The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1886-04-25
EASTER.

Lent has come 70 an end. Forty
davs ago there came a sudden halt in
the gay tide of worldly fashion
Friyolity was stopped by the barrier OF
the Lenten season, and religious
society exchanged its sparkle and rest
Iessness for q deep and penitential
cllm. Catholics and Episcopalians
make of Lent TO the year what Sunday
Is TO the week; it is to members Of their
churches blessed season OF penitence,
a time for devout reflection and
religious zeal; for Christians generally,
Lent is a period of rest. when they can
escape without ofense, the strain Of social
duties and amusements. Whatever
may be said OF the religious feature OF
the period. the influence U. Lent upon
society is good-it is good morally and
physically. Some imprudently question
the sincerity of the fair devotee who
breaks of in her round OF revelry and
gaiety, and donning penitential weeds,
holds her prayer book reverentially to
her bosom, and with downcast eyes
wends her way to church; but nobody
has the right to say that she is not sim
cere, or that her whole soul is not
wrapped up in the devotion indicated
by her appearance. Fashion does
no. necessarily deprive its followers of
sincerity. 1t is Often that the true in
ner life of its devotees is hidden beneath
conventionality, and it is preferable to
believe that the penitential. the sober,
the devoted, the religious life of the
fashionable man or woman during Lent.
is really the true, the inner life of the
individual, over whom fashion
holds but superficial and tenn
porery dominion. But whatever the
real significance of Lent-and to thous-
ands it has none-the season is one of
benefit to society, for Its influence is on
the side of self-control and the restric.
ton Of the frivolity, the idle pleasure,
and the physically exhausting merri-
ment demanded by fashion. Lent,
however, closes with the coming of
Easter, the central anniversary OF the
Christian world. 1t matters little
whether there is genuine religious sig
nificance IN Easter, or whether il fol-
lows in line of heather customs that
have been gathered from the days of
the festivals of Bacchus, the revelation
that the day and feast embodies is
purely Christian, and to-day belongs
alone to the system OF Chistianity-a
system which comedies that the
Christ, who was crucihed. who died and
was buried, rose again and assembled
into heaven. The profane philosophers
have tried, but in vain, to reduce the
incidents to an inert allegory, and
harmonic the story with the theory
which attempts to account for all
things outside the domain Of the
spiritual or the supernatural; all the ef-
forts that have been put forth in the
contrary direction have failed, and the
rugged, definite. emphatic declaration
of Paul, that if Christ had not indeed
risen, then faith was dead and worthless,
has grown and fastened itself into the
hearts and convictions Of the Christian
lied world. Those who believe in the
Of the soul. who believe
in a death and future life. find justifi-
cation for their faith in the fact which
Easter celebrates.
But alleeorioal or based upon an event
fraught with so much importance to
the future Of mankind, Easter is fixed
institution in the Christian world, and
is joyously hailed as the close of
penitential season. as the beginning of
a purer and better life; it marks the
opening Of spring and the resumption
OF the gaieties. the pleasures, the
which were laid aside and
forgotten when the devotee hid from
the world and gave up exclusively to
the worship Of the Being who is in no
wise associated with the friyolties and
fraiIfiaS 0f rnorfaIs