1946
"Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory." Luke 24:26. Read Luke 24:24-21, Colossians 3:1-4.
Each Easter confirms anew the faith that time and death are not the lords of life. Jesus the Christ brought life and immortality to light, as the life and immortality were one and indivisible. "He lived every day of His life," someone said, "as though He was to live forever." The vanquished tomb was only the final proof that death had no dominion over him. Therefore, in the light of Easter life Christian faith takes on a new dimension. We, too, may begin to live as if we were to live forever, matching our steps with His.
The Easter bells sound a jubilant and assuring music; love and goodness, are right to endure, forever; comfort will outlast sorrow and the healings of God's mercy for pain and loss are sure. There will be time enough, the Easter revelation assures us, to finish what in our souls is now unfinished and find what in our hopes is still unrealized. Partings are not forever and the wages of virtue "are going on and not to die." That was the pattern of His life Who gives us Easter morning. By the grace of God we may make it ours.
PRAYER — O Thou Who through Thy Son hast turned the shadow of death into the morning, we praise Thee for the everlasting hopes that now rise within our hearts and for the Gospel which has brought life and immortality to light. Receive our thanksgiving, reveal Thy presence and kindle our hearts with the spirit of the Risen Christ. In the Name of the Risen Christ. Amen.
—The Post-Standard, Syracuse, NY, April 21, 1946, p. 4.
Showing posts with label resurrection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resurrection. Show all posts
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Easter: Theme of Reverend Brown
Nevada, 1924
"Easter as the Triune Revelation" was the subject of the Rev. Edward Tanner Brown at Trinity Episcopal church. "Easter is the revelation of the heart of God who answered the triumphant life of the Son by raising Him from the dead," he said, adding, "There is a vibrant life just beyond our vision responding to the life of righteousness. God as shown by the cross and resurrection is a God of love. The character of Jesus was shown by the empty tomb. Love went all the way when He came to this earth for our redemption; it went even as far as a restriction of knowledge, and was shown in weariness of body.
"Jesus was human and fought with human brains and a human body. He achieved a perfect life with the means at our command. He was human and because of the triumph of Easter was shown to be indeed as God. 'God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.' The divineness of the Saviour was proved at Eastertide. And man — Easter shows the glorious possibilities of our nature. Man is a changeable being, still in the becoming, whose end is yet unknown. We have seen once and for all the power of the life of righteousness. And yet man is still content to live on the plane of his lower nature. The light of the resurrection shows his marvelous possibilities. How can he be content to live on the plane of the sensual when sonship with the Divine is his rightful portion."
—Nevada State Journal, Reno, NV, April 28, 1924, p. 8.
"Easter as the Triune Revelation" was the subject of the Rev. Edward Tanner Brown at Trinity Episcopal church. "Easter is the revelation of the heart of God who answered the triumphant life of the Son by raising Him from the dead," he said, adding, "There is a vibrant life just beyond our vision responding to the life of righteousness. God as shown by the cross and resurrection is a God of love. The character of Jesus was shown by the empty tomb. Love went all the way when He came to this earth for our redemption; it went even as far as a restriction of knowledge, and was shown in weariness of body.
"Jesus was human and fought with human brains and a human body. He achieved a perfect life with the means at our command. He was human and because of the triumph of Easter was shown to be indeed as God. 'God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.' The divineness of the Saviour was proved at Eastertide. And man — Easter shows the glorious possibilities of our nature. Man is a changeable being, still in the becoming, whose end is yet unknown. We have seen once and for all the power of the life of righteousness. And yet man is still content to live on the plane of his lower nature. The light of the resurrection shows his marvelous possibilities. How can he be content to live on the plane of the sensual when sonship with the Divine is his rightful portion."
—Nevada State Journal, Reno, NV, April 28, 1924, p. 8.
Life Beyond Death
1925
Easter's Revelation Has Opened New Vistas
Natural Science Silent in the Presence of the Great Belief and Expectation
Easter brings completion to the sciences!
All the secular sciences conduct man as far as death, and there they stop. The door of the tomb is a wall, tall, strong and insurmountable by them. Geology, geography, astronomy, chemistry, physiology, biology and its other divisions bring us on, with an always increasing precision, to an understanding of life's functions and activities, up to that point. There they drop us, for beyond death natural science has not learned to travel. It has no formulae to express anything on the other side of the closed door of death.
And after much bruising of brain, and vain beating of hands against that obstacle, it confesses itself beaten, it has come to an impasse, it declares that because it cannot pass, that there is no passage, nothing beyond — the tomb is the end of all!
Either that, or it accepts the Easter miracle — as it must, if it will be fair towards evidence, towards historical revelation and towards theology, "the queen of all the sciences" — and acknowledges that Easter's revelation crowns all human knowledge, and opens before it new, endless vistas for exploration and future progress.
It would be a sorry conclusion to all science if it brought us only to an ending in the corruption, the annihilation of death. And an unsatisfactory ending! For the great majority of mankind never has, and never will believe that the closed tomb ends everything! Life here is too full of inequalities to make that just! The analogies in nature, which find no definite ending for anything else but life, help to prove it untrue! And justness and truth are the keystones upon which natural science builds up all its theories to arrive at ultimate fact.
Science, which is perhaps the projection of the ripest and best of humanity, needs Easter.
For Science cannot avert death! Men live to their threescore and ten, or beyond that for a few years of labor and sorrow, as they did in the Psalmist's days, before science had traveled very far along the roads of development. But since Easter rolled away the wall from the tomb, science may now claim to bring men onto the threshold of a new and glorified life, the resurrection life. The tomb is now but an episode in lives which were — always were — immortal.
Easter shows the tomb is open on the other side from us — open onto a new garden of Edenic soul life, the Paradise of God. And someday it is to open on our side also, and let those blessedly resting ones out into renewed bodily life, which cannot be bound between a birth and a death.
For one man actually, undeniably went through the tomb into that Paradise, and came back at Easter with an everlasting, undying body!
Just as the little crocus looks up stiff and straight, as a prophecy that all the temporarily dead bulbs and roots and seeds will arise in their own time.
Science teaches the imperishability of matter, and it is true logically endowed when, advancing a step, it teaches also the immortality of man.
Then there is but another step onward, to a grateful acknowledgment of the truth taught by the well attested fact of the Resurrection, that as He rose so shall all our dead also arise at the great Easter, which shall fulfill the promise of all the Springs!
It is the mission of the Church, which is His body here and now to complete the thus inspired teaching of the natural sciences, and show us that everyone who really desires so to do may spend eternity along with its King and Owner, after the last Easter has opened forever the tomb of death! — Montreal Family Herald.
Easter's Revelation Has Opened New Vistas
Natural Science Silent in the Presence of the Great Belief and Expectation
Easter brings completion to the sciences!
All the secular sciences conduct man as far as death, and there they stop. The door of the tomb is a wall, tall, strong and insurmountable by them. Geology, geography, astronomy, chemistry, physiology, biology and its other divisions bring us on, with an always increasing precision, to an understanding of life's functions and activities, up to that point. There they drop us, for beyond death natural science has not learned to travel. It has no formulae to express anything on the other side of the closed door of death.
And after much bruising of brain, and vain beating of hands against that obstacle, it confesses itself beaten, it has come to an impasse, it declares that because it cannot pass, that there is no passage, nothing beyond — the tomb is the end of all!
Either that, or it accepts the Easter miracle — as it must, if it will be fair towards evidence, towards historical revelation and towards theology, "the queen of all the sciences" — and acknowledges that Easter's revelation crowns all human knowledge, and opens before it new, endless vistas for exploration and future progress.
It would be a sorry conclusion to all science if it brought us only to an ending in the corruption, the annihilation of death. And an unsatisfactory ending! For the great majority of mankind never has, and never will believe that the closed tomb ends everything! Life here is too full of inequalities to make that just! The analogies in nature, which find no definite ending for anything else but life, help to prove it untrue! And justness and truth are the keystones upon which natural science builds up all its theories to arrive at ultimate fact.
Science, which is perhaps the projection of the ripest and best of humanity, needs Easter.
For Science cannot avert death! Men live to their threescore and ten, or beyond that for a few years of labor and sorrow, as they did in the Psalmist's days, before science had traveled very far along the roads of development. But since Easter rolled away the wall from the tomb, science may now claim to bring men onto the threshold of a new and glorified life, the resurrection life. The tomb is now but an episode in lives which were — always were — immortal.
Easter shows the tomb is open on the other side from us — open onto a new garden of Edenic soul life, the Paradise of God. And someday it is to open on our side also, and let those blessedly resting ones out into renewed bodily life, which cannot be bound between a birth and a death.
For one man actually, undeniably went through the tomb into that Paradise, and came back at Easter with an everlasting, undying body!
Just as the little crocus looks up stiff and straight, as a prophecy that all the temporarily dead bulbs and roots and seeds will arise in their own time.
Science teaches the imperishability of matter, and it is true logically endowed when, advancing a step, it teaches also the immortality of man.
Then there is but another step onward, to a grateful acknowledgment of the truth taught by the well attested fact of the Resurrection, that as He rose so shall all our dead also arise at the great Easter, which shall fulfill the promise of all the Springs!
It is the mission of the Church, which is His body here and now to complete the thus inspired teaching of the natural sciences, and show us that everyone who really desires so to do may spend eternity along with its King and Owner, after the last Easter has opened forever the tomb of death! — Montreal Family Herald.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Doing God's Work
1905
We are to live in the world pouring into it the fragrance of the love of Christ. There is a legend which says that when Jesus arose and walked out from the tomb in the garden white lilies blossomed where he stepped, so that wherever he went there was beauty and fragrance. So should it be wherever we go, if we are Christ's. We are not to shut ourselves indoors, but are to go out into the world to carry blessing and good among its many needs.
