xvi. APPLES OF SODOM. 295 



beyond the river of death. Blessed beyond Adam, 

 blessed beyond the angels of heaven, are they who are 

 called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. There 

 through the loss of the divine image they have attained 

 to the divine likeness ; and, created anew in Christ Jesus 

 in the image and likeness of God, the spirits of just 

 men are waste perfect. 



In the light of these reflections, what a deep signifi- 

 cance attaches to the apples of Sodom ! As symbols 

 of the fruits which sin produces, they are exceedingly 

 striking. These fruits are galls morbid, not natural, 

 products the result of the working of a foreign element, 

 a poisonous principle in the human soul. The spirit 

 that worketh in the children of disobedience gives rise to 

 them. The life of the soul is perverted thereby from its 

 original purpose ; and that which ought to have gone to 

 develop the peaceable fruits of righteousness, in con- 

 formity with God's design, produces instead the evil 

 works of the flesh. God made man upright made the 

 human tree good, and the fruit would have been the 

 harmonious outcome of his nature had he continued in 

 God's plan and order of his life ; but he sought out 

 many inventions, he corrupted his nature, so that the 

 fruit which it yields is the suitable outcome of a corrupt 

 and degenerate nature. But notwithstanding this per- 

 version, this sad deviation from God's purpose, the 

 morbid excrescences of sin retain the type of the normal 

 fruits of righteousness. Evil is an imitation of good, 

 only on a lower plane, in defect or excess. Sin cannot 

 altogether depart from the pattern of holiness, and 



