---

The original word is not sperma, a seed, but kokkos, a berry, a fruit. It shows the extreme, even scientific, accuracy of our Saviour's language; for the corn of wheat, and other cereal grains, consist of seeds incorporated with seed vessels, and are in reality fruits, though they appear like seeds. It is not the bare seed that falls into the ground, and, by dying, yields much fruit, but the corn of wheat — the whole fruit with its husk-like coverings. A corn of wheat is beautiful and complete in itself. It is full of latent life; it contains the germ of boundless harvests. But it is hard and narrow and isolated. How then are its dormant capabilities to be quickened? Clearly not by keeping it as it is. In its present state it abideth alone. It can never be anything else but bare corn if kept out of the ground. But if sown in the field, and covered by the earth, and quickened by the sunshine and showers of heaven, it softens and expands. It seems to die. It surrenders itself to the forces of nature which take possession of it, and seem to put it altogether aside. But this apparent death is in reality more abundant life. Its burial place becomes the scene of a wonderful resurrection. The spark of vitality has been kindled by the very elements that seemed to work its destruction. The embryo grows at the expense of the decomposing perisperm. Lengthening downwards by the radicle and upwards by the plumule, the seed becomes a bright, green, beautiful plant which lays all nature under contribution for its sustenance, borrows the materials of growth from earth and sky, and at length becomes a luxuriant stalk of corn laden with its fruitful ear. Seed time in this country is in spring. The sower goes forth to sow when the day is lengthening and brightening, and a warmer feeling is in the air. The dark days and wild storms of winter are over; and before the seed sown there is an almost uninterrupted continuance of genial weather till the harvest. But in nature seed time is at the close of autumn, when "the melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year." The important process of scattering the seed over the waste places of the earth is accomplished amid the fading and falling of leaves, and the destruction of nature's strength and beauty. The chill air and feeble sunlight put a stop to all further growth; and the dreary rain and boisterous storms which prevail at this season are needed to shake down the ripe fruits from stem or bough, to scatter them over the face of the earth, and to rot them in the ground, so that the imprisoned seeds may escape and find a suitable soil in which to grow. Thus, the dark ungenial weather which so often proves disastrous to our cereal crops when they are about to be gathered into the barn, is a wise provision of nature to facilitate the dispersion of the ripened fruits and seeds of the earth. We step between nature and her purpose, snatch the corn from its appointed destiny as the seed of a future crop, and convert it into human food; and thus diverting a law of nature into a new channel, we cannot always expect that the weather which would be favourable to the natural process should be equally favourable to the artificial. Nature fulfils her designs perfectly; she is faithful to the law of her God. But when she comes into contact with man she does not harmonize with his designs. The primeval curse rests upon the toil of man's hands, and the earning of man's bread; and nature therefore will not give us her blessings without a stern struggle with hostile elements. How true is all this of the stormy end of our Saviour's life; that dreary autumn seed time of which He said, "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say, Father, save me from this hour; but; for this cause came I unto this hour." And further, how true of His entombment is the natural fact that the seed thus sown in the decaying autumn, amid the wreck of life and beauty, and to the wailing dirge of the devastating storm, lies passive and inert in the soil all the winter, chilled with the frosts, drenched with the rains, and buried in its grave of darkness beneath a shroud of snow, waiting for its resurrection under the bright skies of spring.

(H. Macmillan, LL. D.)

---

---

KJV: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

WEB: Most certainly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.