Live for To-day
We are writing with a diamond on a rock. We are writing the Rock of Remembrance with invisible ink. We are accumulating for the future. What we do is done forever. The thoughts we think, the words we speak, the kindly and unkindly acts of daily life, we must face them again. Take heed, therefore. Live for eternity. And the way to live for eternity is to concentrate all the energies of life upon the discharge of present duty. Therefore, live for to-day. — D. J. Burrell, D. D.
We are to live in the world pouring into it the fragrance of the love of Christ. There is a legend which says that when Jesus arose and walked out from the tomb in the garden white lilies blossomed where he stepped, so that wherever he went there was beauty and fragrance. So should it be wherever we go, if we are Christ's. We are not to shut ourselves indoors, but are to go out into the world to carry blessing and good among its many needs.
Live for To-day
We are writing with a diamond on a rock. We are writing the Rock of Remembrance with invisible ink. We are accumulating for the future. What we do is done forever. The thoughts we think, the words we speak, the kindly and unkindly acts of daily life, we must face them again. Take heed, therefore. Live for eternity. And the way to live for eternity is to concentrate all the energies of life upon the discharge of present duty. Therefore, live for to-day. — D. J. Burrell, D. D.
"I Am the Resurrection and the Life"
1905
April 9 — Sunday School Lesson
GOLDEN TEXT. — Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life. — John 11:25.
Introduction. So far as we can arrange the story of Christ's life from the various Gospels, the events are as follows:
The Feast of Tabernacles, October 11-18, A. D. 29, where took place the events recorded in John 7 to 10:21, ending with the parable of the good shepherd (John 10:21).
Interval of About Two Months between John 10:21 and 22, recorded in Luke 9:51-10:42. Jesus went from the Feast of Tabernacles to Galilee, and soon after left there, proceeding eastward to Perea, and thence down the Jordan on the eastern side.
The Feast of Dedication, December 20-27, A. D. 29. Jesus goes up to this feast (John 10:22,23), is a guest of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus at Bethany (Luke 10:38-42), Mary choosing the good part which shall not be taken from her. During the day Jesus discoursed in Solomon's porch of the Temple (John 10:22-39).
Returns to Perea. Beyond Jordan (John 10:40-42). December, A. D. 29. Here he spends January (A. D. 30) and part of February, speaking the Parables and Discourses recorded in Luke 14:1-17:10. Here we find him at the beginning of to-day's lesson.
I. "Twin Scenes — Lazarus Sick at Bethany. Jesus Busy at Bethabara."
We may, perhaps, make this supreme miracle of Jesus more real and vivid by picturing before our minds the contrasted but related scenes at Bethany and Bethabara.
1. At Bethany on the Mount of Olives, two miles from Jerusalem, lived a family of three members, Martha and Mary and Lazarus, who was, probably, the youngest of the three. Lazarus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Eleazar. The village is now known as El-Azarieh, or Lazarieh, from the Lazarus of to-day's lesson.
Not more than five or six weeks before this, at the Feast of Dedication, Jesus was their guest, and Mary sat at his feet to learn, while Martha was busy with her household duties for his entertainment (Luke 10:38-42).
After Jesus left, Lazarus was taken sick, "it may be by one of the sudden, sharp, and frequently fatal fevers of Palestine," such as that from which Jesus delivered Peter's wife's mother, and it is implied that the assault had assumed an alarming form.
2. At Bethabara, a day's journey beyond Jordan, twenty-five to thirty miles distant, near the scene where Jesus had begun his ministry now so near its end, where he was baptized, and had gained his first disciples. Little time remained and every moment of it was precious for his work. So here he was teaching, preaching, working miracles, giving his last counsels, training his disciples.
II. "Twin Scenes — A Messenger on the Way to Jesus. Lazarus Dying at Bethany."
1. The Messenger. The first thought of the sisters, when all common means failed, was to send a message to Jesus that "He whom thou lovest is sick." No request was made. The message was itself a prayer. They knew that Jesus would do the best thing possible. When we or our loved ones are sick, we should go to Jesus with our trouble; not to the neglect of means, for whatever helps and cures is the gift of God's love, but for guidance, and help, and blessing.
2. Lazarus Dies at Bethany. Soon after the messenger had gone, Lazarus died, and, as usual, on account of the climate, was buried on the same day in the family tomb outside of the village, and a large stone was rolled against the entrance.
III. "Twin Scenes — The Mourning at Bethany. Jesus Remains Two Days Longer at Bethabara."
1. At Bethany. Jesus could have reached Bethany in two days after the messenger left. The two days' delay beyond this time must have been full of anxiety and trial of faith and love, on account of the mysterious delay.
2. At Bethabara (vs. 3-16). After the messenger had reached Jesus, he waited two days before he started for Bethany. We must remember (1) that Jesus had been driven away from Jerusalem, and it was running into the jaws of death to go back there; (2) that Jesus loved the Bethany family and greatly desired to help them. Jesus states that the reason for the sickness was "for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." Therefore he abode two days longer in the place where be was.
The Mysterious Delay. (1) It may have been necessary in order to complete some work in which he was engaged; and it was to the glory of God and his Son that he should place duty before all considerations of personal feeling. The brightest stars in the crown of some of the greatest characters, stars which shine down the ages when almost all else is forgotten, are the deeds of duty and patriotism at the cost of help for one nearest and dearest. (2) "This delay was necessary to the consummation of the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus in such form as to forever prohibit the impression that death had not really taken place." — Abbott. (3) It was needed to develop and increase the faith and love of the Bethany family and his disciples, and give them a vision of the future life and their Savior's power, such as can be seen only from the mountain-top of sorrow. (4) It would lead many to believe on Jesus, and thus glorify the Son (v. 45). (5) Jesus himself was soon to lie three days in the grave; if, therefore, he was able to raise up Lazarus after four days' burial, they would have stronger faith in the resurrection of Jesus from his three days' burial. (6) It has been to the glory of the Son of God, in that it has shown to all generations that Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
IV. "Twin Scenes (vs. 17-37) — The Meeting of Jesus with Martha. The Meeting with Mary."
1. Bethany. The Meeting with Martha. The house at Bethany was full of sympathizing friends. Word came quietly to Martha that Jesus was near the town, and she immediately went out to meet him. She greeted him with the words, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." There were two sorrows, that her brother had died and that Jesus delayed his coming. Yet the words imply faith and hope, not complaint.
2. The Meeting with Mary. Martha returns to the house and secretly says to Mary, "The Master is come and calleth for thee." This loving message is sent to each one of us, in many ways. Let us open our ears and hearts to it as Mary did. She went to Jesus, (v. 32) "fell down at his feet," and spoke the same words as those with which her sister had greeted Jesus. The thought must have been continually in their minds, and often repeated to one another, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died."
33. "When Jesus therefore saw her weeping." Like the maidens in Tennyson's "Princess," "She must weep or she will die." "He groaned in the spirit." Groaned, not in outward expression, but in his inmost soul. "And was troubled." The word means to agitate, to disquiet, as the waters of the sea in a storm. "His whole frame shuddered. A storm of wrath seemed to sweep over him."
35. "Jesus wept." Shed tears, wept silently, an entirely different word from the "weep" and "weeping" of the mourners in vs. 31,33. It is well that this short sentence should be in a verse by itself, the shortest verse in the Bible, but one of the most blessed.
36. "Then (therefore) said (imperfect, kept saying) * * * Behold how he loved him!" The word for "love" is the more passionate word used in v. 3 by the sisters, not the higher word used of Jesus in v. 5 by the Evangelist, laying emphasis on friendship.
37. "Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind." This was the last, most widely known, and most marvelous miracle which had been wrought in Jerusalem only two or three months before. The inference was natural and just.
V. Lazarus Restored to Life. — Vs. 38-45.
38. "Cometh to the grave. R.V., 'tomb.' It was a cave. And a stone lay upon it." 39. "He hath been dead four days," and, therefore, Martha inferred naturally that decay had begun. It is not stated as a fact.
40. "Said I not unto thee." He had, doubtless, repeated to Martha what he had said to his disciples (v. 4). "If thou wouldest believe." Trust in the goodness, and power, and promises of Jesus, not in any definite work to be accomplished. Such must be our faith. But her faith was necessary to the blessing. "See the glory of God." They would see a work of God which would manifest his power and love to men, which would exalt his Son as the Messiah, and bring divine blessings to the family, to his disciples, and to the world.
41. "Jesus lifted up his eyes." A natural, simple, but expressive act of worship. "And said, Father, I thank thee." Is not the address recorded in these verses simply a thanksgiving spoken in respect of a previously offered private prayer?
42. "And I knew that thou hearest me always." He was never denied, for he always prayed in the right spirit, with the right motives, and in perfect sympathy with the will of his Father. "Because of the people which stand by I said it." So that they would know that his power was from God, and recognize his relation to God.
43. "He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth." As one would speak loud to awaken a sleeper. It was loud in order that all the people who had come to the tomb might realize whence the power came.
44. "And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes." "It was the Jewish custom to wrap the dead comparatively loosely in a winding sheet or shroud, which would have impeded, through not prevented, arising and walking." — Abbott. "Loose him, and let him go."
The Consequences. 45. "Many * * * believed on him." (1) Lazarus henceforth was a perpetual sermon on the loving power of Christ. (2) The rulers from that day forth planned to put him to death. (3) Jesus left Jerusalem for a time and was concealed in the wilderness with his disciples.
April 9 — Sunday School Lesson
GOLDEN TEXT. — Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life. — John 11:25.
Introduction. So far as we can arrange the story of Christ's life from the various Gospels, the events are as follows:
The Feast of Tabernacles, October 11-18, A. D. 29, where took place the events recorded in John 7 to 10:21, ending with the parable of the good shepherd (John 10:21).
Interval of About Two Months between John 10:21 and 22, recorded in Luke 9:51-10:42. Jesus went from the Feast of Tabernacles to Galilee, and soon after left there, proceeding eastward to Perea, and thence down the Jordan on the eastern side.
