It is not a great many years ago that, among Protestants in this
country, Easter was mainly the festival of one denomination, and even
within that denomination it was celebrated with comparatively little
pomp. But now it is universal, especially in the larger towns and
cities, and many churches decorate themselves with flowers, and
observe with annually accumulating splendor the great feast of the
immortal hope. The churches are filled with people. The music is
elaborate, and it is elaborately advertised during the preceding week,
and, by one of those odd coincidences which associate the most diverse
things, it is on Easter-Day that the new spring bonnets of the ladies
appear, and there is a delightful mingling of most diverse interests.
"I have observed," said an elderly gentleman, as he watched from the
window of his club the pretty procession of new clothes winding
churchward on Easter morning, "that some ladies of high fashion dress
more and more elaborately as they advance in years, and as the sweet
light of youth fades from their eyes it is replaced by a greater blaze
of diamonds upon their persons."
It was the venerable Ambassador from Sennaar who spoke, and who was
smiling pleasantly upon the cheerful scene.
"For myself," he continued, "I can recall nothing more enchanting in
human form than the granddaughter of my old friend whom I went to see
some years ago in Newport, and who bounded in at the open window from
the garden on a perfect June morning--herself incarnate June--clad in
a white muslin dress, her hair simply knotted behind, holding a rose
in her hand, and with the loveliest rose in her cheeks. That young
woman, a girl not yet twenty, now has girls of her own more than
twenty. I wonder if she wears a very elaborate bonnet this Easter
morning, and whether her dress is a mass of pleats and puffs and
marvellous trimmings, which, when profusely extravagant upon the form
of an elder woman, always remind me of signals of distress hung out
upon a craft that is drifting far away from the enchanted isles of
youth. Is it the instinctive effort to prolong the brilliancy of youth
that induces the advancing woman to decorate herself so brightly? Is
it the involuntary hope that she will really seem to be buoyant and
gay of heart if only her dress be gay? As they go trooping by I mark
that richly caparisoned dowager, and I recall the days when I was
merely an attache of the embassy, and when in the modest parlor in
Bond Street she sang:
"'I wadna walk in silk attire,
Nor siller hae to spare,
Gin I must from my true love part,
Nor think on Donald mair."
The old gentleman from Sennaar is always permitted to have his own
way, and he prattles on without interruption. If you don't care to
listen, it is always easy to withdraw, and to look out at another
window, and to make your own comments instead of heeding his.
"But that was not exactly what I had in mind as I watched this pretty
Easter procession," resumed the venerable Ambassador; "but the truth
is that when I see a crowd of brightly dressed women, my mind
scatters, as it were, and I am very apt not to hit my mark."
The old gentleman smiled again. "All the fine spring bonnets of
Easter-Sunday do not prove the youth of every face under them, and I
wonder whether this splendid celebration of Easter means that you are
a more religious people than in the plainer Easter days that I
remember. Is the sincerity of religious feeling always in proportion
to the magnificence of the ritual? If it be, you have become a deeply
religious people, especially in your great city. We used to think at
the legation in Rome that the people of that city were in danger of
mistaking a punctual observance of religious ceremonies for religion.
But you are so intelligent that you are, of course, in no such danger.
I accept these beautiful flowers and this pretty procession of new
bonnets as the proof of your religious progress."
The Ambassador paused reflectively a moment, and then continued: "You
send a great many missionaries to India and elsewhere. Is it because
you have no work for them at home? In my country, my benighted and
heathen Sennaar, we have a proverb that an ounce of practice is worth
a pound of profession. In Rome, I say, we used to fear lest the
people, with crossings and dippings and genuflections and repetitions
of a long series of invocations and confessions and penance and many
ceremonies, might come to confound these things with religion. But I
suppose that this blossoming Easter, this solemn abstention from 'the
German' in Lent, and this interest in draperies and postures, mean
that you devote the same energy and time and care to studying how to
help the helpless, how to console the suffering, how to teach poverty
to hope and labor for its own relief. It means that the richly attired
Christians who are walking in the most fashionable spring bonnets to
church on Easter-Sunday have learned who is their neighbor, and what
their duty is towards him, and are diligently doing it."
The Ambassador removed his eyeglasses, and turned to smile blandly
upon the group of club-men near him.
"This reflection," he continued, "makes me very happy, and fills me
with reverence for a Christian people. For if you built superb
churches in one street, and tolerated heathen squalor of soul and body
in the next street, you would crucify Christianity. No, no: these
sweet flowers of Easter are not symbols of your words, but of your
work; not of your professions, but of your practice."
The old gentleman resumed his glasses, and looked silently at the
thronged street. How comfortable to believe with our venerable friend,
and to perceive that the great increase in the beauty of the Easter
commemoration is the fitting symbol of the corresponding increase in
our religious faith and practice!