Preachers – Fruit and Flower. – Charles Spurgeon

At Hampton Court Palace everyone regards with wonder the enormous vine loaded Svith so vast a multitude of huge clusters: just outside the vine-house is as fine a specimen of the wistaria, and when it is in full bloom, the cluster-like masses of bloom, cause you to think it a flower-bearing vine, as the other is a fruit-bearing vine. Fit emblems these two famous trees of two ministries, both admired, but not equally to be prized; the ministry of oratory, luxuriant in metaphor and poetry, and the ministry of grace.’, abounding in sound teaching and soul saving- energy. Gay as are the flower- clusters of the wistaria, no one mistakes them for the luscious bunches of the grape; yet there are many simpletons in spiritual things who mistake sound for sense and seem to satisfy their hunger not on solid meat, but on the jingle of a musical dinner bell.