d so, as Easter day has given us strength to live, let Easter day, too,
give us strength to die.

SERMON XI. EASTER DAY

Chester Cathedral. 1870.

St John xii. 24, 25. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it
bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he
that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."

This is our Lord's own parable. In it He tells us that His death, His
resurrection, His ascension, is a mystery which we may believe, not only
because the Bible tells us of it, but because it is reasonable, and
according to the laws of His universe; a fulfilment, rather say the
highest fulfilment, of one of those laws which runs through the world of
nature, and through the spiritual and heavenly world likewise. "Except a
corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone;"--barren,
useless, and truly dead to the rest of the world around it, because it is
shut up in itself, and its hidden life, with all its wondrous powers of
growth and fertility, remains undeveloped, and will remain so, till it
decays away, a worthless thing, into worthless dust. But if it be buried
in the earth a while, then the rich life which lay hid in it is called
out by that seeming death, and it sprouts, tillers, and flowers, and
ripens its grain--forty-fold, sixty-fold, an hundred-fold; and so it
shows God's mind and will concerning it. It shows what is really in it,
and develops the full capabilities of its being. Even so, says our Lord,
would His death, His resurrection, His ascension be.

He speaks of His own resurrection and ascension; yes, but He speaks first
of His own death. Before the corn can bring forth fruit, and show what
is in it, fulfilling the law of its being, it must fall into the ground
and die. Before our Lord could fulfil the prophecy, "Thou wilt not leave
my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see
corruption," He must fulfil the darker prophecy of that awful 88th Psalm,
the only one of all the psalms which ends in sorrow, in all but despair,
"My soul is full of trouble, and my life draweth nigh unto hell. I am
counted as one of them that go down into the pit: and I have been even
as a man that hath no strength. Free among the dead, like unto them that
are wounded and lie in the grave, who are out of remembrance, and a