I.
Death the Condition of Feuitfulness in Nature.
The illustration which our Saviour employs is generic. Take a particle of grain into your hand. It is round and complete; hard and self-contained. It seems to be dead, but there lies within it the possibility of a wondrous and manifold life. The mystery of life sleeps within it. The beauty of summer lies hidden in its dark and narrow breast. But of it the paradox is true, that it is dead, because it has not died. It must die in order to become alive. It must be cast away from the hand of the sower, fall into the ground, and be buried in darkness. Its outer form must be broken up and decay, that the dormant life
500 FRUITFULNESS THROUGH DEATH
within it may be awakened, and manifested, and its beautiful and manifold being come out of the prison-house of its loneliness, and wave and rustle and shine in the sunlight. Unless it go through this process, it remains a lonely and unproductive seed. Every seed is alone until it dies. It may be laid up with other seeds in the store house ; but in the midst of multitudes it is alone. It has no living union with any, being cut off from the universal life ; and the reason why it escapes from its loneliness through death is, that thereby its individual life is placed in living contact with the all-pervading life of nature. When it is embedded in the soil, it is no longer alone, but unites itself with the universal life ; and thus the day of its death is the day of its birth to a higher life.
^ Every annual plant dies when it has produced blossom and fruit ; every individual branch in a tree which corresponds with an annual plant also dies when it has blossomed and fruited. It is interesting to notice the strange effect of the effort to flower in the American aloe. It appears to exhaust all its energies, so that the huge, fleshy leaves, which before stood firm and erect, gradually shrink, shrivel, and droop as the process of inflorescence advances, and the plant becomes a mere ghost of its former self. So, too, the Talipat palm, which lives to a great age and attains a lofty stature, flowers only once, but it bears an enormous quantity of blossoms, succeeded by a crop of nuts sufficient to supply a large district with seed, while the tree immediately perishes from the exhaustion of over-production. These are beautiful illustra- tions of the natural love of self-sacrifice.^
^ This law of self-sacrifice is embedded in nature. Minot, the embryologist, and Drummond, the scientist, tell us that only by losing its life does the cell save it. The new science exhibits the body as a temple, constructed out of cells, as a building is made of bricks. Just as some St. Peter's represents strange marble from Athens, beauteous woods from Cyprus, granite from Italy, porphyry from Egypt, all brought together in a single cathedral, so the human body is a glorious temple built by those architects called living cells. When the scientist searches out the beginning of bird or bud or acorn he comes to a single cell. Under the microscope that cell is seen to be absorbing nutrition through its outer covering. But when the cell has attained a certain size its life is suddenly threatened. The centre of the cell is seen to be so far from the surface that it can no longer draw in the nutrition
* Hugh Macmillan.
ST. JOHN XII. 24 501
from without. The bulk has outrun the absorbing surface. " The alternative is very sharp," says the scientist, " the cell must divide or die." Only by losing its life and becoming two cells can it save its life.
Later on, when each of the two cells has grown again to the size of the original one, the same peril threatens them and they too must divide or die. And when, through this law of saving life by losing it, nature has made sure the basis for bud and bird, for beast and man, then the principle of sacrifice goes on to secure beauty of the individual plant or animal and perpetuity for the species. In the centre of each grain of wheat there is a golden spot that gives a yellow cast to the fine flour. That spot is called the germ. When the germ sprouts and begins to increase, the white flour taken up as food begins to decrease. As the plant waxes, the surrounding kernel wanes. The life of the higher means the death of the lower. In the orchard also the flower must fall that the fruit may swell If the young apple grows large, it must begin by pushing off the blossom. But by losing the lower bud the tree saves the higher fruit.^
First the grain, and then the blade — The one destroyed, the other made ; Then stalk and blossom, and again The gold of newly minted grain.
So Life, by Death the reaper cast To earth, again shall rise at last; For 'tis the service of the sod To render God the things of God.*
II.
Death the Condition of Fruitfulness in the Life of Christ.
1. The need for Christ's death. — A comparison of the good done by the life of Christ with that done by His death shows how truly He judged when He declared that it was by His death He should effectually gather all men to Him. His death, Hke the dissolution of the seed, seemed to terminate His work, but really was its germination. So long as He lived, it was but His single strength that was used ; He abode alone. There was great virtue in His life — great power for the healing, the instruction, the 1 N. D. Hillis, The Investment of Infiuenu^ 159. ' John B. T»bb.