The fruit of the vine Author:Andrew Murray Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. MORE FRUIT " Every branch that beareth fruit, He cieanseth it, that it may bring forth more fruit."—John xv. 2. How clear that the heart of the Father... more », the Divine Husbandman, is set on Fruit I In the whole parable Christ does not speak of anything that the Husbandman seeks or does, but this one thing—He seeks more fruit, and dir-ects His pruning or cleansing to this one end. As surely as His judgment takes away entirely the branch that bears no fruit, his judgment takes away whatever hinders the fruit- bearing. He prunes and cuts the branch that bears fruit, that it may bring forth more fruit. The Husbandman who made us branches of the Vine, and on whom we are entirely dependent for our fruit—let us seek to get into His mind and will. Not till fruit has exactly the same place in our heart. as in His, not till we long for More Fruit as much as He does, not till we seek the cleansing as earnestly as He does, can we fully please Him, or taste the blessedness of the life He calls us to. I am deeply persuaded that our Christian life, that the welfare of the Church and its power to bless, depend far more upon our taking God's view of the supreme importance of fruit-bearing than we think. Nothing is more needful than that the Church should learn, in all her preaching of redemption, to teach all to give fruit the place in their heart that it has in God's. I cannot repeat too often, and cannot beg too earnestly that all would lay it Jo heart, what the parable of the Branch is meant to teach. As entirely as the vine, so the branch too exists only for fruit. As entirely as the natural branch, the believer as branch in the Heavenly Vine, has his place only to bear fruit for the salvation of sinners. Yea, more, as entirely and exclusively as Christ Himself was made a Vine, are we...« less