And again: “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; And the place thereof shall know it no more.” And again: “In the morning they are like grass which groweth up; In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.” Oh, faded couch on which I lean, here are witnesses enough of the highest authority of all, to establish a brotherhood between us! I look at these hands which can write and work, I look at these limbs which can rise and go, I consider the brain which can busily toil:--and from these I turn to regard the dry heap that once was living grass;--and I think how slack, and void of energy, and lifeless will these also lie, in the long swathes which ever and ever fall before the advancing mower, Death. “‘Consider well,’ the voice replied, ‘His face, that two hours since hath died; Wilt thou find passion, pain, or pride?’” No; each lies in that especial long line of mown grass that we call his generation: “Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.” Flesh, and grass: are they not akin? These ever-succeeding generations;--how the grass still grows after every mowing. “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh”; --there is not a word of abiding at all, says Archbishop Leighton. But, however, there is a notice of constant succession, and the grass grows as fast as it is mown. Load after load is added to the store of Eternity; but the mower Death knows no pause. Ever and ever the tall grass and the sweet flowers bend before that industrious scythe. Where is the glad growth of fifty years ago; and where the life that preceded that; and so on, back to Adam? In long fallen ranks they lie, generation parallel with generation, all across the wide field of the world’s history. Flowers, and plain grass, and wholesome fodder, and prickly thistles, and poison weeds, they bowed at the edge of the scythe; so far they are equal: “There is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not; as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath. This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all.” Yes, all lie in the swathes, and are equal there; the almost bitter saying of the wise man, to whom sin had made even wisdom sadness, is so far true. True while we consider the field after the scythe; true while we look on Death, but not applying any longer when we imagine the Resurrection. A very Life shall revive, or a very Death shall wither, each stalk of the myriads that lie waiting in the field, each in the place where it fell.