trees

59:5.22The plants of these times were spore bear­ing, and the wind was able to spread them far and wide. The trunks of the Car­bonif­er­ous trees were com­monly seven feet in di­am­e­ter and of­ten one hun­dred and twenty-five feet high. The mod­ern ferns are truly relics of these by­gone ages.

70:1.3An­don taught his chil­dren to set­tle dis­putes by each beat­ing a tree with a stick, mean­while curs­ing the tree; the one whose stick broke first was the vic­tor. The later An­don­ites used to set­tle dis­putes by hold­ing a pub­lic show at which the dis­putants made fun of and ridiculed each other, while the au­di­ence de­cided the win­ner by its ap­plause.

85:2.4Ideas about tree spir­its var­ied greatly among dif­fer­ent tribes and races. Some trees were in­dwelt by kindly spir­its; oth­ers har­bored the de­cep­tive and cruel. The Finns be­lieved that most trees were oc­cu­pied by kind spir­its. The Swiss long mis­trusted the trees, be­liev­ing they con­tained tricky spir­its. The in­hab­i­tants of In­dia and east­ern Rus­sia re­gard the tree spir­its as be­ing cruel. The Patag­o­ni­ans still wor­ship trees, as did the early Semites. Long af­ter the He­brews ceased tree wor­ship, they con­tin­ued to ven­er­ate their var­i­ous de­i­ties in the groves. Ex­cept in China, there once ex­isted a uni­ver­sal cult of the tree of life.

140:3.19“I warn you against false proph­ets who will come to you in sheep’s cloth­ing, while on the in­side they are as raven­ing wolves. By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes from thorns or figs from this­tles? Even so, ev­ery good tree brings forth good fruit, but the cor­rupt tree bears evil fruit. A good tree can­not yield evil fruit, nei­ther can a cor­rupt tree pro­duce good fruit. Ev­ery tree that does not bring forth good fruit is pres­ently hewn down and cast into the fire. In gain­ing an en­trance into the king­dom of heaven, it is the mo­tive that counts. My Fa­ther looks into the hearts of men and judges by their in­ner long­ings and their sin­cere in­ten­tions.

140:8.22Je­sus did not ve­he­mently de­nounce even the Phar­isees, as did John. He knew many of the scribes and Phar­isees were hon­est of heart; he un­der­stood their en­slav­ing bond­age to re­li­gious tra­di­tions. Je­sus laid great em­pha­sis on “first mak­ing the tree good.” He im­pressed the three that he val­ued the whole life, not just a cer­tain few spe­cial virtues.

142:5.2“As to my mes­sage and the teach­ing of my dis­ci­ples, you should judge them by their fruits. If we pro­claim to you the truths of the spirit, the spirit will wit­ness in your hearts that our mes­sage is gen­uine. Con­cern­ing the king­dom and your as­sur­ance of ac­cep­tance by the heav­enly Fa­ther, let me ask what fa­ther among you who is a wor­thy and kind­hearted fa­ther would keep his son in anx­i­ety or sus­pense re­gard­ing his sta­tus in the fam­ily or his place of se­cu­rity in the af­fec­tions of his fa­ther’s heart? Do you earth fa­thers take plea­sure in tor­tur­ing your chil­dren with un­cer­tainty about their place of abid­ing love in your hu­man hearts? Nei­ther does your Fa­ther in heaven leave his faith chil­dren of the spirit in doubt­ful un­cer­tainty as to their po­si­tion in the king­dom. If you re­ceive God as your Fa­ther, then in­deed and in truth are you the sons of God. And if you are sons, then are you se­cure in the po­si­tion and stand­ing of all that con­cerns eter­nal and di­vine son­ship. If you be­lieve my words, you thereby be­lieve in Him who sent me, and by thus be­liev­ing in the Fa­ther, you have made your sta­tus in heav­enly cit­i­zen­ship sure. If you do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, you shall never fail in the at­tain­ment of the eter­nal life of prog­ress in the di­vine king­dom.

153:4.4“Many of you have this day come to the part­ing of the ways; you have come to a be­gin­ning of the mak­ing of the in­ev­i­ta­ble choice be­tween the will of the Fa­ther and the self-cho­sen ways of dark­ness. And as you now choose, so shall you even­tu­ally be. You must ei­ther make the tree good and its fruit good, or else will the tree be­come cor­rupt and its fruit cor­rupt. I de­clare that in my Fa­ther’s eter­nal king­dom the tree is known by its fruits. But some of you who are as vipers, how can you, hav­ing al­ready cho­sen evil, bring forth good fruits? Af­ter all, out of the abun­dance of the evil in your hearts your mouths speak.”

135:6.7John was a heroic but tact­less preacher. One day when he was preach­ing and bap­tiz­ing on the west bank of the Jor­dan, a group of Phar­isees and a num­ber of Sad­ducees came for­ward and pre­sented them­selves for bap­tism. Be­fore lead­ing them down into the wa­ter, John, ad­dress­ing them as a group said: “Who warned you to flee, as vipers be­fore the fire, from the wrath to come? I will bap­tize you, but I warn you to bring forth fruit wor­thy of sin­cere re­pen­tance if you would re­ceive the re­mis­sion of your sins. Tell me not that Abra­ham is your fa­ther. I de­clare that God is able of these twelve stones here be­fore you to raise up wor­thy chil­dren for Abra­ham. And even now is the ax laid to the very roots of the trees. Ev­ery tree that brings not forth good fruit is des­tined to be cut down and cast into the fire.” (The twelve stones to which he re­ferred were the re­puted memo­rial stones set up by Joshua to com­mem­o­rate the cross­ing of the “twelve tribes” at this very point when they first en­tered the prom­ised land.)

166:4.9“There was a cer­tain man who planted a fig tree in his yard, and when he had many times sought fruit thereon and found none, he called the vine­dressers be­fore him and said: ‘Here have I come these three sea­sons look­ing for fruit on this fig tree and have found none. Cut down this bar­ren tree; why should it en­cum­ber the ground?’ But the head gar­dener an­swered his mas­ter: ‘Let it alone for one more year so that I may dig around it and put on fer­til­izer, and then, next year, if it bears no fruit, it shall be cut down.’ And when they had thus com­plied with the laws of fruit­ful­ness, since the tree was liv­ing and good, they were re­warded with an abun­dant yield.

85:2.3The cults of tree wor­ship are among the old­est re­li­gious groups. All early mar­riages were held un­der the trees, and when women de­sired chil­dren, they would some­times be found out in the for­est af­fec­tion­ately em­brac­ing a sturdy oak. Many plants and trees were ven­er­ated be­cause of their real or fan­cied medic­i­nal pow­ers. The sav­age be­lieved that all chem­i­cal ef­fects were due to the di­rect ac­tiv­ity of super­nat­u­ral forces.

85:2.5The be­lief that wa­ter or pre­cious met­als be­neath the earth’s sur­face can be de­tected by a wooden di­vin­ing rod is a relic of the an­cient tree cults. The May­pole, the Christ­mas tree, and the su­per­sti­tious prac­tice of rap­ping on wood per­pet­u­ate cer­tain of the an­cient cus­toms of tree wor­ship and the later-day tree cults.