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Show The Significance Of Easter IT IS not quite Easter, but it is not out of the way to contemplate the tremendous significance of the event it celebrates at any time. It stands out by itself alone; it is a day that has no duplicate in all the rolling ages. Men had entertained angels; it was told that gods had talked with men; but the dividing line that separated the mortal from the immortal had never been broken down; the one was to live on and on forever; the other had been given divine faculties, thoughts that compassed all the ' heights and depths, from the stars to the deepest abysses; it thought to -go up among the angels and feel all their joys; to mount the heights of literature and touch its divinest chords; to open door after door of science and bring out its wonders to the light; to grasp and hold for I a little space the ecstacy of love; to feel the clinging arms of their children around them; to I scale the heights of glory and feel the thrill that thrill that comes when human valor tried by fire triumphs; to feel the joy of commanding command-ing wealth and power; but just before them always al-ways they knew there awaited a funeral pyre or a grave and that the point of an arrow, the kiss of a serpent or a breath of fever was enough in an hour to convert them into dust. So they lived as century after century unrolled, un-rolled, and the question was continually asked: "Is this all?" with no answer except its own echo coming back from empty space. Men clung to the belief that there must be something beyond; they invented gods and gave them Immortality; they filled the earth and the air with them; when the spring came and kissed the earth and the snows disappeared and the J i t world again put on its spring habiliments, they ascribed it to a god or a goddess and built altars to him or her and offered their oblations. , When a storm shook the world and left in its path only wreck and death, then some god was offended and must be propitiated; when they went into battle they offered sacrifices to their gods; the blaze of lightnings, the flight of birds, the roll of thunder down the stairs of the sky, were signs to them which cunning men interpreted to the masses to suit their own designs and called the interpretations messages from the gods. J But the old doubts continued to distress them for back from tho immemorial past there came no sight, no sound. "If a man die, shall he live again?" remained unanswered. But at last the seal was broken. A devoted wSman went to the grave of one whom she believed was divine, who had been slain, to weep for him there. But the tomb was empty, and looking within, a radiant one seated there thrilled her soul with the words: "He is not here; He is risen." At last the answer had come and the glory of It, the comfort of it, the mighty significance" of it, is as startling and as sweet as when those words were first pronounced to the lowly woman. She could not begin to comprehend the wonder. The wisest man who has since lived cannot com1 prehend them in their significance to man. In ancient days, when in the capitals of southern south-ern Europe and western Asia, the storm-tones went out of the winds, the frost disappeared, the earth awoke from her winter's sleep and put on her spring blooms; when the migratory birds returned and men heard the robin's call and the lark when she rose to hail the sun; they set aside a day of thanksgiving and praise that the world had awakened from the death of the winter and spring had come. -With the event described above a new wisdom had come to men; this ancient day of praise and thankfulness for material blessings was changed to a day of thankfulness for the divine blessings which come of the proof that this life is but the dawn of an everlasting golden day. |