What Easter Ought to Mean

1920--

What Easter Ought to Mean

Its significance is both sacred and sentimental. From the devotional standpoint it lifts our souls in communion with our better impulses and gives us new incentives for better living with Nature's changing season.

From a sentimental standpoint it enlivens and awakens our pride, our self regard and the esteem with which we seek to impress ourselves in the minds of our fellow men. We manifest that in our new raiment, new spirits, new aspects on life from which we receive our suggestion with Spring's balmy breezes, green trees, the happiness of the birds and the fragrance of the flowers, and rendering to us a fuller appreciation of the joy of living.

"What Easter Ought to Mean" was the subject recently of Rev. Waldorf, D. D., pastor of Cleveland Methodist church, who said in part:

"There is danger that the multitude of Easter eggs and the social customs shall hide the real meanings of the day. Let us have Easter ecstasy -- not something cheaper and lower.

Easter means a new reverence for human life and a new sense of the worth, the dignity and the divinity of the race. We are not creatures of a day. Our origin is not creatures of a day. Our origin is not obscured in myth. Our destiny is not shrouded in mist. All this and more the Resurrection proves. The thinking world has understood this. Most beneficent have been the results. No person would be permitted today to treat a dumb animal today as any Roman slave owner might have treated his slave with impunity before the Resurrection.

"Easter ought to mean to us as individuals a call to a high earthly life. We are immortals. We must live as immortals. To live as immortals we must discard the carnalizing and the low and deal with the spiritualizing and the pure. A soul that is destined to be crowned and throned, and to live perpetually amid the glory and beauty of heaven, must enter upon its high career here and now, and must deal constantly in those things which are morally and spiritually ennobling.

Easter ought to mean an assurance of faith. The Resurrection of Christ is so important that we are not content with a guess. We desire to be sure. Fortunately it is the one historical fact, the one supreme miracle which has been attested with such an array of evidence as to satisfy any honest judicial court of inquiry. The Crucifixion was not done in a corner. It was at Jerusalem and a multitude saw it. They were mostly Christ's enemies. The Roman spear proved that the sufferer was dead, the sealed tomb proved that he was buried. The empty grave proved that he had broken his bonds of death. The six weeks' fellowship after the Resurrection and before his ascension, during which he was seen by dozens, scores and even hundreds, makes assurance doubly sure."

--The Chronicle Telegram, Elyria, Ohio, April 3, 1920, page 5.