THE observance of Lent, which for years has been attaining prominence in the popular churches, is more marked this year, it is said, than ever before. The New York Sun speaks of “the extraordinary devotion displayed at this Lenten season,” and says: “The exhibition is the more impressive because it is made by men of distinguished intellectual ability and discipline. . . . On Passion Sunday, or the fifth Sunday in Lent, two weeks before Easter, fifteen hundred men of social, political, and intellectual prominence in New York will enter a Lenten retreat at the Roman Catholic church of St. Francis Xavier, and continue their devotions daily until Palm Sunday, or the Sunday before Easter. Among them will be three justices of the Supreme Court, and the rest are all men of superior standing in this community. They will manifest their religious faith by attending mass at eight o’clock in the morning of every day of that week,” etc. “Lent has brought a change over the whole face of social life in New York.” A yearly penitential season accords with human nature and with the Catholic religion, which is the religion of human nature; but Christianity is the religion not of human nature, but of the divine nature.