Here are two pots of earth. One is crowned with a beautiful Easter lily, pure, and white, and beautiful, rising out of its green leaves. The other is all black and ugly. But what is this? A bulb, an Easter lily bulb. See! I will plant it in the black earth, and now both flower-pots are alike, are they not? They both contain an Easter lily.
What, you think they are different? To be sure, one is beautiful and the other is still ugly and black; but I am going to water the last, and make it grow, until it is just as lovely as the other. But what must the bulb I just planted be thinking about, down there in the close, black soil? Little it guesses of the beauty and the light and the joy into which it is going to spring up, some day.
Now do you know why Christ came to earth? It was for many reasons, but this was one of the chief: to tell us that we are really buried in the close, black soil; just as this bulb I planted a minute ago. You look at the great, blue sky, and the wide, green earth, and you cry, “Buried? Why, how can that be?” but Christ came to tell us of a country as much more lovely and bright and happy than this world, as it is brighter and better than the black ground beneath our feet; so that we can fairly call ourselves buried while we live here, and can think about that next world as our time of rising and blooming.
Have you ever seen the husk that the seed or the bulb leaves behind it when it springs up into the beautiful flower? I will show you one. And now you know what a dead body is. When you die, your body will lie all still and lifeless as this cast-off husk, but you will be gone; you will be far above the body that you have lived in so long, in a lovely new world, and with a lovely new body, as much more beautiful than your old one as this lovely lily is more beautiful than this shriveled husk. Now are you not glad that Christ lived down here, and died, and rose again, to prove to us all these wonderful things?