EASTER DAY.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXXII, Issue 5770, 25 March 1876, Page 3

EASTER DAY.

To the Editor: Sir, — NcwZealaudcalendai«msuk Sunday the 16th. of April as next Easter Duy. The rule for Easter day in the prayer-book is that it is always the first Sunday after the full moon, which happens upon, or next after, tho 21st March, Full moon is to occur on Saturday the 8th April, should Easter day therefore fall on Sunday the 9th April? The following paragraphs from Dr. Denison's "Astronomy without Mathematics " may be acceptable to many of your readers in relation to this subject : "The time of Easter has been fixed by tha metonic cycle as long as it has been fixed by any l ule at all ; for many centuries without any modification, and laterly with some; but still that cycle is the rule. 235 lunations take C,l>39 '00 days, or >o little less than 19 years of 3G5J days that they differ only by a day m 322 yeais. There is indeed a whole day's difference, according as the 19 years include four or five leap yean ; and tho complete cycle is 4 x 19, or 70 years. But the world has always been content to use only 19 patterns of years at once for finding the Easter moonj only they are now shifted in the calendar seven times in 1,200 yean. Neglecting the difference between leap and common years, which corrects itself every four years, and the moon's coming a day sooner in 322 years, we may say that the new and full moons come again on the same days of the same months eveiy 19th year. Therefore thcie are only 19 out of the 30 days after tho vernnl equinox, on which the equinoctial full moon can fall; and the l'J golden numbers pisfixed to those days in tbo prayei-book calendar mean that tho day against the golden number of the year is the clay of Paschal moon, or lull moon next before Easter Sunday. For by the i ule which has existed over all the world sinco tho first Council of Nice in 325, Easter is the Sunday after the full moon next after the 20th of March. The Council left the moon to bo found as it might be; and further disputes arose on that, which were ended by Pope Hilarius, in 463, ordaining what lias over since been the law of church and state, that the Paschal moon should not be the actual full moon to be found by astronomers (if it ever was ho), but tho 14th day of the moon by th» metonic cycle. Consequently, the Paschal moon often differs from the true equinoctial moon by a day or two, and Easter may bo a week, or even five weeks earlier or later than it wouM bo if it followed the r«ul moon. Indeed, unless uu ' Easter meridian ' were agreed on for tho whole world, it might still differ fivo weeks in different places, even if it were fixed by astronomers, and therefore made incalculable either forwards or back wauls by anybody else. For if there is full moon in London very c a ly in the morning of Saturday, March 21st, Easter would be the next day there ; but that same full moon may bo on Friday night of March 20th at Exeter or Oxford, by true time, and thereforo would not be the Paschal moon there, which would be on Sunday, April 19th, and Easter not till Apvil 26th, which it never in now. The correctness o£ the metonic cycle for the purpose of keeping the ecclesiastical full moon tolerably near tho real ono on the average, involves the whole subject of the reformation of tho calendar, or the change from old to new style, which iu intimately connected with astronomy. The result is that the rules for keeping Easter neither keep it by the real equinoctial moon of each year, nor by a moon which is right on the average of a long period, either for the real equinox, or for the artificial year which we adopt, and sometimes leave it , five weeks off the real time. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether Easter is not always from two to 36 days later than the real anniversary of our Lord's resurrection. It seems that even Clavius the Jesuit, who did the astronomical work of reforming 1 the calendar for Gregory XIII. , ventured to publish the suggestion that it would be better to make Easter always tho Sunday after March 21, thau to let all tho great festivals and holidays, except Christmas, wander over five wceki of the oalendar, in the v.uu attempt to follow the moon. Perhaps ' bofore tho year 2000 the world will be in a coudition to leviso the calendar, and re consider | that questiou without prejudice."— I am, &c, TEMPUa.