“Pour out thy love like the rush of a rive
Wasting its waters, for ever and ever,
Through the burnt sands that reward not the giver;
Silent or songful thou nearest the sea.
Scatter thy life as the summer shower’s pouring!
What if no bird through the pearl rain is soaring?
What if no blossom looks upward adoring?
Look to the life that was lavished for thee!”
Our Lord’s teaching is that only the life that is lost in love is really saved. The illustration is in the little parable of the grain of wheat. “Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.” The teaching is very clear and simple. You may keep your flower seeds out of the earth to save them from rotting; they will be clean and beautiful, but nothing will come of them. They will be only flower seeds. If, however, you put them into the earth, they will seem to perish, but presently there will come up from the dead seeds lovely plants, which in the season will be laden with sweet flowers that will fill the air with their fragrance.
It is easy to find the meaning of the parable in the life of the great Teacher himself. The precious seed fell into the earth and died, but it sprang up in glorious life. Had Jesus saved his life from the cross he might have lived to a ripe old age, making all his years beautiful as the three or four he wrought in such wondrous way among the people. But there would have been no cross lifted up to draw all men to it by its power of love. There would have been no fountain opened to which earth’s penitent millions could come with their polluted lives to find cleansing. There would have been no atonement for human guilt, no tasting of death by the Son of God for every man, no bearing by the Lamb of God of the sin of the world. There would have been no broken grave with its victory over death, and eternal life for all who will believe.
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