PROTESTANTS AND LENT by G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 4, 1903

PROTESTANTS AND LENT.

By G.

We have one holy day set apart by special command of the Lord, namely, the seventh day of the week. This is God’s memorial of creation (Gen. 2:2, 3; Ex. 20:8–11); and of redemption (Deut. 5:15), and sign of sanctification. All other days and seasons now observed religiously were appointed by men, and are of merely human origin. The so-called “church calendar” is the product of the Roman Catholic Church, and until very recently was observed only by that church, together with the Episcopal, Lutheran, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian Churches.

Within the past decade, however, the other professed Protestant churches have gradually fallen in with the Easter custom until it has become quite generally recognized among them. Persons who have noted the fulfilment of prophecy and the trend of the times have anticipated this movement, and have known that it would be only one step toward Rome, with the certainty that it would be followed by other more extended strides.

This expectation is being fulfilled, and the whole Lenten season is now being urged on the churches for observance. And the suggestion is being received with marked favor. It is championed by many prominent clergymen of the leading denominations in the United States, including the National Central Committee of the Twentieth Century Gospel Campaign. Inasmuch as the chairman of this committee is Dr. Francis E. Clark, president of the Christian Endeavor Society, the Lenten idea takes a strong hold of all the churches where the Christian Endeavor Society is well established. This great representative committee asked that Ash Wednesday, February 25, be set apart as “a day of humiliation and prayer;” then that the whole Lenten season be devoted to a general evangelistic effort.

Now an energetic effort to spread the Gospel for the period of forty days is of itself a good move, and would be commendable at any season. But to carry on such a work at such a season because it is such a season, savors of glorifying the time rather than the Gospel. In view of the trend of professed Protestantism in this and in other respects, observance of Lent looks more like a compromise with Rome, a white-washing of Roman institutions, than the furtherance of Gospel truth.

After adopting the Lenten season, the next move will inevitably be a further step in the same line. It is a time for earnest Protestants to look well to their steps. The enemy is striving hard to lure them out of the “old paths”—and is succeeding to an alarming extent.