ON a ridge of sandstone rock, on the borders of a park near Wellington, in Somersetshire, stands a fine old oak-tree. Its noble boughs throw their leafy shadow right across the high-road which runs below, and reach even into the field on the opposite side, and, in sunshine and rain, afford a welcome shelter to the wayfarer. Far and near this tree is known as “The Old Oak,” and it is not unlikely that it stood there before the road below it was cut through the sandstone, and when the whole region round about was one vast forest, stretching fax away over the Blackdown Hills in the distance. Perhaps the Saxon swineherd has led his pigs to feed upon its acorns while he sat beneath its shade, and the red-deer, yet found wild in Somerset, has whetted his wide antlers on its trunk.
Oaks, you know, are very slow of growth, especially when rooted in a rock, as this is; and you may rely upon it many a generation has lived from infancy to old age, and passed away, since that old tree first peeped a little sapling from an acorn, out of the greensward, and grew up to its present size. Many a one has played beneath its boughs a little child, and lived to grow up, and grow old, and walk with Gray head, and bent with age beneath those same branches. What a difference there is between the life of a man and that of a tree! If this world were all, what poor creatures we should be! Why, even the works of a man’s own hands outlive him. Have you ever looked on an old book, and considered that the hand that wrote it, and he who printed it, and those who made the paper and the binding, and they who put the book together, are all gone down into the grave? The book outlives them all, and he who wrote it, “being dead, yet speaketh.” But where is he? Ah, dear little reader, that is a solemn question; and if you think over what I have been saying about The Old Oak-tree or an old book, I am sure you will see two things first, that this life is but as “a vapor that appeareth for a little while, and then vanisheth away,” and that it is a poor thing indeed to be wholly taken up with; and, secondly, that the future state — that which we pass into when this state ends — is, after all, the one that we should think most about. Where are all those little boys who used to climb The-Old Oak-tree to gather acorns, when its stem was not too great for their arms to grasp? You can hardly fancy little boys growing old and Gray, and so bent with age as to be scarcely able even to look up to the lofty boughs where once they climbed and laughed and shouted to each other — can you? Yet so it has been with many, many little boys since The Old Oak first threw its shadow on the grass; and they are all gone — but the tree still stands erect and stately, no hollow in its trunk, no shattered limbs, no sign of decay about it. Well, then, I say that, if this life were all, a tree is better than a man: “For there is hope of a tree (even), if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.... But man dieth, and wasteth away yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?” (Job 14:7-107For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. 8Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; 9Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. 10But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? (Job 14:7‑10)). Ah, that is the question — “Where is he?” You see, the great thing is his future state, his condition after he has passed away from a scene in which even a tree outlives him, and therefore, as to this world, is stronger than he. “Where is he?” He still exists — but where? Now, the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ knows where he will be — nay, more, where he is (in spirit) already; for the Word of God tells him that he is seated “in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2), and should he die before the Lord comes (1 Thess. 4:16, 1716For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16‑17)), it will be “to depart and be with Christ” — “absent from the body, present with the Lord” — there to wait for the moment when, at the coming of the Lord, he shall be clothed with his house which is from heaven, that is, his glorified body (2 Cor. 5). And in that body he will live and “reign forever and ever” with the Lord. No Old Oak-tree will outlive him then; but when “the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Peter 3); when heaven and earth have passed away (Rev. 20:1111And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. (Revelation 20:11)), he will still live on in glory.
Let us hope that some, perhaps many, of those who once as boys, in years long past, played beneath or climbed about The Old Oak-tree were brought to Jesus. If so, their sins were forgiven them for His name’s sake, for “the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from, all sin.” Their “life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3); and, though their bodies are sleeping now, it may well be in the old churchyard hard by The Old Oak, their spirits are “present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:88We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:8)): not unconscious, as some foolish people talk, but present with the Lord. But what shall we say of the unbeliever who has gone down to the grave a rejector of Jesus? His boyhood, manhood, and old age all wasted — “where is he?” “There is hope of a tree” — there is no hope of him (Rev. 20:1515And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:15)). “Good were it for that man if he had not been born.” Better to have been but an old tree by the wayside, giving shelter to the birds, a shadow from the heat, and beauty to the landscape, “bringing forth his fruit in his season,” and so answering the end for which it was created, than to have lived and died as one “having no hope, and without God in the world.”
May you, dear young reader, ponder these things whenever you think of THE OLD OAK-TREE.
J. L. K.