THE ORIGIN OF LENT by Chas. A. S. Temple

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 25, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 12.

THE ORIGIN OF LENT.

By Chas. A. S. Temple

THE ASSUMPTIONS of great sanctity, which, despite its acknowledged paganism and relationship, are so often set up for Lent, the increasing respect for it even among Protestants, and that mysterious glamour with which it always seems invested, all demand the most searching investigation into its every feature, and that its merit, or demerit, be fully and thoroughly understood.

It is conceded by all concerned that there is no precept or command in the Old Testament or in the New requiring, or even approving, any such observance. In no history, sacred or profane, have we any example of its observance, either by those holy men "to whom were committed the oracles of God," by the ancient church under the Old Testament dispensation, or by the "apostolic church," of the New. Like every form of "festival," therefore, its appearance in the Christian church is that of an interloper and an enemy.

Very early in the Christian era, the resurrection of Christ was annually commemorated, but for centuries that commemoration was preceded by no Lent. Cassianus, the monk of Marseilles, writing in the fifth century, says: "The observance of the forty days had no existence so long as the perfection of that primitive church remained inviolate." This testimony is a most expressive intimation that the introduction of "the forty days" was the bitter fruit of a violation of the purity and integrity of "that primitive church."

"Whence, then," we ask with another, "came this observance?" We answer: The forty days' abstinence of Lent originated with the ancient pagans, formed a part of their worship, and is, therefore, a purely idolatrous observance. "Such a fast of forty days in the spring of the year is now observed by the Yezidis, or devil worshippers of Koordistan, who have inherited it from their early masters, the Babylonians." (See "Layard's Nineveh and Babylon," p. 73.)

So, too, the pagan Mexicans. Says Humboldt ("Mexican Researches," Vol. 1, p. 404), "Three days before the vernal equinox, . . . began a solemn fast of forty days in honor of the sun."

Wilkinson tells us in his "Egyptian Antiquities," vol. 1, p. 278, that such a fast of forty days was observed in Egypt. Rome, too, whose paganism, both ancient and modern, was borrowed and perpetuated from the same ancient Babylonian model as that of Egypt, did not allow herself to overlook so conspicuous a feature as this, in that paganism, for under the pagan régime, she, too, had her Lent. Probably this was the time which includes the "forty nights," during which "the wailing for Proserpine continued." It appears from the testimony of Arnobius, as represented by Hislop in "Two Babylons" (p. 170), that the Romans observed a "sacred fast" called "Castus," which the Christians in his time believed "was primarily in imitation of the long fast of Ceres, when for many days she refused to eat, on account of "excess of sorrow" for the loss of her daughter Proserpine, who had been stolen and carried away by Pluto, the god of hell."

Whatever relation "the forty nights' wailing for Proserpine," "the long fast of Ceres," and the "sacred fast of Castus," may or may not have sustained to each other, they show that, like the Egyptians, from whom, in part at least, they learned their paganism—and like the whole pagan world as well—the ancient Romans periodically observed a sacred fast.

These facts, as we shall see, answer the question as to the origin of this great observance. They reveal, as the source from whence it has emanated, a fountain whose filthiness and pollutions no words but those "which the Holy Ghost speaketh," can possibly describe, whose waters, however clear and pellucid they may appear, are always charged to the full with the rankest, deadliest poison.

Just here another question presents itself, viz.: How and why did Lent find its way into the Christian church? Let us see. There is abundant evidence in history to show that, to propitiate the pagans, and secure their assent to a "nominal Christianity," the church of Rome, pursuing her usual policy, took measures, and found it no difficult matter to get paganism and Christianity, now far sunk in idolatry—in this, as in so many other things—to shake hands.

Such a treasonable policy could be carried out only by treachery and fraud. But Rome, as usual, was equal to the occasion. Taking advantage of the fact that fasting, though not expressly commanded, was yet approved by the Master, and practiced by all his apostles and the "apostolic church," it was easy for her, under some plausible pretext, to recommend, and at last to bring in, this ancient and revered pagan fast. To the church, "now far sunk in idolatry," this—like certain popular defections of the present day—was but another backward and downward step in her much boasted "progress and advanced thought." Of course, it was in every sense a loss to her, while to the pagans it was a positive gain.

Side by side with the Christians, they still fasted and worshiped in honor of Bacchus, their false Messiah; while Christians, in their "progressive" but false "liberality," kept the same fast, and to a great extent in the same way, in honor, profanely, of the true. Thus at length Lent had found its place among other "abominations," as an ordinance of the Christian religion.

In this the pagans yielded absolutely nothing, yet the church, in conceding everything, yielding everything, took, in this one act, a long step in that long career of concessions and compromises, by which at last she became thoroughly and hopelessly metamorphosed into what is now called the Roman Catholic Church, a living, loathsome embodiment of the ancient Babylonian paganism.—Chas. A. S. Temple, in Pagan Counterfeits.