I. Looking at an apple from a morphological point of view, we find that it is an arrested branch. Instead of going on to develop more wood and foliage, a branch terminates in an apple; and in this apple the sap and substance that would have prolonged the branch are concentrated, and hence its enlarged size and capability of expansion. We behold in it, as in a glass, a very striking natural example of the law of self-sacrifice; that law which pervades all nature, and upon which the welfare and stability of nature depend. It is in this self-sacrifice of the plant that all its beauty comes out and culminates.
II. The little globe of the apple is a microcosm, representing within its miniature sphere the changes and processes which go on in the great world. Life and death, growth and decay, fight their battle on its humble stage. While it hangs upon its stem, it is in some kind of magnetic correspondence with all the powers of nature; it shares the life of the earth and the sky. It is an embodiment of the air and the sunshine, and the dew. But its special charm consists not in its' scientific teaching or in its material utilities. Who would care to study an apple or any other natural object, were it not for its religious side? Nothing can be simpler and lowlier than such an object lesson. It is nigh unto us, in our very mouths, familiar to every child, but its simplicity is the mystery of the unsearchable God, the depth of the clear but unfathomable heaven. Autumn is the season of revealing; and the fruit is ripened when the foliage that hid the orchard is stripped off, and all its secrets are opened to the glances of the sun. But no autumn of revelation comes to this tree of knowledge, and we pluck its fruit from the bough in the midst of mysteries that conceal even while they reveal it that baffle even while they instruct us. But these mysteries are favourable to faith and to a simple, childlike trust, leaving what it cannot understand, with a wise contentment, in the infinity of God.
H. Macmillan, Two Worlds are Ours,p. 213.
References: Song of Solomon 2:7. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxv., No. 1463.Song of Solomon 2:8. Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 80. Song of Solomon 2:8-17. R. M. McCheyne, Memoir and Remains,p. 437. Song of Solomon 2:9. S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches,p. 168. Song of Solomon 2:10. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 116. Song of Solomon 2:10-12. J. M. Neale, Sermon on the Song of Songs,p. 92; J. H. Newman, Sermons on Various Occasions,p. 190. Song of Solomon 2:10-13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. viii., No. 436.