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Title: Parables of the Christ-life

Author: I. Lilias Trotter

Release Date: August 29, 2007 [EBook #22432]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARABLES OF THE CHRIST-LIFE ***

Parables of the Christ-life,
by I. Lilias Trotter

Marshall Brothers, Ltd.
London & Edinburgh.

To F.N.F. B.G.L.N. G.S.T. & A.M.E.
'fellow workers unto the kingdom of God.'

LIFE--the first glance would hardly find it on this African hillside
in the summertime. The hot wind of the desert has passed over it, and
the spring beauty of iris and orchid, asphodel and marigold, has
vanished. Nothing is to be seen but the mellow golden-brown of the
grass, broken by blue-green aloe leaves, and here and there a deep
madder head of dried-up fennel.

Yet life is reigning, not death, all the while; it is there, in
infinitely greater abundance than when the field was green--life
enough to clothe a score of fields next year.

Stoop down and look into that withered grass, and a whole new world
of God's handiwork will come into view in the burnt-up tangle. For of
all the growing things out here, the seed-vessels are among the most
wonderful. Even little insignificant plants that would hardly catch
your eye when in flower, develop forms of quaint beauty as the
capsules ripen. And now that all is finished, they lie stored with
vitality in the midst of the seeming loss around.

Do you see the parable? We will trace it out step by step.

Back we must go, to the days of early spring. The annuals that
clothed the field had each but one life then; a perishing life,
though it looked so strong in its young vigour. Left to itself, it
stood "condemned already."

But the critical moment came, changing its whole destiny, when a new
birth took place: the vitalizing pollen was received by the pistil,
and set up the reign of a fresh undying creation. All that had gone
before in the plant's history was a preparation for this moment: all
that followed was a working out to its fruition.

"Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he
canno