The Feast of Dedication, December 20-27, A. D. 29. Jesus goes up to this feast (John 10:22,23), is a guest of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus at Bethany (Luke 10:38-42), Mary choosing the good part which shall not be taken from her. During the day Jesus discoursed in Solomon's porch of the Temple (John 10:22-39).
Returns to Perea. Beyond Jordan (John 10:40-42). December, A. D. 29. Here he spends January (A. D. 30) and part of February, speaking the Parables and Discourses recorded in Luke 14:1-17:10. Here we find him at the beginning of to-day's lesson.
I. "Twin Scenes — Lazarus Sick at Bethany. Jesus Busy at Bethabara."
We may, perhaps, make this supreme miracle of Jesus more real and vivid by picturing before our minds the contrasted but related scenes at Bethany and Bethabara.
1. At Bethany on the Mount of Olives, two miles from Jerusalem, lived a family of three members, Martha and Mary and Lazarus, who was, probably, the youngest of the three. Lazarus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Eleazar. The village is now known as El-Azarieh, or Lazarieh, from the Lazarus of to-day's lesson.
Not more than five or six weeks before this, at the Feast of Dedication, Jesus was their guest, and Mary sat at his feet to learn, while Martha was busy with her household duties for his entertainment (Luke 10:38-42).
After Jesus left, Lazarus was taken sick, "it may be by one of the sudden, sharp, and frequently fatal fevers of Palestine," such as that from which Jesus delivered Peter's wife's mother, and it is implied that the assault had assumed an alarming form.
2. At Bethabara, a day's journey beyond Jordan, twenty-five to thirty miles distant, near the scene where Jesus had begun his ministry now so near its end, where he was baptized, and had gained his first disciples. Little time remained and every moment of it was precious for his work. So here he was teaching, preaching, working miracles, giving his last counsels, training his disciples.
II. "Twin Scenes — A Messenger on the Way to Jesus. Lazarus Dying at Bethany."
1. The Messenger. The first thought of the sisters, when all common means failed, was to send a message to Jesus that "He whom thou lovest is sick." No request was made. The message was itself a prayer. They knew that Jesus would do the best thing possible. When we or our loved ones are sick, we should go to Jesus with our trouble; not to the neglect of means, for whatever helps and cures is the gift of God's love, but for guidance, and help, and blessing.
2. Lazarus Dies at Bethany. Soon after the messenger had gone, Lazarus died, and, as usual, on account of the climate, was buried on the same day in the family tomb outside of the village, and a large stone was rolled against the entrance.
III. "Twin Scenes — The Mourning at Bethany. Jesus Remains Two Days Longer at Bethabara."
1. At Bethany. Jesus could have reached Bethany in two days after the messenger left. The two days' delay beyond this time must have been full of anxiety and trial of faith and love, on account of the mysterious delay.
2. At Bethabara (vs. 3-16). After the messenger had reached Jesus, he waited two days before he started for Bethany. We must remember (1) that Jesus had been driven away from Jerusalem, and it was running into the jaws of death to go back there; (2) that Jesus loved the Bethany family and greatly desired to help them. Jesus states that the reason for the sickness was "for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." Therefore he abode two days longer in the place where be was.
The Mysterious Delay. (1) It may have been necessary in order to complete some work in which he was engaged; and it was to the glory of God and his Son that he should place duty before all considerations of personal feeling. The brightest stars in the crown of some of the greatest characters, stars which shine down the ages when almost all else is forgotten, are the deeds of duty and patriotism at the cost of help for one nearest and dearest. (2) "This delay was necessary to the consummation of the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus in such form as to forever prohibit the impression that death had not really taken place." — Abbott. (3) It was needed to develop and increase the faith and love of the Bethany family and his disciples, and give them a vision of the future life and their Savior's power, such as can be seen only from the mountain-top of sorrow. (4) It would lead many to believe on Jesus, and thus glorify the Son (v. 45). (5) Jesus himself was soon to lie three days in the grave; if, therefore, he was able to raise up Lazarus after four days' burial, they would have stronger faith in the resurrection of Jesus from his three days' burial. (6) It has been to the glory of the Son of God, in that it has shown to all generations that Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
IV. "Twin Scenes (vs. 17-37) — The Meeting of Jesus with Martha. The Meeting with Mary."
1. Bethany. The Meeting with Martha. The house at Bethany was full of sympathizing friends. Word came quietly to Martha that Jesus was near the town, and she immediately went out to meet him. She greeted him with the words, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." There were two sorrows, that her brother had died and that Jesus delayed his coming. Yet the words imply faith and hope, not complaint.
2. The Meeting with Mary. Martha returns to the house and secretly says to Mary, "The Master is come and calleth for thee." This loving message is sent to each one of us, in many ways. Let us open our ears and hearts to it as Mary did. She went to Jesus, (v. 32) "fell down at his feet," and spoke the same words as those with which her sister had greeted Jesus. The thought must have been continually in their minds, and often repeated to one another, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died."
33. "When Jesus therefore saw her weeping." Like the maidens in Tennyson's "Princess," "She must weep or she will die." "He groaned in the spirit." Groaned, not in outward expression, but in his inmost soul. "And was troubled." The word means to agitate, to disquiet, as the waters of the sea in a storm. "His whole frame shuddered. A storm of wrath seemed to sweep over him."
35. "Jesus wept." Shed tears, wept silently, an entirely different word from the "weep" and "weeping" of the mourners in vs. 31,33. It is well that this short sentence should be in a verse by itself, the shortest verse in the Bible, but one of the most blessed.
36. "Then (therefore) said (imperfect, kept saying) * * * Behold how he loved him!" The word for "love" is the more passionate word used in v. 3 by the sisters, not the higher word used of Jesus in v. 5 by the Evangelist, laying emphasis on friendship.
37. "Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind." This was the last, most widely known, and most marvelous miracle which had been wrought in Jerusalem only two or three months before. The inference was natural and just.
V. Lazarus Restored to Life. — Vs. 38-45.
38. "Cometh to the grave. R.V., 'tomb.' It was a cave. And a stone lay upon it." 39. "He hath been dead four days," and, therefore, Martha inferred naturally that decay had begun. It is not stated as a fact.
40. "Said I not unto thee." He had, doubtless, repeated to Martha what he had said to his disciples (v. 4). "If thou wouldest believe." Trust in the goodness, and power, and promises of Jesus, not in any definite work to be accomplished. Such must be our faith. But her faith was necessary to the blessing. "See the glory of God." They would see a work of God which would manifest his power and love to men, which would exalt his Son as the Messiah, and bring divine blessings to the family, to his disciples, and to the world.
41. "Jesus lifted up his eyes." A natural, simple, but expressive act of worship. "And said, Father, I thank thee." Is not the address recorded in these verses simply a thanksgiving spoken in respect of a previously offered private prayer?
42. "And I knew that thou hearest me always." He was never denied, for he always prayed in the right spirit, with the right motives, and in perfect sympathy with the will of his Father. "Because of the people which stand by I said it." So that they would know that his power was from God, and recognize his relation to God.
43. "He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth." As one would speak loud to awaken a sleeper. It was loud in order that all the people who had come to the tomb might realize whence the power came.
44. "And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes." "It was the Jewish custom to wrap the dead comparatively loosely in a winding sheet or shroud, which would have impeded, through not prevented, arising and walking." — Abbott. "Loose him, and let him go."
The Consequences. 45. "Many * * * believed on him." (1) Lazarus henceforth was a perpetual sermon on the loving power of Christ. (2) The rulers from that day forth planned to put him to death. (3) Jesus left Jerusalem for a time and was concealed in the wilderness with his disciples.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The Resurrection Life of Christ
Pennsylvania, 1882
Sermon by Rev. P. H. Mowry
Note: The Rev. P. H. Mowry was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chester, Pennsylvania.
The preacher taking his text from John 20:17, said:
In the words of Christ to Mary Magdalen, which properly translated read, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say unto them, I am ascending unto My Father and your Father; and to My God and your God." He indicates that in the forty days that lay between the Easter Sunday and the Pentecostal Sunday, his life was of a different character than the ordinary human, and that His body was in a state of transition tending toward its highest spiritual form.
The scene of the incident mentioned in this chapter, was in the garden surrounding the rock-hewn tomb, where His body had been deposited. On the morning of the first day in the week, Mary Magdalen came to look for the body of the Master. When the Lord said to her, "Woman, why weepest thou?" she thought the form before her was the gardener. This, however, gives us no right to suppose that physical appearance of Christ had changed to such an extent, that even Mary Magdalen should not recognize Him, but with her eyes dimmed with tears, her mind preoccupied, and perhaps prevented from seeing Him distinctly by the posture assumed, it was only when another sense was touched, when He said, "Mary!" that she recognized Him. And immediately following Christ adds, as if to prevent an embrace or the grasping of His hands by Mary Magdalen, "Touch me not."
Various reasons have been given as explanations of this, but the most reasonable is this, that the touching of his body was not essential to her for recognition and faith as it was later for Thomas. The special point is that the Lord tells her that He is ascending. That is in other words that he is in a state of transition or transformation from the temporal and physical state to the eternal and spiritual.
Christ's is the first instance of resurrection as distinct from resuscitation or reanimation of those who were dead, as for instance Lazarus. Lazarus was reestablished to the same condition of things out of which he had passed, to live the same life and be subject again to death. This was not the case with Jesus. When he rose, he was risen in triumph no more to die. The transitions through which Christ passed are therefore essential to us. He was the first resurrected, the first born of death and when he returned to the realm of the visible and tangible he had a body. Mary and Thomas did not see a spirit. In some respects it was the same body which is seen by Christ challenging Thomas to put his hands on the marks of the nails.
