A BRIEF HISTORY OF EASTER.
By Chas. A. S. Temple
"THE ancient pagans had their temples, altars, images, sacrifices, and sacerdotal orders. They were accustomed to a great number of pompous and magnificent ceremonies in all their religious worship."—Moshiem, vol. 1, p. 66. In that worship they had also certain great festivals, some of which were celebrated with great elaborateness and display. But "the simplicity which is in Christ," the most remarkable feature of the Christian worship, rendered all such things, except houses for that worship, wholly superfluous, and as appointments or ordinances for Christian observance, blasphemous and profane. Yet this very simplicity was regarded and treated by both Jews and pagans with unmitigated scorn and contempt. (Moshiem, vol. 1, pp. 30, 66.) To remove, in some measure, this prejudice, and to render their religion and worship more attractive to their heathen neighbors, the early Christians began to increase the number and magnificence of their rites, observances, and ceremonies. Even in the first century festivals and other pagan observances began to be introduced. Thus it appears that the real object or motive of the Christians, in introducing and adopting the festival, was widely different from that which they professed. Their professed object, the honor of Christ, was but a flimsy excuse for a weak, mercenary, criminal concession to pagan vanity, arrogance, and hate. It betrayed, on the part of the Christians, an utter lack of that firmness, consistency, and fidelity to the cause of the Master, which it was both their privilege and duty to maintain. No doubt it was in allusion to this fact that Paul wrote (2 Thess. 2:7), "The mystery of iniquity doth already work;" for probably before his very eyes the Christians had begun to celebrate, by a pagan festival, the anniversary of the resurrection of Christ. By what name the festival was then called among Christians, history does not inform us. In succeeding ages, the Latins called it Pascha. (See Moshiem, vol. 1, p. 68.) Later it received its present name, "Easter." The Asiatic and Western Christians differed, somewhat, in their views of the proper time for its celebration. This caused sharp and vehement contentions, which were not terminated till A. D. 325, when a decree of the Council of Nice rendered the time of the celebration of Easter the same in all the churches. (See Moshiem, vol. 1, pp. 45, 66, 69.) Such, in brief, was the origin of Easter, as a so-called Christian observance. It has no basis in Scripture, as we shall further see. When Christ came the Jews, unmindful of the divine prohibition, as also the lessons of experience, had adopted some of the rites and ceremonies of the pagan worship, and had incorporated them, as ornaments, into the service of the temple, to embellish and adorn the ritual which they had received by divine appointment. (Moshiem, vol. 1, pp. 2, 3.) In the divine statute, "Thou shalt not do so unto Jehovah thy God: . . . thou shalt not add thereto" (Deut. 12:29-32), it is easy to see that this conduct of the Jews was not merely inexcusable, it was criminal. It merited, therefore, as it afterwards received, the severest divine reprehension. How, then, could the Christian church innocently adopt, in the celebration of, at best, a quasi-Christian observance, any rite or observance which, as in the words just quoted, God had most positively, most emphatically, forbidden? Does the word of God give that which to the Jew is law, but to the Christian is license? Are the thunders of divine denunciation against every form and feature of paganism, intended for Jews only? Do they fall inert and powerless and meaningless, at the feet of the Christian church? May she do with impunity and even with divine approbation what the Jew was so imperatively forbidden to do, and which, when done, brought down upon him such great and terrible judgments? Is God changeable, and will sin now go unpunished? But what has the church done? Let us see. Her adoption of Easter was unauthorized. There is no warrant, expressed or implied, in the divine law. It is, therefore, an unlawful "addition" (Deut. 12:32) to the ordinances of divine appointment. To celebrate that ordinance, the church adopted a festival, a rite or observance, abounding in pagan mythology, but unknown in the ritual of Christ. It was, as we shall see, a mingling of paganism with the Christian worship, of the worship of Ashtaroth with that of the true God, and so, of course, a violation of the divine command (Deut. 12:31), "Thou shalt not do so unto Jehovah thy God," and of that other equally explicit command (2 Cor. 6:17), "Touch not the unclean thing." Such a professed attempt to honor the Master, by celebrating an ordinance which he had condemned and interdicted,244was more than touching the unclean thing; it was, and is, literally, that "walking in the ordinances" of the heathen, so explicitly forbidden in the divine statutes. It was nothing more nor less than actual