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.
Showing posts with label spring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spring. Show all posts
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Friday, June 29, 2007
Easter Sunday Comes April 23, 1905
1905
Only nine times in two and one quarter centuries has Easter fallen as late as it does this year. Only five times in this period has it come later in the spring than it does in 1905, and it is not possible for it to fall more than two days later. In all of the time from 1786 to 2013 there is not an occasion when it falls later than April 25, and only twice does it come on this day of the month. During this period it will come three times on April 24 and four times on the 23d.
This year Easter Sunday. will be celebrated on April 23. This is the latest date since 1886, when it came on April 25, the latest date possible. As a result of a late Easter, Lent, of course, came correspondingly late and this meant a very long social season. Lent came as early as February 4, and as late as March 10, but it more often begins from the middle to the latter part of February, thus cutting off the gaiety of the social season right at its height.
The lateness of Easter and Lent this year will be appreciated by the ladies of the city for many reasons, some of which may perhaps seem trivial, but nevertheless they are of considerable moment to them. In the first place the lengthening of the social season is really a treat, then Lent is always taken advantage of by many as a time to prepare the spring and summer wearing apparel. While they are not kept out of the swirl of society by their regard for religious duty, they use the time in making up their clothes and the hum of the sewing machines is the prevailing sound in the household during this season. Because the beginning of Lent came so late this year all the spring and summer fabrics will be on display in the stores and they can have the latest there is to begin on at once.
Everyone knows what a pleasure it is to wear new Easter bonnets on Easter Sunday, and what a disappointment it is to the woman who has purchased a beautiful spring blossom of a picture hat, when she wakes up Easter morn to see the snow on the ground and the mercury hovering about the zero mark. With Easter falling so late there is only a slight possibility that the weather will be unfavorable.
Only nine times in two and one quarter centuries has Easter fallen as late as it does this year. Only five times in this period has it come later in the spring than it does in 1905, and it is not possible for it to fall more than two days later. In all of the time from 1786 to 2013 there is not an occasion when it falls later than April 25, and only twice does it come on this day of the month. During this period it will come three times on April 24 and four times on the 23d.
This year Easter Sunday. will be celebrated on April 23. This is the latest date since 1886, when it came on April 25, the latest date possible. As a result of a late Easter, Lent, of course, came correspondingly late and this meant a very long social season. Lent came as early as February 4, and as late as March 10, but it more often begins from the middle to the latter part of February, thus cutting off the gaiety of the social season right at its height.
The lateness of Easter and Lent this year will be appreciated by the ladies of the city for many reasons, some of which may perhaps seem trivial, but nevertheless they are of considerable moment to them. In the first place the lengthening of the social season is really a treat, then Lent is always taken advantage of by many as a time to prepare the spring and summer wearing apparel. While they are not kept out of the swirl of society by their regard for religious duty, they use the time in making up their clothes and the hum of the sewing machines is the prevailing sound in the household during this season. Because the beginning of Lent came so late this year all the spring and summer fabrics will be on display in the stores and they can have the latest there is to begin on at once.
Everyone knows what a pleasure it is to wear new Easter bonnets on Easter Sunday, and what a disappointment it is to the woman who has purchased a beautiful spring blossom of a picture hat, when she wakes up Easter morn to see the snow on the ground and the mercury hovering about the zero mark. With Easter falling so late there is only a slight possibility that the weather will be unfavorable.
Monday, May 7, 2007
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.
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
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