It was the same body that had hung on the cross, but had changed mysteriously in several respects. It was a palpable body that might be touched, yet it was above the limitations of space, as proved by his appearance in the midst of the disciples through closed doors and afterwards vanishing from their sight. It was a body, which could eat, but did not need it. Christ manifested himself on ten different occasions between his resurrection and ascension. They all indicate that some change had taken place in his body, while still preserving its identity. From this we may reasonably infer that the 40 days constitute a period, measuring the beginning and consummation of the glorification, where at last he assumed the perfect spiritual body in which he was taken from the vision of the disciples.
Of the ten manifestations, five occurred on the day following the resurrection, the five others were distributed over the period; we do not know exactly how, but one was towards the close, that at the shores of the lake of Galilee, where He spoke to the despondent disciples from the shore, and when John said to Peter, "It is the Lord," Peter threw himself in the water and swam ashore. But some awful change was wrought in him, and while the disciples recognized him, they felt that he was not the same who wandered through Galilee with them, but that this was a life of manifestations. And thus he progressed, leaving behind gradually the old earthly relationships, and gathering and lifting up himself into glory everlasting.
The whole subject of Christ's resurrection life is a personal revelation of life and important for every one of us. The heart of the world was aching for this doctrine of resurrection. It is the consolation of the world, the sure, immovable corner-stone whereon to rear the glorious superstructure of our own immortality. It teaches us that there is a continuity of our own existence; that death is only apparently a chasm, and shows most surely the fact that life goes on continuously, preserving individuality. Death in the naturalistic sense of the word is the disintegration of the body, and when it does not break the chain nothing can.
Jesus arises unharmed from sin and death and hell. Behold him, the same who hung on the tree, the same as the one who held familiar converse with the disciples, indestructibly the same yesterday, today and forever. This is the truth of continuity of life in this story, redolent and fragrant with the blossoms of eternity. If Christ's life triumphed over death, ours will. And his process through new faculties of existence to the possession of a spiritual body, the spiritual element evermore assuming the ascendancy until the ascension will be a pattern of ours.
In order to participate in anticipation or reality in this, there must be a oneness of life with Christ, which will be part of us on our passage through the portals of death. Oneness with Christ is the link. Life without a personal union with Christ, how can it expect to share in the benefits he marked out for his children? The question is, are you with Christ? Then all that life of Christ from his birth — the cross, burial, resurrection and ascension — will be to you a grand object-lesson — a picture where you may read what are constituent elements in your own fate. Yours will be similar.
—Chester Times, Chester, Pennsylvania, May 8, 1882.
Sermon by Rev. P. H. Mowry
Note: The Rev. P. H. Mowry was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chester, Pennsylvania.
The preacher taking his text from John 20:17, said:
In the words of Christ to Mary Magdalen, which properly translated read, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say unto them, I am ascending unto My Father and your Father; and to My God and your God." He indicates that in the forty days that lay between the Easter Sunday and the Pentecostal Sunday, his life was of a different character than the ordinary human, and that His body was in a state of transition tending toward its highest spiritual form.
The scene of the incident mentioned in this chapter, was in the garden surrounding the rock-hewn tomb, where His body had been deposited. On the morning of the first day in the week, Mary Magdalen came to look for the body of the Master. When the Lord said to her, "Woman, why weepest thou?" she thought the form before her was the gardener. This, however, gives us no right to suppose that physical appearance of Christ had changed to such an extent, that even Mary Magdalen should not recognize Him, but with her eyes dimmed with tears, her mind preoccupied, and perhaps prevented from seeing Him distinctly by the posture assumed, it was only when another sense was touched, when He said, "Mary!" that she recognized Him. And immediately following Christ adds, as if to prevent an embrace or the grasping of His hands by Mary Magdalen, "Touch me not."
Various reasons have been given as explanations of this, but the most reasonable is this, that the touching of his body was not essential to her for recognition and faith as it was later for Thomas. The special point is that the Lord tells her that He is ascending. That is in other words that he is in a state of transition or transformation from the temporal and physical state to the eternal and spiritual.
Christ's is the first instance of resurrection as distinct from resuscitation or reanimation of those who were dead, as for instance Lazarus. Lazarus was reestablished to the same condition of things out of which he had passed, to live the same life and be subject again to death. This was not the case with Jesus. When he rose, he was risen in triumph no more to die. The transitions through which Christ passed are therefore essential to us. He was the first resurrected, the first born of death and when he returned to the realm of the visible and tangible he had a body. Mary and Thomas did not see a spirit. In some respects it was the same body which is seen by Christ challenging Thomas to put his hands on the marks of the nails.
It was the same body that had hung on the cross, but had changed mysteriously in several respects. It was a palpable body that might be touched, yet it was above the limitations of space, as proved by his appearance in the midst of the disciples through closed doors and afterwards vanishing from their sight. It was a body, which could eat, but did not need it. Christ manifested himself on ten different occasions between his resurrection and ascension. They all indicate that some change had taken place in his body, while still preserving its identity. From this we may reasonably infer that the 40 days constitute a period, measuring the beginning and consummation of the glorification, where at last he assumed the perfect spiritual body in which he was taken from the vision of the disciples.
Of the ten manifestations, five occurred on the day following the resurrection, the five others were distributed over the period; we do not know exactly how, but one was towards the close, that at the shores of the lake of Galilee, where He spoke to the despondent disciples from the shore, and when John said to Peter, "It is the Lord," Peter threw himself in the water and swam ashore. But some awful change was wrought in him, and while the disciples recognized him, they felt that he was not the same who wandered through Galilee with them, but that this was a life of manifestations. And thus he progressed, leaving behind gradually the old earthly relationships, and gathering and lifting up himself into glory everlasting.
The whole subject of Christ's resurrection life is a personal revelation of life and important for every one of us. The heart of the world was aching for this doctrine of resurrection. It is the consolation of the world, the sure, immovable corner-stone whereon to rear the glorious superstructure of our own immortality. It teaches us that there is a continuity of our own existence; that death is only apparently a chasm, and shows most surely the fact that life goes on continuously, preserving individuality. Death in the naturalistic sense of the word is the disintegration of the body, and when it does not break the chain nothing can.
Jesus arises unharmed from sin and death and hell. Behold him, the same who hung on the tree, the same as the one who held familiar converse with the disciples, indestructibly the same yesterday, today and forever. This is the truth of continuity of life in this story, redolent and fragrant with the blossoms of eternity. If Christ's life triumphed over death, ours will. And his process through new faculties of existence to the possession of a spiritual body, the spiritual element evermore assuming the ascendancy until the ascension will be a pattern of ours.
In order to participate in anticipation or reality in this, there must be a oneness of life with Christ, which will be part of us on our passage through the portals of death. Oneness with Christ is the link. Life without a personal union with Christ, how can it expect to share in the benefits he marked out for his children? The question is, are you with Christ? Then all that life of Christ from his birth — the cross, burial, resurrection and ascension — will be to you a grand object-lesson — a picture where you may read what are constituent elements in your own fate. Yours will be similar.
—Chester Times, Chester, Pennsylvania, May 8, 1882.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Hope Crapsey Will See Error of Ways
1906
If He Doesn't His Jurors Decide That Church Shall Suspend Him
Rochester, N. Y., May 15. — The verdict in the heresy trial of Rev. Dr. Algernon S. Crapsey was today delivered to the accused minister. The four jurors state in their opinion sentence should be passed as follows:
"That the respondent should be suspended from exercising functions of the church until such time as he shall satisfy the ecclesiastical authorities of the diocese that his belief and teaching conform to the doctrines of the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed as this church has received the same. However, we express the earnest hope and desire that the respondent may see his way clearly during the thirty days that under the canons of the church must intervene before sentence can be pronounced to fully satisfy the ecclesiastical authorities of such conformity on his part."
The charges against Crapsey grew out of a series of sermons, delivered by him while he was rector of St. Andrew's church at Rochester, and which he subsequently published in book form under the title of "Religion and Politics." In brief the charges declare Crapsey in these writings denies the doctrines of the divinity of Christ, his virgin birth, his resurrection and the doctrine of the Trinity as contained in the Apostles' and Nicene creeds and the Book of Common Prayer of the Protestant Episcopal church of the United States.
Dr. Francis S. Dunham filed a minority report in which he says:
"I find from Crapsey's own statements and evidence submitted for his defense that his defense is that his error consists rather in presuming to define what God has not been pleased to reveal, and to interpret those doctrines in a manner not generally received by the church, rather than in denial and rejection of their truth and authority."
If He Doesn't His Jurors Decide That Church Shall Suspend Him
Rochester, N. Y., May 15. — The verdict in the heresy trial of Rev. Dr. Algernon S. Crapsey was today delivered to the accused minister. The four jurors state in their opinion sentence should be passed as follows:
"That the respondent should be suspended from exercising functions of the church until such time as he shall satisfy the ecclesiastical authorities of the diocese that his belief and teaching conform to the doctrines of the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed as this church has received the same. However, we express the earnest hope and desire that the respondent may see his way clearly during the thirty days that under the canons of the church must intervene before sentence can be pronounced to fully satisfy the ecclesiastical authorities of such conformity on his part."
The charges against Crapsey grew out of a series of sermons, delivered by him while he was rector of St. Andrew's church at Rochester, and which he subsequently published in book form under the title of "Religion and Politics." In brief the charges declare Crapsey in these writings denies the doctrines of the divinity of Christ, his virgin birth, his resurrection and the doctrine of the Trinity as contained in the Apostles' and Nicene creeds and the Book of Common Prayer of the Protestant Episcopal church of the United States.
Dr. Francis S. Dunham filed a minority report in which he says:
"I find from Crapsey's own statements and evidence submitted for his defense that his defense is that his error consists rather in presuming to define what God has not been pleased to reveal, and to interpret those doctrines in a manner not generally received by the church, rather than in denial and rejection of their truth and authority."
Saturday, June 2, 2007
No Resurrection, Princeton Professor Says
1914
The story of the resurrection of Christ, as recorded by the Disciples, was the product of Peter's imagination and zealous faith, according to Lucius Hopkins Miller, professor of Biblical instruction at Princeton University, in an article in the Biblical World just released by the University of Chicago Press.
