xii. THE AMARANTH. 211 



grave than to the unchangeable affections of the world 

 within, and the immortal hopes of the world beyond. 

 The immortelles therefore are more in harmony with 

 our feelings ; they supply what the other flowers lack. 

 Unhurt by the mouldering decay of the sepulchre, 

 they seem the fittest types of that human love which 

 is not of the things that rust and perish in the tomb. 

 They tell us that there is a Beyond for love, though 

 not for pride ; for the things associated with the 

 flowers, though not for the things associated with 

 gold : that there is something besides the divine as- 

 pirations of religion which will survive and endure 

 for ever; something purely human and yet susceptible 

 of immortality. They give us the blessed assurance 

 that life here below is not all transitory and vain 

 " a chain of yesterdays, which have but lighted kings 

 the way to dusty death." Laid in the form of the 

 wreath or the cross on the marble head-stone, or on 

 the green sod, they whisper to us that, planted together 

 in the likeness of Christ's death, we shall be planted 

 together in the likeness of His resurrection. For if 

 the lowly flowers in their death retain the likeness of 

 their life unchanged, and triumph over the physical 

 forces which seek to decay and decompose them, 

 surely the lofty creature made in the image of God 

 will retain that image unimpaired amid all the decays 

 of death and the grave, and this same mortal shall 

 put on immortality, and this same human love shall 

 be glorified. 



The amaranth of the ancients was a fitting type of 



