Vintage Easter Readings for High School Students

Chapter XX, The Message of Easter: 
"All true progress is conditioned upon sacrifice... Nothing is complete in itself. All things are correlated. There is no day without a preceding night, no spring without a winter, no life without death. There can be no resurrection anywhere without a crucifixion. Throughout the realm of nature, the development of the higher and nobler forms of life is invariably conditioned upon struggle and sacrifice. From the death and decay of the old plant springs the larger life of the new. The birth of the better things to be is amidst the ruins of the things that were. Within the grain of wheat lies the possibility of countless other grains, yea, of the vast harvest fields of the future. But this grain must lie buried in the earth and suffer death and decay before it can ever be more than a single grain. It must lose its own identity in the present, before it can be fruitful in the future; it must sacrifice self, if it would benefit posterity. The tree, stripped of its protecting foliage, must endure the frost and the wintry blast, if it would bud and blossom and bear fruit. Sacrifice is the law and condition of all physical progress; without a cross, nature finds no resurrection. The tragic is everywhere incomplete. In fiction and in dramatic literature, the tragedy comes at the end of the story; but, in nature's story, tragedy is the beginning, not the ending. The better literature of the future will follow nature's suggestion, and the larger life born in tragedy will be idealized. No destruction is final: the tree dies and decays, but its elements pass on into other forms of life. All tragedy is a condition of a larger life beyond: every death has the potency of an eternal future...."

Not a Bible study, but interesting parallels nevertheless, and there are more. Read here, from Old Tales and Modern Ideals: A Series of Talks to High School Students, John Herbert Phillips,Silver, Burdett and Company, 1905.

Free and in public domain, downloadable and readable online.

1906 book review:
Old Tales and Modern Ideals. By John Herbert Phillips. This is a series of talks to high school students on a variety of interesting subjects ancient and modern. The addresses were delivered to the high school students of Birmingham, Ala., who for a number of years have been assembled each Monday morning for the purpose of listening to an address by some superintendent or invited speaker. The purpose of these talks has been the presentation of worthy ideals and inspiration to noble living, rather than mere entertainment. Certainly this is a splendid idea, worthy of imitation by others. The range of topics is large, including such varied subjects as "Janus, the Roman Gate-God;" "The Student's Dividends;" "Laughter as an Indication of Character;" "The Philosophy of Want;" "The Message of Easter;" "Modern Chivalry," etc. We can easily imagine the influence of these words as they fell from living lips upon the minds and hearts of earnest pupils. The book will be suggestive, we are sure, to other earnest teachers.