The article is entitled "Life of Jesus in the Light of Modern Criticism."
Prof. Miller maintains that Jesus rose merely in the spirit and not in the body, and the story of the empty grave is a myth. He describes the impressions produced on the minds of the Apostles following Christ's crucifixion as a "series of visions."
—Edwardsville Intelligencer, Edwardsville, IL, Feb. 20, 1914.
The story of the resurrection of Christ, as recorded by the Disciples, was the product of Peter's imagination and zealous faith, according to Lucius Hopkins Miller, professor of Biblical instruction at Princeton University, in an article in the Biblical World just released by the University of Chicago Press.
The article is entitled "Life of Jesus in the Light of Modern Criticism."
Prof. Miller maintains that Jesus rose merely in the spirit and not in the body, and the story of the empty grave is a myth. He describes the impressions produced on the minds of the Apostles following Christ's crucifixion as a "series of visions."
—Edwardsville Intelligencer, Edwardsville, IL, Feb. 20, 1914.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Life Beyond The Grave
Indiana, 1917
Rev. H. B. Hostetter Tells Why He Believes in Immortality
"Some of the Reasons Why I Believe There Is a Life Beyond the Grave," was the subject of the morning sermon by Rev. H. B. Hostetter at the Third Presbyterian church Sunday.
"Humanly speaking there is no absolute proof of the immortality of the soul," he said. "But the great preponderance of evidence is in its favor and any man who makes a candid, unprejudiced inquiry can come to but one conclusion — though a man die he shall most certainly live again.
"Life's voyage is to end not in the rocks and shallows of an unmerciful sea, but in the Haven of Eternal Rest — not a kingdom of darkness, but a kingdom of living light; not the cramped and suffocating confines of the grave, but heaven's broad arch; not the dark and narrow house, but our Father's house, where many mansions are. 'He that findeth Me, findeth life,' said Christ, 'and because I live ye shall live also.' "
CHURCHES CROWDED SUNDAY
Easter Services Attended by Throngs of People
An unprecedented number of people attended services in the various churches of the city Easter Sunday.
Special services were held in all the churches and music appropriate for the day and season was heard everywhere. Downtown churches were especially well attended, many of them being full to the very doors. Every service at the Cathedral attracted a record crowd.
A patriotic strain was carried through the services of practically every church and the Stars and Stripes mingled with Easter decorations everywhere. Many of the sermons touched upon the crisis in which the nation now stands, and called for the support of the people in the process of upholding the nation's honor.
—The Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Monday, April 9, 1917, p. 14.
Rev. H. B. Hostetter Tells Why He Believes in Immortality
"Some of the Reasons Why I Believe There Is a Life Beyond the Grave," was the subject of the morning sermon by Rev. H. B. Hostetter at the Third Presbyterian church Sunday.
"Humanly speaking there is no absolute proof of the immortality of the soul," he said. "But the great preponderance of evidence is in its favor and any man who makes a candid, unprejudiced inquiry can come to but one conclusion — though a man die he shall most certainly live again.
"Life's voyage is to end not in the rocks and shallows of an unmerciful sea, but in the Haven of Eternal Rest — not a kingdom of darkness, but a kingdom of living light; not the cramped and suffocating confines of the grave, but heaven's broad arch; not the dark and narrow house, but our Father's house, where many mansions are. 'He that findeth Me, findeth life,' said Christ, 'and because I live ye shall live also.' "
CHURCHES CROWDED SUNDAY
Easter Services Attended by Throngs of People
An unprecedented number of people attended services in the various churches of the city Easter Sunday.
Special services were held in all the churches and music appropriate for the day and season was heard everywhere. Downtown churches were especially well attended, many of them being full to the very doors. Every service at the Cathedral attracted a record crowd.
A patriotic strain was carried through the services of practically every church and the Stars and Stripes mingled with Easter decorations everywhere. Many of the sermons touched upon the crisis in which the nation now stands, and called for the support of the people in the process of upholding the nation's honor.
—The Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Monday, April 9, 1917, p. 14.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Brands Higher Critics of The Bible as Judases
1907
Minister Attacks Biblical World and Professors Are Scored
St. Louis, Nov. 13.— At yesterday's session of the Bible League of North America meeting the conference's 13-inch theological guns were turned upon the Biblical World, one of the official publications of the University of Chicago. The indignation of the conference was aroused by the publication recently of an editorial in this magazine, in which the second advent of Christ was derided and the resurrection of Jesus denied.
The chief address of the day was made by Rev. W. M. McPheeters, D.D., instructor in the Southern Presbyterian Theological seminary at Columbia S.C. His subject was "Has the Influence of Radical Criticism Been Wholly to the Advantage of Religion and the Bible?"
This question the minister answered with an emphatic and indignant negative.
Criticism Kiss of Judas.
"Higher criticism is not the Roman's spear," said he, "which pierced the side of the Lord. It is rather the kiss of Judas, which, under the pretense of friendliness, aims at the destruction of religion. We, the adherents of literal faith in every work of holy writ, are contending today for the altar and the hearthstone.
"Radical criticism, such as that voiced by the University of Chicago proposes a complete change from Christianity to infidelity. It not only presumes to modify, but even, on occasions, rejects the truth taught by Christ, such as his resurrection and second advent.
"There are a few ambitious young men at the university, who, impatient of obscurity and meager pay, think to procure themselves better positions by attracting publicity. This aim they can accomplish best by sensational attacks upon what is holy.
"The editorial says that the expectation of Christ's second coming is based not on the historical but the imaginative portions of the Bible. But the second advent is mentioned in the Acts, a historical book. It is estimated that every twenty-fifth verse of the Old Testament refers to the second coming of the Messiah."
Uses Sarcasm as Weapon.
A paper satirizing the methods of higher criticism, by one of the ministers present, was read at the morning session by Rev. P. V. Genness. The author, by adopting the reasoning as he understood it, of the higher critics, sarcastically proved that the Declaration of Independence was not written until after the civil war.
Rev. Dr. C. J. Scofield, of the First Congregational church, Dallas, Texas, said that the beliefs expressed by the Biblical World, if generally adopted, would work the subversion of all religion.
"These young professors, said he, "have almost reached the point where they consider the Bible not a divine, but merely a human document."
The motto of the Bible League of America is "Back to the Bible." Its purpose is to renew faith in both testaments and to oppose the inroads of higher criticism.
—Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, IN, Nov. 13, 1907, p. 5.
Minister Attacks Biblical World and Professors Are Scored
St. Louis, Nov. 13.— At yesterday's session of the Bible League of North America meeting the conference's 13-inch theological guns were turned upon the Biblical World, one of the official publications of the University of Chicago. The indignation of the conference was aroused by the publication recently of an editorial in this magazine, in which the second advent of Christ was derided and the resurrection of Jesus denied.
The chief address of the day was made by Rev. W. M. McPheeters, D.D., instructor in the Southern Presbyterian Theological seminary at Columbia S.C. His subject was "Has the Influence of Radical Criticism Been Wholly to the Advantage of Religion and the Bible?"
This question the minister answered with an emphatic and indignant negative.
Criticism Kiss of Judas.
"Higher criticism is not the Roman's spear," said he, "which pierced the side of the Lord. It is rather the kiss of Judas, which, under the pretense of friendliness, aims at the destruction of religion. We, the adherents of literal faith in every work of holy writ, are contending today for the altar and the hearthstone.
"Radical criticism, such as that voiced by the University of Chicago proposes a complete change from Christianity to infidelity. It not only presumes to modify, but even, on occasions, rejects the truth taught by Christ, such as his resurrection and second advent.
"There are a few ambitious young men at the university, who, impatient of obscurity and meager pay, think to procure themselves better positions by attracting publicity. This aim they can accomplish best by sensational attacks upon what is holy.
"The editorial says that the expectation of Christ's second coming is based not on the historical but the imaginative portions of the Bible. But the second advent is mentioned in the Acts, a historical book. It is estimated that every twenty-fifth verse of the Old Testament refers to the second coming of the Messiah."
Uses Sarcasm as Weapon.
A paper satirizing the methods of higher criticism, by one of the ministers present, was read at the morning session by Rev. P. V. Genness. The author, by adopting the reasoning as he understood it, of the higher critics, sarcastically proved that the Declaration of Independence was not written until after the civil war.
Rev. Dr. C. J. Scofield, of the First Congregational church, Dallas, Texas, said that the beliefs expressed by the Biblical World, if generally adopted, would work the subversion of all religion.
"These young professors, said he, "have almost reached the point where they consider the Bible not a divine, but merely a human document."
The motto of the Bible League of America is "Back to the Bible." Its purpose is to renew faith in both testaments and to oppose the inroads of higher criticism.
—Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, IN, Nov. 13, 1907, p. 5.
Monday, May 7, 2007
The First Easter
1917
Rosily dawned the day in the far east. On the shore the cool waves broke gently, fluttering foamy drops on the yellow sand. Away from the rocky stretches of green, lilies bloomed slender and tall, while with cups curving to catch the errant little breeze which carried their sweetness beyond the hills. In the stony crevices wild flowers glinted out from dew wet leaves. Half hidden by pale lily blooms, a dark stone guarded the entrance to a cave among the rocks.
Early in the dawning Sabbath glow, two women, gentle voiced and sorrowing, came slowly down a flowered path, bearing in their arms perfumed napkins and precious spices in carved boxes. They were clad in flowing gray garments, and their heads were bent in meek weeping.
As they drew nearer to the lily sentineled tomb, the one who walked ahead raised her eyes, dark with pain, to the open doorway, and quick wonder lighted their depths, and she turned, whispering: "Ah! Mary Magdalene, the stone already is rolled away. He hath done this thing."
