EASTERTIDE

Southland Times, Issue 21361, 6 April 1931, Page 5

EASTERTIDE

PAGEANT OF AUTUMN LOCAL CHURCH SERVICES. ' To-day, Easter Monday, will bring to a conclusion this year’s festival of the resurrection of Our Lord, typical of new birth for mankind. As on Good Friday, special services were conducted yesterday in the local churches, there being large congregations in all instances. The subjects chosen by the ministers dealt with the resurrection and of the message of everlasting hope it conveyed to the world. Easter, in northern lands, is the festival of spring and in these southern latitudes is marked by the pageant of autumn —“season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” Its meaning, however, is the same. Apart altogether from its religious and spiritual significance, Easter may be regarded as an observance and a recognition of the fact that life moves in cycles, that nothing dies, ana that growth is eternal. So long as humanity endures, and so long as the valiant spirit of mankind survives the clay whence the body was wrought, so long will Easter be observed, for the inborn knowledge of the meaning of Easter is with humanity for all eternity. According to Bede. The name Easter, like the names of the days of the week, is a survival of the old Teutonic mythology. According to Bede — the “Venerable Bede,” earliest of Christian scholars—it is derived from the name of Eostre, or Ostara, the Saxon Goddess of Spring, to whom the month answering to our April, and called Eostrc-monath, was dedicated. This month, says Bede, was the same as the mensis paschalis, “when the old festival was observed with a new solemnity." In the ancient church the celebration of Easter lasted an octave (eight days). After the eleventh century, however, it was limited to three, and, in later times, to two days. It was formerly the favourite time for performing the rite of baptism. The courts of justice were closed, and alms were dispensed to the poor and needy. After the Lenten fast it was a time of rejoicing, a time when the heart of mankind was opened as at no other time save Christmas. How many people know why Easter is a movable feast, and why it falls early one year and late in another ? The proper time for the celebration of Easter has occasioned no little controversy. In the second century after the birth of Christ a dispute arose on this point between the eastern and western churches. The great mass of the eastern Christians celebrated Easter on the fourteenth day of the. first Jewish month, or moon, considering it to be equal to the Jewish Passover. The western churches kept it on the Sunday after the fourteenth day, holding that, it was the commemoration of the resurrection of Our Lord. However, it is definite that the time for the observance of Easter is decided by the date of the Paschal moon. Should it be Movable? It was debated, at the time of the introduction of the Gregorian calendar whether Faster should continue to be movable, or whether a fixed Sunday, after March 21, should not be adopted. It was deference to anejent custom that led the ecclesiastical authorities to adhere to the method of determination by the moon. It must be remembered, ■ however, that it is not the actual moon in the heavens, nor even the mean moon of astronomers that regulates the time of .Easter, but , an altogether imaginary moon, whose periods are so contrived that the new (calendar) moon always follows the real new moon, sometimes by two or even three days.