New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1877-02-14
THE LENTEN SEASON.
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To-day begins the Fast of the Forty Days
in the Wilderness. Yesterday was Shrove
Tuesday and Feasting to-day is Ash Wednes-
day and Fasting-special and ceremOniOuS
fasting, we mean, for many of Gods poor
have had something like Ash "Wednesday all
Winter long. Nor will there now among the
WELT do, however precise in religious OBJ
scrvance, he any abstinence very trying to the
mortal frame, save with the prOfessed religious
and ascetic. The Church, in this country at
least, considerably tempers the austtrltles or
the season, permits sufficient consumption OF
flesh to maintain hard workers in health. and
leaves the general regulation of the matter to
the bishops The material peculiarities of Lent
are soon disposed Of and the modification of
the body is an old resource for strengthening
faith and weakening the fleshly apperltes. Its
spiritual suggestions are of higher import. 1t re-
calls that divine self-abnegatiOn, that terrible
suffering, that anguish of which mere mOrtals
can form no conception, which preceded the
ultimate agony of the cross. 1t rcnews or
should renew, our awful sense of that mystic
riOus struggle between the divine and human
nature, which resulted in the victory over
death and the grave-the infinite tragedy and
triumph of the redemption. To all who are
making of life only long career of worldli-
ness and of selfishness; to all who shrink from
any pain, physical or mental; to all who see
in existence only an opportunity OF aggran-
dizement or of qualification, the whole story
of those days that preceded the death at which
all nature shuddered must be simply incOm-
prehensiblc. They speak the words which are
rtually prescribed; they attend carefully to
the admonitions of the Church, and are dill
gent frcquenters of her temples; they sing
what is to be sung, and they say what is to be
said but of the infinite significance of all this
service and symbolism they know, alas, how
little!
Men who make no professions, but who are
of a spiritually philosophical or of reverently
poetical nature, sitting in the loneliness of
their chambers and recalling the unsatisfying
bitterness of their lives, may catch glimpses of
the perfect justice and inilexible veracity of
the divine scheme, which never come to eyes
often closed in prayer, or to devotees kneeling
daily under the fretted vault and every morn
ing bathed in the prismatic glory of the oriole.
For it is true that while our religion is fitted
alike for the thoughtful and the thoughtess,
and may often fix the attention of the igno-
rant while it fails to arrest that of the culti-
waited, yet not the less is it full of the lOftiest
truth, and in its whole unreasonable sublim-
ity cannot be, humanity speaking, compre-
hended by the deepest intellect. But
to all, and this is the chief of its
miracles, it brings all which is neces-
sary-consoation. courage, and hope and
even a true sense of that wOndrOus mercy
and that divine plan through which came the
reconciliation. The world, in this nineteenth
century, has grown very FESTIVE under the per-
fectly cOngruous conditions of belief and of
unbclief; and many sharp witted men have
sought to sweep cOntemptuOusy aside all the
great doctrines upon which the Church is
builded. One by one. under the exorcism Of