Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 103, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1918 — EASTER [ARTICLE]

EASTER

Easter, the season when we incline our hearts to the god of spring, is with us . once more Typical of renewed life, of restored vitality, it seems as though some of its force -and significance had gone. It finds us this time with all that niakes life dear, jeopardized, and life’s beauties marred and tarnished by ruthlessness, 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 mysti-

eisins of pagans, and grafted onto a Christian stem, it has stood for centuries as a symbol of a risen 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 that Mother Nature has conferred upon them. And never did human conditions lirore loudly call for an Easter of the heart, the soul and the mind than in this year of our Lord 191?. Newer 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 and greed, prowling in the under-world of deceit and avarice, there is much need of an awakening. Dare we hope that this Easter will see such an awakening? Can we hope to see during the year lying out before us, old passions and prejudices die and new and purer growths take their place? May we hope to see the earth's millions calmed and soothed and divested of the fever of avarice and hate that seems to dominate them, and brought under the milder sway of a new and better life, a life drawn from a purer fount? If we would thus hope, we must not lose sight of the fact that before every Easter there must be a winter—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 also true today as when it was uttered 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 and see if we have consigned to death all the vile and ignoble passions so wont to foregather in that very complex habitation. Let ns be sure that our outlook upon life is such that we may welcome the pure growth that a spiritual spring shall unfold before our vision. May the grain of wheat, typical of the old man with all his passions, truly “fall into the earth and die,” then in its place shall arise such a flower of love and beauty as shall

dazzled our vision and enrapture our souls.