s before us in the
illuminating figure of the corn of wheat. "Except a corn of wheat fall
into the ground and die, it abideth alone." There are three uses to
which wheat may be put: it may be stored for sale, it may be ground and
eaten, it may be sown. For our Lord's purposes these three uses may be
considered as only two. Wheat may be eaten, or it may be sown. With a
pickle of wheat or a grain of oats you may do one of two things: you may
eat it and enjoy a momentary gratification and benefit; or you may put
it in the ground, burying it out of sight and suffering it to pass
through uncomely processes, and it will reappear multiplied a
hundredfold, and so on in everlasting series. Year by year men sacrifice
their choicest sample of grain, and are content to bury it in the earth
instead of exposing it in the market, because they understand that
except it die it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much
fruit. The proper life of the grain is terminated when it is used for
immediate gratification: it receives its fullest development and
accomplishes its richest end when it is cast into the ground, buried out
of sight, and apparently lost.

As with the grain, so is it with each human life. One of two things you
can do with your life; both you cannot do, and no third thing is
possible. You may consume your life for your own present gratification
and profit, to satisfy your present cravings and tastes and to secure
the largest amount of immediate enjoyment to yourself--you may eat your
life; or you may be content to put aside present enjoyment and profits
of a selfish kind and devote your life to the uses of God and men. In
the one case you make an end of your life, you consume it as it goes; no
good results, no enlarging influence, no deepening of character, no
fuller life, follows from such an expenditure of life--spent on yourself
and on the present, it terminates with yourself and with the present.
But in the other case you find you have entered into a more abundant
life; by living for others your interests are widened, your desire for
life increased, the results and ends of life enriched. "He that loveth
his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall
keep it unto life eternal." It is a law we cannot evade. He that
consumes his life now, spending it on himself--he who cannot bear to let
his life out of his own hand, but cherishes and pampers it and gathers
all good around it, and will ha