THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 1904. GOOD FRIDAY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 14, 7 April 1904, Page 17

THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 1904. GOOD FRIDAY

/tjfijxi^L NE b y on e some gratud mistake of the ilefor/iiD^llJ nation ' casts off its bright skin yearly vfflfcjir) like the slna!ke -' TiieTe was a time when the stern Puritanism of Scotland and of the w&s!t& New En S iand States of America forbade by the urgent appeal of fine and lash the ob"s£<£ servance of the old ' Church days,' such as Christmas and Good Friday. Even rest from lahbr on such days was a misdemeanor. And in England, down to half a century ago, the observance of Good Friday consisted in the consumption of great quantities of (hot cross buns and the appearance of salt-fish on old-fashioned dinner-tables— a relic of the compulsory law of fasting which was passed by a Reformed Parliament in 1549 and remained in force for many a day. But in those fifty years I>he Ritualists have been gradually levelling our Anglican friends up to the Cat/holic sentiment regarding Good Friday— they ha,ve in Uhis matter (to adapt Tennyson's lines)turned the pebbles of English Reformed thought into Orient pearls Repeated services are held in their churches. The Way of the Cross, and even the ' Adoration of the Cross,' haive been introduced. And in many places the devotion of the Thre"e Hours' Agony— first instituted by the Peruvian Jesuit Father, Al'onso Mesia in 1720— is as firmly established in Anglican churches as it is in Catholic ones on the Continent and in the republics of South America. Good Friday services were introduced into the London City Temple by the Rev. Dr. Parker ; and in the United States sundry other Protestant bodies are gradually marking tihat great, sad day in Christian history by commemoirative religious services of ivarious kinds.

' Thus times do shift.' The movement towards the Catholic idea of Good Friday goes on apace. It gathers momentum as it goes, and should reach interesting 'developments by the time that this youthful twentieth century comes of age. But side by side with the advance of the true spiritual conception of Good Friday, there also runs in these colonies a growing disposition to regard that sacred day as one of mere merrymaking. It is a sign of the times on the other side to hear a protest from the Anglican Bishop of Auckland against the desecration of the day by such unseemly exhibitions as the "holding of sptirts demonstrations. Picnicking and jutilceting constitute another deplorable feature in the ' observance ' of Good Friday, and we ajre afraid that many Catholics are drawn into some of the various pastimes and little frivolities that, however innocent in themselves and at their proper season, stand in violent contrast with the true spirit of the day. Catholics do not (says a writer an this subi&ct) moutn over the! Lo'rtl's Death in tihe same spirit as that in which the Syrian damsels weipt over Thammlu^. Tihe Church does not mourn over the Death

in the senise that she would halve it reversed, bkxt she weeps in sympathy with Christ. Sorrow and sympathy arising out of the contemplation of the sufferings of Cihrisrt*— that is the keynote of the day. It has been so from apostolic days. In Tert,ullian's days (AD. 200) and long before, Good Friday was the one day in all the circling year in which ' Christians universally agread in keeping as a complete fast, not merely as a station (semi-jejunium 1 ), but Toy an entire abstention from food, continued in most cases untal the Easter Sun-day, morning. ' True, the note of religious triumph— of hjQpe and victory— rings out for a brief space in the strains of the ' Vcxilla Regis.' But tthis is almost as inconsistent as the predominant one of sympathy is with play; and frolic and sport and picnic and merrymaking. To those who lead or take part in this mode of keeping Good Friday, the Cross has lost its significance.