Bobby’s thoughts converged upon that still thing within the coffin. The little face would be wearing a waxen unaccustomed dignity; the round, preposterously innocent blue eyes would be closed and a little sunken. Where were those thoughts and hopes, now, that Bobby had listened to a few weeks since? Sargon had talked of flying, of visiting India and China, of doing noble work in the world. He had said that half his life still lay before him. He had seemed to be opening like a flower on the first sunny morning of a belated spring. And it was all delusion; the door of death that had slammed upon him was already closing then.
Surely those hopes had been life! In them if in anything was something of the life that lives and cannot die. But was it yonder? No. That in the coffin there was no more than a photographic impression, a cast garment, the parings of a nail. There was more of Sargon now in Bobby’s brain alone, than in that coffin. But Sargon, where was he? Where were those dreams and desires?
Bobby became aware of the voice of the officiating clergyman driving high, like a flying bird, over the welter of his thoughts: “But some men will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened unless it die. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat or any other grain: But God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased him, but to every seed its own body....”
“Queer, tortuous, ingenious fellow that Paul,” thought Bobby. Now what exactly was he driving at there? Queer fellow! Bad manners too with his “Thou fool.” A rather strained analogy this about the seed, “sown in corruption.” After all a seed was the cleanest, most living bit of vegetable matter you could have; it had to be sown in clean mould. Growing plants you manured perhaps, but not seed-boxes. But there was a queer insistence in the discourse of the “difference,” the discontinuity, of the new life. What was to come was to be altogether different from what was sown. Bobby had never noted that before, never noted how plainly the apostle insisted that no body, no earthly sort of body, no personality, ever came back.
“The glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory.”
What was the drift of that? Was it translated properly? What had Paul been up against in Corinth? After all, why couldn’t the Church speak to one’s living needs instead of disinterring this Levantine argument? And that analogy of the seed; was it after all a good one? Whatever comes from a seed must itself die again; it is no more immortal than the plant that came before it. The clergyman was going too fast, too, to follow him closely. Better get a prayer-book at home afterwards and read all this.
“O Grave where is thy sting? O death where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is in the law.”
No. There was no following that. It sounded like nonsense. One just missed the implications. It was like listening to some one who was too far off to be heard distinctly but who made eloquent gestures and noises.
The service came to an embarrassed pause. Everyone was motionless, arrested.
“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live.... He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow....”