True Christianity Needs No Lenten Season
By Editor
Referring to the Lenten season, the Christian at Work says: “Only the flippant and thoughtless will assume to ridicule a solemn season whose observance commands itself to the devout feelings of by far the larger number of their fellow-Christians. Surely it is well to turn aside for a while from the pomp and circumstance of the world, and in meditation and contemplation, in abstinence and self-denial, bring those things to the fore which the cares and attractions of the world have put for the time aside, if they have not been lost to sight.” Certainly no one should ridicule anything; but there are not a few who will continue to regard as a grave error the idea that people can live for the world 325 days of the year and then make it right by a little self-denial during the Lenten season. True Christianity demands devotion every day in the year, and it is only putting in few words that which is the plain teaching of the Scriptures to say that those who follow the pomp of the world excepting in Lent are not true followers of Him who said: “Let your loins be girded about, and your light burning; and ye yourselves like unto men who wait for their Lord.” Those who obey the divine injunction to “pray without ceasing” will need no Lenten season in which, “starving their sin,” as the Christian at Work puts it, they “will find spiritual refreshment,” and they who do not preserve a constant and living connection with the true Vine would better not depend upon securing it by means of abstinence and self-denial during Lent.