The fig is often mentioned in the Bible, and two kinds
are spoken of--the very early fig, and the one that ripens late in the
summer. The early fig was considered the best; and I think that Clara
will tell us what is said of it by the prophet Jeremiah."
Clara read slowly:
"'One basket had very good figs, _even like the figs that are first
ripe_; and the other basket had very naughty figs, which could not be
eaten, they were so bad[16].'"
[16] Jer. xxiv. 2.
"But can figs be naughty, Miss Harson?" asked Edith, with very
wide-open eyes. "I thought that only children were naughty,"
"There are 'naughty' grown people as well as naughty children," was the
reply, "and inanimate things like figs in old times were called naughty
too, in the sense of being bad.--The fruit of the fig tree appears not
only before the leaves, but without any sign of blossoms, the flowers
being small and hidden in the little buttons which first shoot out from
the points of the sterns, and around which the outer and firm part of
the fig grows. The leaves come out so late in the season that our
Saviour said, 'Now learn a parable of the fig tree; when his branch is
yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh[17].'
Did not our Lord say something else about a fig tree?"
[17] Matt. xxiv. 32.
"Yes," replied Clara; "the one that was withered away because it had no
figs on it."
"The barren fig tree which was withered at our Saviour's word, as an
awful warning to unfruitful professors of religion, seems to have spent
itself in leaves.
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