GOOD FRIDAY, like Easter, is coming to be recognized quite generally by Protestant people everywhere, as well as by the Catholics. Out of deference to this sentiment, business in many localities is practically suspended on Good Friday, and the day is made a holiday. There are many Protestant people who enter into this celebration not knowing that Good Friday, Easter, and Lent are among the institutions that have been handed over to the world by the Catholic Church. These, like many other church days, have no Bible authority and therefore no Bible origin; but the way things are going now, it will only be a question of time until the observance of Good Friday and Easter will be demanded through the growing strength of the papacy, the same as she will demand the observance of Sunday. The voluntary observance of any day or of any institution is something for the individual to decide for himself. But we should understand the meaning of these things, and see how their development is growing toward an ecclesiastical demand. At first, business is suspended on these holidays through fear of losing trade, and in this way sentiment is created. Then as soon as the sentiment becomes strong enough, that which is first conceded out of respect is required under pains and penalties. The demands of ecclesiasticism are something that grow into a nation so stealthily that we are ground down beneath their tyrannies before we know it. And it is not merely because these things are institutions of the Catholic Church that they forebode dangers, but because they belong to the realm of ecclesiastical notions that are demanded. When Protestants go wrong on these questions, they tyrannize just as cruelly as does the papacy itself. The value and necessity of individual freedom must be seen, and such freedom must be protected. If a man wishes to observe Good Friday and Easter, it is his right, and he should be protected in doing it; but the place should never be reached, by an aggregate of sentiment, where another individual will be coerced into observing them, or ever be made to feel uncomfortable if he does not observe them. The church federations of this time, and the growth of ecclesiasticism that is seeking to dominate, need to be studied, and we should be on our guard concerning them. The prophecies in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Revelation, which tell of world-wide ecclesiastical powers that will seek to compel all to bow to their mandates, should be studied as never before.