The burning pen of inspiration, ranging heaven and earth for
a similitude, to convey to our poor minds some not inadequate
idea of the mighty doctrine of the resurrection, can find no
symbol so expressive as “bare grain, it may chance of wheat
or some other grain.” To-day a senseless plant, to-morrow it
is human bone and muscle, vein and artery, sinew and nerve;
beating pulse, heaving lungs, toiling, ah, sometimes overtoiling
brain. Last June, it sucked from the cold breast of the earth
the watery nourishment of its distending sap-vessels; and now
it clothes the manly form with warm, cordial flesh; quivers
and thrills with the five-fold mystery of sense; purveys and
administers to the higher mystery of thought. Heaped up in your
granaries this week, the next it will strike in the stalwart
arm, and glow in the blushing cheek, and flash in the beaming
eye; till we learn at last to realize that the slender stalk,
which we have seen shaken by the summer breeze, bending in the
corn-field under the yellow burden of harvest, is indeed the
“staff of life,” which, since the world began, has supported
the toiling and struggling myriads of humanity on the mighty
pilgrimage of being.--EDWARD EVERETT.
(1290)