With eager steps they left the growing day and entered the darkened sepulcher. But as they went they saw two angels seated at the tomb, two men with strong, glorified faces and glad, bright eyes, and their robes were bright as if the sunlight were shining through. The two Marys paused, startled, awed by the great light.
Then the mother of Christ knelt low and wept but a voice thrillingly tender called to her saying, "Woman, why weepest thou?"
And she lifted her eyes at the words and answered softly, "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him."
But the voice came again, glad and full of rejoicing: "Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified He is not here, for he is risen!"
Wondering, the mother gazed, her starry eyes searching the brightened sepulcher. Then she rose and walked with Mary Magdalene from the place.
Descending the path in the golden sunlight, her gray robes brushed against the uplifted flowers, dew flecked, wondrous sweet. Stooping, she bent her head to the shining lilies "Live," she murmured, "as expression of the divine beauty of the Son of Man, as examples of his wondrous mercy and boundless love and as the symbol of his resurrection. Henceforth you shall be the flower of purity and spiritual beauty of the holy Easter day, of the great new life which floods the earth through the power of the Son of God." — Patricia Gray in Philadelphia North American.
Rosily dawned the day in the far east. On the shore the cool waves broke gently, fluttering foamy drops on the yellow sand. Away from the rocky stretches of green, lilies bloomed slender and tall, while with cups curving to catch the errant little breeze which carried their sweetness beyond the hills. In the stony crevices wild flowers glinted out from dew wet leaves. Half hidden by pale lily blooms, a dark stone guarded the entrance to a cave among the rocks.
Early in the dawning Sabbath glow, two women, gentle voiced and sorrowing, came slowly down a flowered path, bearing in their arms perfumed napkins and precious spices in carved boxes. They were clad in flowing gray garments, and their heads were bent in meek weeping.
As they drew nearer to the lily sentineled tomb, the one who walked ahead raised her eyes, dark with pain, to the open doorway, and quick wonder lighted their depths, and she turned, whispering: "Ah! Mary Magdalene, the stone already is rolled away. He hath done this thing."
With eager steps they left the growing day and entered the darkened sepulcher. But as they went they saw two angels seated at the tomb, two men with strong, glorified faces and glad, bright eyes, and their robes were bright as if the sunlight were shining through. The two Marys paused, startled, awed by the great light.
Then the mother of Christ knelt low and wept but a voice thrillingly tender called to her saying, "Woman, why weepest thou?"
And she lifted her eyes at the words and answered softly, "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him."
But the voice came again, glad and full of rejoicing: "Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified He is not here, for he is risen!"
Wondering, the mother gazed, her starry eyes searching the brightened sepulcher. Then she rose and walked with Mary Magdalene from the place.
Descending the path in the golden sunlight, her gray robes brushed against the uplifted flowers, dew flecked, wondrous sweet. Stooping, she bent her head to the shining lilies "Live," she murmured, "as expression of the divine beauty of the Son of Man, as examples of his wondrous mercy and boundless love and as the symbol of his resurrection. Henceforth you shall be the flower of purity and spiritual beauty of the holy Easter day, of the great new life which floods the earth through the power of the Son of God." — Patricia Gray in Philadelphia North American.
What Easter Should Mean
1917
Does Easter mean to you only the wearing of a new hat, a new frock and the studying of fashions as worn by others? Do you let it bring to your little ones only the rabbit's nest of colored eggs or the fluffs of yellow chicks? Does it strike no higher chord in your being than the fact that spring is at hand and you must have light and becoming apparel?
Easter is more than all these. It is the force in nature that brings the leaf, the bud and at last the glowing blossom from the clod. It is the resurrection of the life of those things we call inanimate because they cannot talk to us; how much more than the springing into being of the good that may be dormant in our hearts.
What the little ones should be told this Easter morning is that the life of the world itself is new; that the grave cannot hold within its confines the mighty spirit of growing things. So I beg of you to not dwell too largely upon the sadness of the cross and the crown of thorns, but rather upon the glorious truth that those were but small in comparison with the glory of Christ's rising.
If the remembrance of the freeing from the tomb means anything in teaching Christianity it means the beauty of the resurrection; it means that the very spirit of "Christ risen from the dead" is to be carried out in real life; that joy and fresh glowing happiness are to be taught and believed in. Gloom has no place on Easter day. What is past is past; troubles that have come are gone; pain that has been suffered and cured is to be forgotten, and this is the meaning that Easter should bring into every mother's morning greeting to her little ones.
"You were ill yesterday, but you are well today." You are to live as if the sun was newly born, the skies newly washed in their sunny blue, the stars but just freshly placed to shine to give you pleasure, the moon sailing like a beautiful round globe for your eyes to see. All these mean a keener enjoyment, a better understanding, and you will find response in each small body and loving heart if the practice be the teaching of the Golden Rule, not only today, but all the year. — Emma Irene McLagan in St. Louis Globe Democrat.
Does Easter mean to you only the wearing of a new hat, a new frock and the studying of fashions as worn by others? Do you let it bring to your little ones only the rabbit's nest of colored eggs or the fluffs of yellow chicks? Does it strike no higher chord in your being than the fact that spring is at hand and you must have light and becoming apparel?
Easter is more than all these. It is the force in nature that brings the leaf, the bud and at last the glowing blossom from the clod. It is the resurrection of the life of those things we call inanimate because they cannot talk to us; how much more than the springing into being of the good that may be dormant in our hearts.
What the little ones should be told this Easter morning is that the life of the world itself is new; that the grave cannot hold within its confines the mighty spirit of growing things. So I beg of you to not dwell too largely upon the sadness of the cross and the crown of thorns, but rather upon the glorious truth that those were but small in comparison with the glory of Christ's rising.
If the remembrance of the freeing from the tomb means anything in teaching Christianity it means the beauty of the resurrection; it means that the very spirit of "Christ risen from the dead" is to be carried out in real life; that joy and fresh glowing happiness are to be taught and believed in. Gloom has no place on Easter day. What is past is past; troubles that have come are gone; pain that has been suffered and cured is to be forgotten, and this is the meaning that Easter should bring into every mother's morning greeting to her little ones.
"You were ill yesterday, but you are well today." You are to live as if the sun was newly born, the skies newly washed in their sunny blue, the stars but just freshly placed to shine to give you pleasure, the moon sailing like a beautiful round globe for your eyes to see. All these mean a keener enjoyment, a better understanding, and you will find response in each small body and loving heart if the practice be the teaching of the Golden Rule, not only today, but all the year. — Emma Irene McLagan in St. Louis Globe Democrat.
What We See in Easter
1917
We see in Easter not merely a memorial of a long gone past, but a witness to the truth that the grave is always empty, that the living are never to be sought among the dead and that a divine presence ever walks the earth, the companion now, as then, of those whose eager questioning needs answer and whose earnest but perhaps almost despairing hope needs inspiration which only He can give, says the Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott.
Flowers in The Churches
Easter is essentially Christ's day. And Christ loved beautiful, simple, reverent things. For that reason, keep your churches simple, beautiful and reverent. Christ would not have enjoyed tight bunches of flowers with their poor little stems all choked up. He would have wanted them to be loosely, gracefully, happily placed. Christ would not have loved the rare orchids and the hot-house palms better than the field daises and the nodding daffodils and the shy arbutus.
Trim your churches with an eye to color and a sense of grouping, and, above all, the spirit of love in your heart.
And your church home, blessed by God's flowers, cannot fail to be beautiful and simple and reverent. — Margaret E. Sangster, in the Christian Herald.
We see in Easter not merely a memorial of a long gone past, but a witness to the truth that the grave is always empty, that the living are never to be sought among the dead and that a divine presence ever walks the earth, the companion now, as then, of those whose eager questioning needs answer and whose earnest but perhaps almost despairing hope needs inspiration which only He can give, says the Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott.
Flowers in The Churches
Easter is essentially Christ's day. And Christ loved beautiful, simple, reverent things. For that reason, keep your churches simple, beautiful and reverent. Christ would not have enjoyed tight bunches of flowers with their poor little stems all choked up. He would have wanted them to be loosely, gracefully, happily placed. Christ would not have loved the rare orchids and the hot-house palms better than the field daises and the nodding daffodils and the shy arbutus.
Trim your churches with an eye to color and a sense of grouping, and, above all, the spirit of love in your heart.
And your church home, blessed by God's flowers, cannot fail to be beautiful and simple and reverent. — Margaret E. Sangster, in the Christian Herald.
Welcome Easter
1917
Man likes to rule, not merely to wait upon nature. So it is that he has learned through the ages to look for, and love the tiny things that mark the coming of the soil's great Easter session, and give him a hint that spring is waiting for him to commit his hopes and promises to her, that she may carry them on strong and hearty to her more vigorous successor, the sunny summertime.
IN THE HOLY LAND
Easter the Accepted Time for Gathering of Pilgrims From All Countries.
Easter has always been the most popular season for pilgrims and tourists to the Holy Land. Both the Roman and Greet Catholic churches have from remote ages encouraged and promoted the pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Scattered throughout the land vast hospices have been erected for the proper care of the religious pilgrims "under the supervision of the various Catholic and Protestant faiths that are drawn to the promised land. For, as someone has said. "This, the least of all lands, is the one country toward which Christian and Jew, Romanist, Greek and Moslem turn with adoring devotion and longing desire."
About fifteen thousand have been in the habit of visiting the sacred scenes of biblical history every year, entering the country through the ancient seaport or Jaffa. The European conflict has interfered with the plans of many a devoted follower of the Christian faith who proposed this season to carry out the dreams of a lifetime. The writer recalls a band of more than 135 German Catholics whom he frequently met last summer in Jerusalem, under the guidance of Brother Sebastian, formerly stationed at the American Catholic university, Brookland, Washington, D. C. The pilgrims were taken prisoners as they sailed from Jaffa a few hours after they had left Jerusalem with songs of devotion and praise to Christ and his church upon their lips.
