The Newtown bee., 1908-03-06
LITTLE SERMON.
THE PURPOSE OF LENT. =. BY O.
 o. WRIGHT.

For everything there is a season, and {
 time for every purpose under heaven" Feel
 3:l.
 In the natural world of seedtime,
 summer growth, and harvest. the sea.
 son and the purpose must go hand ir
 hand. We cannot expect harvest
 without seeding and cultivation; and
 if we do not SOW in the springtide
 there will be no time for growth.
 Even so the periods of human life
 must each have time and opportunity
 for their proper fulflment, or we can
 not be successful. The child must be
 nurtured, trained, and cared for, or
 youth will lack its golden experience of happiness, and glad anticipations of
 maturity, !, and manhood and woman- hood will fail of its glory.
 The same law is found in the evolu- tion of the moral and spiritual life. There are seasons in the growth. of the virtues and grace of Christian char acter. It is so in the nature of things. 1 It is the divine rule of life. A The his tory of the world shows that it has al- ways been so; and the best philosophy of life goes to prove that it is most |likely to continue ever as it has been.
 r"The purpose of Lent" says Dean Hodges, lis the deepening of our re- ligious life. It is time to consider what sort of persons we are, and to compare the'actual with the ideal, and to get nearer to the ideal. Ought we to do that all the time? We certainly ought not to be all the time introspec- tive. It is we'll that we should at some time look in and not out, be sub jective rather than objective and de- vote ourselves to an examination of our character. If we were to do that continually we would be not only very sad, but very unsatisfactory and un- successful Christians. We wou Id be- come morbid and self-centered. We would have pale souls. We would be in spirit what they are in body who sit all day in the house with the doors and windows shut. In the monasteries they tried to have Lent all the year round, and they proved for our benefit that continual Lent is not good for human beings.
 Indeed, it is question not of obliga- tion, but of possibility. Could we keep Lent all the year, if we would? Not without change in our nature. For it is everlastingly true of us men that all our progress, spiritual as we'll as other, is made in pedestrian fashion, as a man walks, first with one foot, then with the other. Now we do this, now we do that. Now we put the emphasis of our life here, now we put 1t there. To-day we look in towards our own souls, and examine ourselves, and go to church two or three times, and are in- tentionalIy self-conscious, and with lraw from some of the distractions of ,ur common life. Then we go back again, better, let us hope, and strong ,r, but still back we go into it all. into he distractions, into the temptations, nto the urgent interests, into the healthy pleasures of life, forgetting if we can, in thinking help ully about our neighbors. It is like he attenuation of day and night, of winter and summer, of week days and Sunday. That is how we are made. And Lent is in accord with it. Lent is or emphasis. Lent is for that deepen ng of the religious life which can be ffected only by the appointment of ertain days and seasons"