rebellion against divine law and command. The following facts will shed still more light upon the origin and present pagan character of this great festival. The ancient pagans, with entire unanimity, worshiped one and the same great "goddess of sensual love." The Babylonians and Phœnicians called her "Astarte;" the Egyptians, "Isis;" the Greeks, "Aphrodite;" the Romans, "Venus, Flora, Ceres," etc. Our pagan-English ancestors called her "Eostre," and the Saxons by the similar name, "Easter." She also had many other names, among which were the "Ashtaroth," of the Jews and Zidonians, and "Diana," of the Ephesians. The Roman Church has adopted her Saxon name, Easter, and applied it to the, now paganized, "Pascha" of the early Christians. Like the ancient Romans, all those nations regarded her as "the patroness of lewdness, obscenity, and adultery." Her worshipers literally "rioted in licentiousness," and every kindred abomination. Her festivals were always regarded as "dedicated to lasciviousness and uncleanness." See Adams' "Roman Antiquities," p. 284, "Floralia." According to the pagan mythology, "Venus was fond of flowers," and "wherever she went, flowers sprang up." (See "Appleton's Cyclopedia," art. Venus.) April was the most agreeable month to Venus, because it produced flowers, hence called "Mensis Veneris," the month of Venus. Her chief festivals were celebrated in this month, and from her Greek name were called Aphrodisia. The custom of celebrating Easter with a great profusion of flowers is another sure mark of its Aphrodisio-Floralian origin, character, and relationship. Although "to Venus, young animals were sometimes sacrificed, the offerings usually presented were incense and garlands of flowers." (Appleton's Cyclopedia.) At her festivals, her temples, altars, and images were lavishly decorated with flowers. And just so with Easter in the Roman Church. At that festival her churches, altars, etc., exhibit the same dazzling display of flowers. To the shame of our common Protestantism, we have more than imitated that church, and the ancient pagans as well, in the celebration of this festival. In many Protestant churches flowers in garlands and wreaths and bouquets are scattered about, and festoons of flowers twined in every way conceivable and inconceivable. Flowers in pots and vases adorn (?) the pulpits, tables, niches, in fact everything. The Christian church, which should be, at all times, an example of the strictest fidelity to Christ, his words and ordinances and godly simplicity, becomes, on such occasions, a mere theater of pagan worship, ostentation, and display. What a spectacle for the Christian to contemplate, when, on the morning of "Easter Sunday," he enters a sanctuary, dedicated to the worship of the true God, and finds it all ablaze with these emblems of the ancient pagan worship. If he is at all acquainted with ancient pagan history, he cannot fail to see that the scene before him is but a repetition of the old Greek and Roman Aphrodisia, the ancient Roman Floralia. Venus, "the goddess of sensual love," "the patroness of lewdness, obscenity, and adultery," for the time being in full possession of, and holding high carnival in, the Christian church. Not until light and darkness can be assimilated, not until Christ and Belial are in "concord," not until the sanctuary and worship of God is metamorphosed into harmony and fellowship with idols and idol worship, can such a scene be in agreement with that beauty of holiness, that true devotion, worship in the Spirit, which becomes the house and worship of the true God. 2 Cor. 6:14-17. It is a profanation, a horrible sacrilege. It is akin to the sin of Manasseh, who erected a graven image and altars for idol worship in the temple of Jehovah. It is doing unto Jehovah the very thing so imperatively forbidden in that divine precept (Deut. 12:31), "Thou shalt not do so unto Jehovah thy God." Thus it appears that this festival is by birth, by name, and by manner of celebration, a pagan; and that, too, despite the sanctimonious glamour with which the present professed object of its celebration has invested it. Its celebration, therefore, is the worship, not of Christ, but Astarte (Ashtaroth, Isis, Venus, Aphrodite, Flora), that paragon of lust, "the very incarnation of every kind of licentiousness" ("Two Babylons," pp. 8, 143), whose festivals were always "dedicated to lasciviousness and uncleanness." Such was the origin, and such was and is the true character, of this most deceitful festival. For it we are indebted, not to Christ (he gave his church nothing of the kind), not to the apostles (they neither taught nor practiced it), but to the Church of Rome, that "hold of every foul spirit, that cage of every unclean and hateful bird, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." Surely, the origin, the name, and associations of this great festival ought to relegate it to the noisome source from whence it had its birth.—Chas. A. S. Temple, in Pagan Counterfeits.