One of the principal sights of Easter in Jerusalem is to witness upon Holy Saturday the so-called miracle of Holy Fire. It has been denounced by Roman Catholics and devout Christians of many faiths as a grass imposture, yet year after year for hours the section of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher upon Holy Saturday is crowded with the motley multitude, mostly from Russia, who are waiting for the Holy Ghost to appear unto them in the sacred fire. The people believe that it descends from heaven that day or is brought by an angel to the Holy Sepulcher.
Early in the last century two oval holes were pierced in the walls of the Chapel of the Angels, which is a portion of the Holy Sepulcher, where Greek, Roman Catholic, Armenian and Coptic Catholics worship at the burial place, as they believe, of their Lord. After being shut up in the sanctuary for several hours, the Greek bishop passes the miraculous fire through the little openings.
Immediately the multitude that has waited for over twenty four hours without food or drink becomes a howling mob and the fanatical Russians, Armenians, Copts and Abyssinians contend like maniacs to get their tapers lighted so that in a spirit of penance they may sear their bodies with the burning taper that has been lighted by "the holy fire."
The task of the Turkish guard stationed there in the great Christian temple erected in the cradle of their faith, symbolizing in its worship the unity in diversity of the church, is virtually powerless to keep order, much less to check the rioting and fighting of professed Christians. Frequently the enacting of the ceremony results in leaving upon the floor of the basilica the mangled dead forms of many who came there to worship. Above all the strife and superstition of the various sects that worship in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the fact that they all stand for a common truth that is symbolized in the sacred spot which for fully fifteen centuries has been considered the most sacred place on the earth.
Man likes to rule, not merely to wait upon nature. So it is that he has learned through the ages to look for, and love the tiny things that mark the coming of the soil's great Easter session, and give him a hint that spring is waiting for him to commit his hopes and promises to her, that she may carry them on strong and hearty to her more vigorous successor, the sunny summertime.
IN THE HOLY LAND
Easter the Accepted Time for Gathering of Pilgrims From All Countries.
Easter has always been the most popular season for pilgrims and tourists to the Holy Land. Both the Roman and Greet Catholic churches have from remote ages encouraged and promoted the pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Scattered throughout the land vast hospices have been erected for the proper care of the religious pilgrims "under the supervision of the various Catholic and Protestant faiths that are drawn to the promised land. For, as someone has said. "This, the least of all lands, is the one country toward which Christian and Jew, Romanist, Greek and Moslem turn with adoring devotion and longing desire."
About fifteen thousand have been in the habit of visiting the sacred scenes of biblical history every year, entering the country through the ancient seaport or Jaffa. The European conflict has interfered with the plans of many a devoted follower of the Christian faith who proposed this season to carry out the dreams of a lifetime. The writer recalls a band of more than 135 German Catholics whom he frequently met last summer in Jerusalem, under the guidance of Brother Sebastian, formerly stationed at the American Catholic university, Brookland, Washington, D. C. The pilgrims were taken prisoners as they sailed from Jaffa a few hours after they had left Jerusalem with songs of devotion and praise to Christ and his church upon their lips.
One of the principal sights of Easter in Jerusalem is to witness upon Holy Saturday the so-called miracle of Holy Fire. It has been denounced by Roman Catholics and devout Christians of many faiths as a grass imposture, yet year after year for hours the section of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher upon Holy Saturday is crowded with the motley multitude, mostly from Russia, who are waiting for the Holy Ghost to appear unto them in the sacred fire. The people believe that it descends from heaven that day or is brought by an angel to the Holy Sepulcher.
Early in the last century two oval holes were pierced in the walls of the Chapel of the Angels, which is a portion of the Holy Sepulcher, where Greek, Roman Catholic, Armenian and Coptic Catholics worship at the burial place, as they believe, of their Lord. After being shut up in the sanctuary for several hours, the Greek bishop passes the miraculous fire through the little openings.
Immediately the multitude that has waited for over twenty four hours without food or drink becomes a howling mob and the fanatical Russians, Armenians, Copts and Abyssinians contend like maniacs to get their tapers lighted so that in a spirit of penance they may sear their bodies with the burning taper that has been lighted by "the holy fire."
The task of the Turkish guard stationed there in the great Christian temple erected in the cradle of their faith, symbolizing in its worship the unity in diversity of the church, is virtually powerless to keep order, much less to check the rioting and fighting of professed Christians. Frequently the enacting of the ceremony results in leaving upon the floor of the basilica the mangled dead forms of many who came there to worship. Above all the strife and superstition of the various sects that worship in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the fact that they all stand for a common truth that is symbolized in the sacred spot which for fully fifteen centuries has been considered the most sacred place on the earth.
The Empty Tomb
1917
Resurrection of Jesus Meant the Unfolding of the Purest Things of Life
When the angel pointed to the stone rolled away from the of the sepulcher and invited inspection of the empty tomb, what a magnificent allegory for life was written to the scrolls of humanity! Life is lived in action, say they who lay emphasis upon the strenuous life. But what action? The action of the ideal, the action of the parable of human existence. Erase the parables of beauty and lore and of love and service from the experiences of mortals, and religion vanishes and life loses its appeals to the higher aspirations and life's service becomes sordid and unworthy. The allegory of the empty tomb is the tremendous contribution of the resurrection to the life of humanity. It is inspiring to dwell upon a risen Lord. It is even more inspiring to dwell upon a risen life — the aggregate life Of hoping and struggling and effortful humanity. Civilization sits at the tomb of the divinest of men and with its mystical loom it weaves into the resurrection of Jesus the theme of advance and unfolding of the purest things of human life.
The dark fates that had cut the thread of the mortal life of the one who served a brief ministry of word and deed among his fellows, at the same time released the mechanism of almightiness. The human passed that the divine might be revealed. The mortal was lost in the immortal. The world has attestation to the limitlessness of life and therefore the illimitable reach of the divinest of its aspirations and endeavors. The risen Christ is adored because he is risen. Had he simply suffered he would have been pathetic. Ennobling as suffering is in triumph, it is useless to defeat. Jesus Christ did not simply suffer — he triumphed. This is the need of the ages and of all time and of all life. It is needful for men that they shall triumph over the deadening facts of materiality. It is necessary that they shall triumph over the cabining and cramping confines of mortal existence. It is necessary that they shall have the horizon of their soul's meaning made coterminous with the expanse of love and of hope and of faith. It is necessary that there shall be fulfillment to life and not an ending of it. It is important above all things that the drama of existence shall not close in a tragedy. The world would have flung the divine claims of Jesus Christ to the winds of sophistry and contempt had he not arisen from the tomb and confirmed the faith of his fellows in the power of the life that he lived in the flesh to abide after the flesh had been impaled by the darts of death.
Let those who would contrive or contest the resurrection take a petal from the lilies of pure ideals that blossomed by the tomb of the Savior. Let those who will enter into discussion as to the scientific aspect of the great Easter occasion — the world is redolent with its glory. Mankind rejoices in its liberty. Humanity is exalted by the vistas of infinity that lay outside the tomb from whose door was rolled away the sealed stone. Life is the one great theme of mankind. Death is an anachronism. Fulfillment, rejoicing, power, strength and endurance, these are the qualities that belong to the risen life — the life spiritual. For only as the announcement was made of the risen Jesus Christ from the dead was there opened to man's range of the ages the spiritual realities this side of the grave and the immortal heritage on the other side.
Resurrection of Jesus Meant the Unfolding of the Purest Things of Life
When the angel pointed to the stone rolled away from the of the sepulcher and invited inspection of the empty tomb, what a magnificent allegory for life was written to the scrolls of humanity! Life is lived in action, say they who lay emphasis upon the strenuous life. But what action? The action of the ideal, the action of the parable of human existence. Erase the parables of beauty and lore and of love and service from the experiences of mortals, and religion vanishes and life loses its appeals to the higher aspirations and life's service becomes sordid and unworthy. The allegory of the empty tomb is the tremendous contribution of the resurrection to the life of humanity. It is inspiring to dwell upon a risen Lord. It is even more inspiring to dwell upon a risen life — the aggregate life Of hoping and struggling and effortful humanity. Civilization sits at the tomb of the divinest of men and with its mystical loom it weaves into the resurrection of Jesus the theme of advance and unfolding of the purest things of human life.
The dark fates that had cut the thread of the mortal life of the one who served a brief ministry of word and deed among his fellows, at the same time released the mechanism of almightiness. The human passed that the divine might be revealed. The mortal was lost in the immortal. The world has attestation to the limitlessness of life and therefore the illimitable reach of the divinest of its aspirations and endeavors. The risen Christ is adored because he is risen. Had he simply suffered he would have been pathetic. Ennobling as suffering is in triumph, it is useless to defeat. Jesus Christ did not simply suffer — he triumphed. This is the need of the ages and of all time and of all life. It is needful for men that they shall triumph over the deadening facts of materiality. It is necessary that they shall triumph over the cabining and cramping confines of mortal existence. It is necessary that they shall have the horizon of their soul's meaning made coterminous with the expanse of love and of hope and of faith. It is necessary that there shall be fulfillment to life and not an ending of it. It is important above all things that the drama of existence shall not close in a tragedy. The world would have flung the divine claims of Jesus Christ to the winds of sophistry and contempt had he not arisen from the tomb and confirmed the faith of his fellows in the power of the life that he lived in the flesh to abide after the flesh had been impaled by the darts of death.
Let those who would contrive or contest the resurrection take a petal from the lilies of pure ideals that blossomed by the tomb of the Savior. Let those who will enter into discussion as to the scientific aspect of the great Easter occasion — the world is redolent with its glory. Mankind rejoices in its liberty. Humanity is exalted by the vistas of infinity that lay outside the tomb from whose door was rolled away the sealed stone. Life is the one great theme of mankind. Death is an anachronism. Fulfillment, rejoicing, power, strength and endurance, these are the qualities that belong to the risen life — the life spiritual. For only as the announcement was made of the risen Jesus Christ from the dead was there opened to man's range of the ages the spiritual realities this side of the grave and the immortal heritage on the other side.
