And now we may see, it seems to me, what the text has to do with Easter-day. To my mind our Lord is using here the same parable which St. Paul preaches in his famous chapter which we read in the Burial Service. Be not anxious, says our Lord, for your life. Is not the life more than meat? There is an eternal life which depends not on earthly food, but on the will and word of God your Father; and that life in you will conquer death. Behold the birds of the air, which sow not, nor reap, nor gather into barns, to provide against the winter’s need. But do they starve and die? Does not God guide them far away into foreign climes, and feed them there by his providence, and bring them back again in spring, as things alive from the dead? And can he not feed us (if it be his will) with a bread which comes down from heaven, and with every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God? Consider, again, the lilies of the field. We must take our Lord’s words exactly. He is speaking of the lilies, the bulbous plants which spring into flower in countless thousands every spring, over the downs of Eastern lands. All the winter they are dead, unsightly roots, hidden in the earth. What can come of them? But no sooner does the sun of spring shine on their graves, than they rise into sudden life and beauty, as it pleases God, and every seed takes its own peculiar body. Sown in corruption, they are raised in incorruption; sown in weakness, they are raised in power; sown in dishonour, they are raised in glory; delicate, beautiful in colour, perfuming the air with fragrance; types of immortality, fit for the crowns of angels. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. For even so is the resurrection of the dead. Yes, not without a divine providence—yea, a divine inspiration—has this blessed Easter-tide been fixed, by the Church of all ages, at the season when the earth shakes off her winter’s sleep; when the birds come back and the flowers begin to bloom; when every seed which falls into the ground, and dies, and rises again with a new body, is a witness to us of the resurrection of Christ; and a witness, too, that we shall rise again; that in us, as in it, life shall conquer death when every bird which comes back to sing and build among us, is a witness to us of the resurrection of Christ, and of our resurrection; and that in us, as in it, joy shall conquer sorrow. The seed has passed through strange chances and dangers: of a thousand seeds shed in autumn, scarce one survives to grow in spring. Be it so. Still there is left, as Scripture says, a remnant, an elect, to rise again and live.