For thousands of ages before Jesus Christ, people absolutely believed in their own essential divinity. Not just an individual here and there, but the great sweeping mass of the people in those olden times had a firm belief in the essential divinity of man's soul. They were aware of the beautiful possibilities of following the divine urge in us, while we have been drifting steadily downwards. No matter how much wealth or intellect or education or culture we have in the outward sense, what man really needs to give him the secret of living, the worthwhileness of life, is that quality of the soul and of the heart which bespeaks the divinity within. It is the eternal, divine life growing in the hearts of men.
Nature awaits all the time our recognition of the wonderful, invisible forces of the inner life.
The reason we do not take into our souls the sweeping forces of these divine, eternal, permanent qualities is that we have lost faith in ourselves, in our fellow men, and in our inner god. If it were not so, we would have no war, no semblance of war. We would all be living together peacefully, doing the duties of everyday life, but spiritually conscious of the inner life, drinking in the strength and the beauty of the eternal life. Every man, when he tests his strength, when he challenges his own soul, reaches out into the sunshine of life and finds that life is worth living. But the celebration of Easter was originally a pagan festival, which the Church Fathers later adopted and turned into a Christian observance when they found that the ideas associated with it were so ingrained into the very lives of the multitude that it was of no use to attempt to change them.