An Antidote

There grows in the West Indies a tree of surpassing beauty.  It’s fruit which resembles a golden apple, emits the most delicious fragrance.  Strangers, ignorant of it’s appearance, sometimes pluck and eat this fruit whose juice is deadly poisonous.  This tree, however, called the “manchineel,” is always found beside a white wood or fig tree, the sap of either of which if applied is a sovereign antidote to the evil it occasions.  Sin, like the poisonous apple, is pleasant to the taste but when tasted it brings death to the soul.  But a remedy has been graciously provided by God against it, for where “sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” (Rom. 5:20)