Easter Gifts
1917
The very pleasant Easter custom of sending Easter cards to our friends or of making them simple and inexpensive gifts is a good one provided we do not carry it to an extreme. The springtime is a busy season when every one is weeding out one's possessions rather than seeking to add to them; hence numerous large gifts would prove a burden to the recipient. Eggs have always been associated with the day as symbolic of the resurrection. Bonbonnieres of this shape or candy eggs are always popular.
Flowers and growing plants are especially appropriate to the day, Easter lilies being always in demand. A corsage bouquet of violets or of lilies of the valley is a pretty gift to a girl. The man who makes it must be careful to have it sent to the house of the girl in time for her to wear to church on Easter morning. Neckties or scarves are suitable gifts to make to a man who is a relative or friend, provided one knows his tastes. — Florence Howe Hall in Chicago News.
ANGELS
God hath sent His angels
To the earth again,
Bringing joyful tidings
To the sons of men.
They who first at Christmas
Thronged the heavenly way.
Now beside the tomb door
Sit on Easter day.
Angels, sing His triumph
As you sang His birth.
"Christ the Lord is risen,
Peace, good will on earth."
In the dreadful desert
Where the Lord was tried,
There the faithful angels
Gathered at his side.
And when in the garden,
Grief and pain and care
Bowed Him down with Anguish
They were with Him there.
Yet the Christ they honor
Is the same Christ still,
Who, in light and darkness.
Did His Father's will.
And the tomb, deserted.
Shineth like the sky.
Since He passed out from it
Into victory.
God has still His angels
Helping, at His word.
All His faithful children
Like their faithful Lord.
Soothing them in sorrow,
Arming them in strife.
Opening wide the tomb doors
Leading into life.
Father, send Thine angels
Unto us, we pray;
Leave us not to wander
All along our way.
Let them guard and guide us
Whereso'er we be,
Till our resurrection
Brings us home to Thee.
—Phillips Brooks
The very pleasant Easter custom of sending Easter cards to our friends or of making them simple and inexpensive gifts is a good one provided we do not carry it to an extreme. The springtime is a busy season when every one is weeding out one's possessions rather than seeking to add to them; hence numerous large gifts would prove a burden to the recipient. Eggs have always been associated with the day as symbolic of the resurrection. Bonbonnieres of this shape or candy eggs are always popular.
Flowers and growing plants are especially appropriate to the day, Easter lilies being always in demand. A corsage bouquet of violets or of lilies of the valley is a pretty gift to a girl. The man who makes it must be careful to have it sent to the house of the girl in time for her to wear to church on Easter morning. Neckties or scarves are suitable gifts to make to a man who is a relative or friend, provided one knows his tastes. — Florence Howe Hall in Chicago News.
ANGELS
God hath sent His angels
To the earth again,
Bringing joyful tidings
To the sons of men.
They who first at Christmas
Thronged the heavenly way.
Now beside the tomb door
Sit on Easter day.
Angels, sing His triumph
As you sang His birth.
"Christ the Lord is risen,
Peace, good will on earth."
In the dreadful desert
Where the Lord was tried,
There the faithful angels
Gathered at his side.
And when in the garden,
Grief and pain and care
Bowed Him down with Anguish
They were with Him there.
Yet the Christ they honor
Is the same Christ still,
Who, in light and darkness.
Did His Father's will.
And the tomb, deserted.
Shineth like the sky.
Since He passed out from it
Into victory.
God has still His angels
Helping, at His word.
All His faithful children
Like their faithful Lord.
Soothing them in sorrow,
Arming them in strife.
Opening wide the tomb doors
Leading into life.
Father, send Thine angels
Unto us, we pray;
Leave us not to wander
All along our way.
Let them guard and guide us
Whereso'er we be,
Till our resurrection
Brings us home to Thee.
—Phillips Brooks
Garden of Gethsemane
1917
The site of the garden of Gethsemane, on the western slope of Olivet has been recently enclosed — there is about a third of an acre — and is maintained by the Franciscans. Eight olive trees of very great age are among the interesting features of the garden, and it is thought, with some probability, that they may have sprung from the roots of those which were there in the time of our Lord.
Three special sites are shown to travelers — the one known as the Chapel of the Agony, in a cave, and revered by the early pilgrims, the place where the three disciples slept and the spot where Judas gave the kiss of betrayal. The last two are not mentioned by the early chroniclers and have possibly been added at a much later date. In an age when few could read and write and when there were no convenient guidebooks sites and objects were pointed out quite innocently as memorials of the details in the story which pilgrims were following. It must be remembered that vast numbers of pilgrims today — especially Russians — cannot read and expect to see marked the exact spots of the gospel incidents. When a simple minded peasant has traveled hundreds of miles to see the holy places and is shown the scene of the denial of St. Peter he will undoubtedly expect to be told where the cock crew.
Old Easter Customs
The English people formerly had two very large cakes divided among the congregation at the church on Easter. In 1645 parliament forbade this by law, providing that the money spent for cakes should in future be used to buy bread for the poor.
"At Easter let your clothes be new
Or else be sure you will it rue."
The boys in the north of England will tell you that if you do not put on something new on Easter day some misfortune will befall you.
Underneath most Easter customs and carols lies the symbol of Christ's resurrection.
The site of the garden of Gethsemane, on the western slope of Olivet has been recently enclosed — there is about a third of an acre — and is maintained by the Franciscans. Eight olive trees of very great age are among the interesting features of the garden, and it is thought, with some probability, that they may have sprung from the roots of those which were there in the time of our Lord.
Three special sites are shown to travelers — the one known as the Chapel of the Agony, in a cave, and revered by the early pilgrims, the place where the three disciples slept and the spot where Judas gave the kiss of betrayal. The last two are not mentioned by the early chroniclers and have possibly been added at a much later date. In an age when few could read and write and when there were no convenient guidebooks sites and objects were pointed out quite innocently as memorials of the details in the story which pilgrims were following. It must be remembered that vast numbers of pilgrims today — especially Russians — cannot read and expect to see marked the exact spots of the gospel incidents. When a simple minded peasant has traveled hundreds of miles to see the holy places and is shown the scene of the denial of St. Peter he will undoubtedly expect to be told where the cock crew.
Old Easter Customs
The English people formerly had two very large cakes divided among the congregation at the church on Easter. In 1645 parliament forbade this by law, providing that the money spent for cakes should in future be used to buy bread for the poor.
"At Easter let your clothes be new
Or else be sure you will it rue."
The boys in the north of England will tell you that if you do not put on something new on Easter day some misfortune will befall you.
Underneath most Easter customs and carols lies the symbol of Christ's resurrection.
The Custom of "Lifting"
1917
Strange English Development of the Story of the Resurrection
It is strange that absurdities should have arisen from what is to Christians the solemn idea of the resurrection or "lifting" of Christ. In one of the English countries a grave divine stepped into a wayside inn one day of Easter week.
No sooner was he seated than two strapping women rushed in and, making what children call a "chair" with their arms, invited him to be "lifted" and carried in state through the streets. With a small sum of money he bought them off and made amends for his evident dismay at what they had considered an honor. On Easter Monday and Shrove Tuesday the people were in the habit of going about "lifting" or "heaving" each other, each three times.
Origin of the Easter Egg
How an Ancient Legend Tells the Story of Its Birth
There fell from heaven one day, long, long ago, an egg of immense size. It rested on the Euphrates, where doves descended and hatched it, when out from it arose in splendid beauty Easter, or Venus, and that explains why eggs are a favorite food during the festival of this lovely deity. When the early Christians made their way north, conquering for Christ, they preserved this feast, but changed its application. "We will maintain your celebration," they said, "but it shall henceforth mean the resurrection of Christ." And that explains why it is that this joyous Christian festival bears an old heathen name. Similarly with the egg. It was retained as a symbol of the day and is thus used to the present time in many lands.
Eggs at Easter
The use of eggs at this season is undoubtedly symbolical of the revivification of nature, the rebirth of life in spring. From the Christian point of view this feast of eggs has usually been considered emblematic of the resurrection and of a future life. But the custom is not confined solely to Christians, as Jews use eggs in the feast of the Passover, and we are told that the Persians, when they keep the festival of the solar new year in March, present colored eggs to one another
Strange English Development of the Story of the Resurrection
It is strange that absurdities should have arisen from what is to Christians the solemn idea of the resurrection or "lifting" of Christ. In one of the English countries a grave divine stepped into a wayside inn one day of Easter week.
No sooner was he seated than two strapping women rushed in and, making what children call a "chair" with their arms, invited him to be "lifted" and carried in state through the streets. With a small sum of money he bought them off and made amends for his evident dismay at what they had considered an honor. On Easter Monday and Shrove Tuesday the people were in the habit of going about "lifting" or "heaving" each other, each three times.
Origin of the Easter Egg
How an Ancient Legend Tells the Story of Its Birth
There fell from heaven one day, long, long ago, an egg of immense size. It rested on the Euphrates, where doves descended and hatched it, when out from it arose in splendid beauty Easter, or Venus, and that explains why eggs are a favorite food during the festival of this lovely deity. When the early Christians made their way north, conquering for Christ, they preserved this feast, but changed its application. "We will maintain your celebration," they said, "but it shall henceforth mean the resurrection of Christ." And that explains why it is that this joyous Christian festival bears an old heathen name. Similarly with the egg. It was retained as a symbol of the day and is thus used to the present time in many lands.
Eggs at Easter
The use of eggs at this season is undoubtedly symbolical of the revivification of nature, the rebirth of life in spring. From the Christian point of view this feast of eggs has usually been considered emblematic of the resurrection and of a future life. But the custom is not confined solely to Christians, as Jews use eggs in the feast of the Passover, and we are told that the Persians, when they keep the festival of the solar new year in March, present colored eggs to one another
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
