Lent

Girls of Emory University at Atlanta, Ga., cringed. "... Simple hell cats with muddy minds." The Methodist revivalist was roaring at them. Outside it was full spring. Gay flowers beckoned to be plucked for coat lapels; breezes would blow at hair loosed in vernal gayety. But the girls, and boys, of Emory, sat awed as Dr. Clovis Chapel of Memphis continued to castigate: "The average girl of 17 would not greatly object to appearing nude if she had any excuse to do so. ... Modesty has already burst; it is dead. The average girl of today is like the moth fluttering around the candle light, and she sometimes gets her wings singed. But she is at least lifting the morals of the young men." Students crowded to thank Dr. Chapel for his sermon.

By such revivals do evangelical Christian churches begin the six-week pre-Easter tide of exhortation to creed and dogma that will reach its flood on April 17 this year.* Roman Catholics and the more ritualistic Protestant denominations (Episcopal, Lutheran, Reformed), however, not content with such informality, celebrate Ash Wednesday as their beginning, the Roman Catholics having their foreheads marked crosswise with the ashes of palms used on Palm Sunday of the previous year. Then for 40 days of Lent--a Teutonic word originally meaning spring--they turn their thoughts with especial pains towards their religion.

*Easter was in the beginning a pagan spring festival to which the early Church affixed the idea of the Jewish Passover and of the Resurrection. This year the first Passover Seder occurs the evening of Easter Sunday, April 17, a coincidence Church calendar calculators long tried to prevent.