain proselytes of mammon and low ideals. Indeed the irresistible characters in religious service like the great singers are those who have had their hearts broken; but at the same time and as a result, their interest in righteousness deepened and their wills nourished and strengthened.

These trees are peculiarly beautiful and strong because they send their roots into a well prepared soil thrilling with the liberated elements of life and their branches into God's air to woo the purity of the sunlight. And the young who are to lead us safely in the future are those whose souls have been cultured by helpful and trying experiences—those who have been taught to think deeply, to see far in vision and to act bravely because the conviction of truth and experience has liberated from the subconscious mind—or the subsoil of their lives—those elements which send through the whole man the iron of the prophet and the revealed wisdom of the apostle.

One of the strange characteristics about the orange is that the tree is unusually sensitive and the fruit very hardy. Indeed the tree can be blighted by a frost that will not injure deciduous fruits so that it must be planted in localities protected by a warm climate and God's hills, and often watched and tended like an infant child. But the orange itself, which is so hardy, has an advantage over many other varieties of fruits and can be shipped into any market in the world. For the citrus fruit is not perishable in the same sense that the plums and peaches are and after being removed from the trees may be kept for weeks with advantage without being destroyed by decay or losing its beauty.

I say this is rather unusual. But, to mention the second lesson of the parable, it is no stranger than the guiding of youth through the formative years into a maturity, morally beautiful and capable of vision. And it is only as the home and school, the church and state watch over these sensitive periods, protecting the young from the blights of the frosts of skepticism and sensuality that their lives will mature into characters as golden and hardy as our native fruit. Sane, honorable evangelism never excludes Christian nurture any more than the sunlight obviates the necessity of soil cultivation.

The orange tree, it is true, does not tower in height and conspicuous leadership like the giant Sequoias and Redwoods—although it is said that the bitter specie of the tree occasionally acquires considerable diameter and that the trunk of one near Nice still standing in 1789 became so large that two men could scarcely embrace it. The citrus tree does not tower like Babel. But better yet, it simply bears fruit for food—which the giants of the forest fail to do—like the strong men who prefer only to be reliably useful.

And this third thought suggested by our object lesson is most apparent. For with the instinct of good Americans we hasten to declare that the sight of these trees all comparatively of the same height and vibrant with the same beauty and glow of health does not suggest a monarchy, an aristocracy or even a plutocracy but rather a successful democracy; not only one of an equality of rights, because they all have access to the same sunlight and soil, but also an equality of duty because they all seek to bear fruit—a commonwealth in which every private citizen is capable of being an uncrowned king. This must have been the lesson that Ruskin interpreted from nature when he said: "A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable in effect, a mass of one species of trees is sublime."

And thus as I stood on the highest foothill overlooking these valleys, these were the most important thoughts that were suggested to me by what I saw—the necessity of these three qualities in the forming of mature character, faith in God, the guidance and protection of friendship and education for youth, and useful service, all of which condensed into a single phrase means the co-operation of God with man in producing the beautiful fruit of a refined, symmetrical life.

And then it dawned upon me that a number of other men had also learned parables from the trees. For as I looked over that great expanse of orchards to the south, detecting the irrigating streams flowing among the trees, with patches of the barren desert appearing here and there in striking contrast, the results of an abiding faith in God came to me in the words of David:

And finally as I descended the foothill and came long side of an orchard and saw a barren, scrubby trunk next to a splendid orange tree vigorous and laden down with fruit, the words of Christ pressed to my lips for utterance: "By their fruit ye shall know them. * * * A good tree cannot bear evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bear good fruit."

It was then that I said to myself, why should not all men observe and find the helpful parable in this favorite California tree. Because we are more than mere animals we should rebel against hearing the terrible parable of a barren fig tree pronounced on our lives. But if we profit by the thoughts suggested by a modern parable of the orange tree, then our spirit will be as beautiful and wholesome as the eternal green of its leaves, our character as golden as its fruit and our deeds as numerous as its blossoms, for often the new blossoms appear before the ripe fruit has been picked from the branches.

FOOTNOTES: