Editorial April 20, 1946 Issue

From Cross to Crown

John Randall Dunn

Easter, with the Anglo-Saxons, was originally a festival in honor of Eostre, the goddess of spring; but its observance by Christians followed a merging of the Jewish feast of the Passover with the celebration of the Master's victory over death. The Anglo-Saxon Easter and the Jewish Passover came in the month corresponding to our April; and so in the course of time the festival in honor of a pagan deity disappeared, supplanted by the Christians' commemoration of the sacrifice and triumph of Christ Jesus. To quote the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Thus the Passover, with a new conception added to it of Christ as the true Paschal Lamb and the first fruits from the dead, continued to be observed, and became the Christian Easter."

The Apostle Paul lifts the Paschal feast to new spiritual heights when he says (I Cor. 5:7, 8): "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." The consistent student of Christian Science will do well to ask himself if he is approaching the Easter commemoration with prayerful heart-searchings.

Truly the message of the resurrection is not heard by ears un-attuned to "sincerity and truth." While the Christians of many faiths are observing with solemn rites what is known as Holy Week, is it not fitting that Christian Scientists should likewise, at this season especially, have moments of sacred communion with Truth, wherein they come face to face with that spiritual law which proclaims the all-presence of divine Love and the non-presence of all that is unchristian, petty, unloving, or insincere? Sad indeed, unfilled and unsatisfied, is he who would keep the feast with "old leaven."

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