“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die” (John xii. 24).
Death and resurrection are the central ideas of nature and Christianity.
We see them in the transformation of the chrysalis, in the buried seed
bursting into the bud and blossom of the spring, in the transformation of
the winding sheet of winter to the many tinted robes of spring. We see it
all through the Bible in the symbol of circumcision, with its significance
of death and life, in the passage of the Red Sea and the Jordan leading
out and leading in, and in the Cross of Calvary and the open grave of the
Easter morning. We see it in every deep spiritual life. Every true life is
death-born, and the deeper the dying the truer the living. We doubt not
the months that have been passing have shown us all many a place where
there ought to be a grave, and many a lingering shred of the natural and
sinful which we would gladly lay down in a bottomless grave. God help us
to pass the irrevocable sentence of death and to let the Holy Ghost, the
great undertaker, make the interment eternal. Then our life shall be ever
budding and blossoming and shedding fragrance over all.