“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.
* * * * *
I cannot help being also reminded by this history of mowing and growing, of the special field of each human life, with its ever springing, ever falling hopes and dreams. One day it is a carpet of brightness and glory; the next, the withered lines lie on the bare field. Yet look closer, and you will find already the tender green of a new growth appearing to clothe the scarred meadow. A constant succession, ever mown and still growing; every year and often in the year a fresh attire, however the heart, when that common-place desolation was new to it, refused in dismay to believe in the possibility of any further crops. Fond thing! even while it thus protested, the grass had already begun to grow; and it was in vain to try in sullenness or self-respect to check the smiling flowers that would crowd up over the ruin. Many a one of us can say, of some past sorrow, that,
“When less keen it seemed to grow,
I was not pleased—I wished to go
Mourning adown this vale of woe,
For all my life uncomforted.”
It could not be, except in the case of a hypochondriac. In healthy lands the growth cannot be checked.
“I thought that I should never more
Feel any pleasure near me glow”:
and again: