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Show KASTKK. I Easter, the season when we incline our hear Is to tlie god of spring, is with us once more. Typical of renewed re-newed life, of restored vitality, it' Eeeuis as though some of its force and significance had gone. It finds ua this time with all that makes life dear, jeopardized, and life's beauties ; marred and tarnished by ruthless- j ness. It finds us in a death grapple . with the forces of evil to retain the ideals so long typified by its ever Joyous return. Taken from the myths and mysticisms mystic-isms of pagans, and grafted onto a , christian stem, it has stood for centuries cen-turies as a symbol of a r..-en Lord, a Lord who has triumphed over death and brought confusion to his enemies. It has been to human kind a source of Inspiration, assuring them that though the forces of darkness may triumph for a season, there comes a time, when the deadness of winter shall have passed, when the good, the lovely, the pure and the alive of , earth shall rise up and put to rout all enemies and claim the sovereignty sover-eignty that Mother Nature has, conferred con-ferred upon them. And never did human conditions i more loudly call for an Easter of the heart, the soul and the mind than in ! this. year of our Lord, 1918. Never! was the human race more in need ! of the regenerating influences of a' divine springtime than now. With many of earth's teeming millions -wandering in spiritual darkness, freezing in the arctic regions of selfishness self-ishness and greed, prowling in the under-world of deceit and avarice, there is much need of an awakening. Dare we hope, that this Easter season sea-son will see such an awakening? Can we hope to see during the year lying out before us, old passions and prejudices pre-judices die and new and purer growths take their place? May we hope to see earth's millions calmed and soothed and divested of the fever fe-ver of avarice and hate that seems to dominate them, and brought un- der the milder sway of a new and better life, a life drawn from a purer front? ' If we would thus hope, we must not lose sight of the fact that before every Easter there must be a winter win-ter a death. Resurrection does not signify the bringing to life of the old, but the substituting for it a new life. "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth alone," is as true today as when it was uttered ut-tered by the great Apostle of the Truth. Let us, then, who would look for an Easter of all creation, look to our own hearts and lives anc see if we have consigned to death all the vile and ignoble passions so wont to foregather fore-gather in that very complex habitation. habita-tion. Let us be sure that our outlook upon life is such that we may welcome wel-come the pure growth that a spiritual spirit-ual spring shall unfold before our vision. May the grain of wheat, typical typ-ical of the old man with all his past-ions, truly "fall into the earth and die," then in its place shall arise such a flower of love and beauty as shall dazzle our vision and enrapture our souls. |