What is the meaning of Lent?

This day Geiler took for his text that verse in St. Matthew, chapter 25 verse 40: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me." He spoke of the origin of Lent, how it had been instituted in memory of the Lord's forty days' fast in the wilderness, before He began His life of service and work of redemption. He then set before them how the early Christians fasted, giving to the poor half of the money set apart for their ordinary daily bread, and contenting themselves with the simplest kind of food. He invited his audience to practise the same kind of fasting, sanctifying it with deeds of charity, and exhorted them in a most affectionate manner to love, to visit, and succor Jesus Christ in the person of His poor, quoting those touching words of the Saviour: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

69 But in replying to this we have from him general remarks on fasts which touch our present point of tradition. He says, it was the opinion of the most, that it was a mere Roman custom in reference to Peter's conflict with Simon Magus. "But if," he continues, "it be answered, James taught this at Jerusalem, John at Ephesus, others in other places, which Peter taught at Rome, that is, that men should fast the Saturday, but that other lands had deviated from this doctrine, and that Rome had remained firm in it; and, on the contrary, it is replied, that rather certain places of the West, among which is Rome, have not kept what the apostles delivered, but that the lands of the East, whence the gospel itself began to be preached, have continued, without ever varying, in what was delivered by all the apostles along with Peter, that they should not fast on the Sabbath (Saturday), that dispute is interminable, generating strifes, not finishing questions." — (Augustine, Ep. 36). And then he says that the unity of the faith was the point, for that the glory of the church, according to the psalm, was within: "The king's daughter is all glorious within"; that the observance was only the garments, and that she was in golden fringes, clothed around with variety: so the Vulgate, circumcincta varietate, after the Seventy. — Psalm 44 (Heb. 45).

What a testimony this bright light (as the author alleges, and justly, compared with much of the Fathers) affords of the certainty of tradition, and about fasting, and about Roman tradition too! It was a source of interminable disputes, he says. In the same letter we have another statement, which I will quote, on the point: "But since we have not found, as I have above remarked, in the evangelical and apostolic letters, which properly belong to the revelation of the New Testament, that it is clearly prescribed that fasts should be observed on any certain days, and therefore, that thing also, like many others which it is difficult to enumerate, has found in the garments of the daughter of the king, that is the church, room for variety, I will tell you what the revered Ambrose answered me when I asked him about this." And then he relates how his mother was uneasy, because at Milan they did not fast the same days as at Rome; and was she to follow the custom of her city, or that of Milan where she then was? Ambrose, a light too among the Fathers, told her he could not teach her better than he practised — a good deal to say too, if he went beyond fasts; and so she was to do at Milan as they did at Milan, and to do at Rome, in such matters, as they did at Rome. So Augustine recommends in the beginning of the letter: "In those things, concerning which divine scripture has settled nothing certain (and we have seen he states that it had not settled any certain day for fasting), the customs of the people of God, or the institutions of those of old (majorum), are to be considered as a law." This is a strange way to talk, if these are apostolic traditions too. We see, however, the real source of it — following old habits which were made a law of.

70 However, we have something about Lent itself from Augustine. "The quadragesimal period of fasts, indeed, has authority (that is, scriptural) both in the old books — in the fact of Moses and Elias — and from the gospel, because the Lord fasted so many days, shewing the gospel not to depart from the law and the prophets. In the person of Moses, namely, the law, in the person of Elias the prophets are found … In what part of the year, therefore, could the observation of quadragesima be established more suitably than on the confines of, and close to, the Lord's passion?" And then he shews many wonderful mysteries in the number 40. But where is the apostolic tradition here?

But we have something more from the Fathers on quadragesima. We have seen Irenaeus telling us that some fasted one day, some two, some several, some forty hours continuously. Now, this last is the real secret of this number forty. Tertullian is a Father who lived in the end of the second century, an upright and able man; so that the famous Cyprian used to call him "the master," saying, Bring me the books of the master. This was the famous Cyprian who wrote a celebrated book about the unity of the church; though he would not yield to Rome on what both thought a vital point, namely, re-baptizing heretics. But this Cyprian tells us that the church in his day (Cyprian. de Lapsis) was corrupt to the last degree; that professing Christians were bent upon money-making, men luxurious in their habits, women painting their faces and adorning their hair, cheating going on in a shameful way, marriages with heathens taking place, bishops leaving their sees and flocks to carry on secular affairs, and making long journeys to gain money, not helping their hungry brethren, but seeking large fortunes, seizing on property by insidious frauds, and employing usury to enrich themselves. In other treatises he insists on the evil state of Christendom.

But you shall have, reader, a specimen from history also. After relating what we have stated as to the observation of Easter, and that the Quartodecimans (the Asiatics who kept it the third day after the fourteenth of the moon) alleged that John had taught them; and the Romans boast that they had received their way from Peter and Paul, but that neither could bring a writing to prove it (he does not seem to have valued oral tradition much), he goes on to speak of Lent. Socrates, lib. 5, c. 22. "For these who are of the same faith, the same differ among themselves in rites. It will not therefore be out of place to add somewhat about the various rites of the churches. First, therefore, those fasts which are kept before Easter you will find differently kept among different people; for those who are at Rome fast three weeks continuously, except the sabbath and the Lord's day (it is a question whether this does not apply to Novatians). Those who are in Illyria, and throughout Achaia, and those who live in Alexandria, fast six weeks before Easter, and call that the quadragesimal fast. Others, again, follow a different custom from that. They begin their fast the seventh week before Easter, and, fasting three only of five days with intervals, call the time nothing the less quadragesimal; and I cannot but wonder why, although they differ among themselves about the numbers of days, they still call it by the same name of quadragesimal."

72 "But of this appellation each different person, according to his own invention, gives a different reason: for not only in days alone, but also in abstinence from foods, they are found to differ. For some, indeed, abstain altogether from eating what has had life; others eat fish alone of such as have had life; some, with fishes, eat also of birds, affirming that they also are formed out of water, according to Moses; some abstain from fruit of trees, and from eggs; some eat only bread; others do not use even this. Some, fasting to the ninth hour, eat without distinction of every kind of food afterwards. There are other observances, again, in different nations, and innumerable causes are alleged for them; and since no one can produce a written precept concerning this matter, it appears that the apostles left to the choice and will of every one that each one might do what is good, neither from fear nor necessity." What a certainty of apostolical tradition we have here! Sozomen gives the same accounts. Lib. 7, c. 19. Cassian, too, tells us, as others state (I have not his works), the same thing. For a long time there were only thirty-six days' fast, even when six weeks or forty-two days were kept; because they never fasted on the Lord's day, till at last either Gregory the Great or Gregory II (in the close, that is, of the sixth, or beginning of the eighth, century, for it is disputed which) added Ash-Wednesday and the three following days to make it forty. Think of an apostolic tradition, arranged seven hundred years after Christ, and grown from forty hours to forty days, and all the original reasons gone!

73 But I have yet one extract more from this same Cassian, for which I am also indebted to another. Cassian was a monk, founded monasteries and nunneries, was ordained deacon by Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople, and made priest by Innocent, pope of Rome. He will give us a sounder idea, perhaps, of this apostolic tradition. "It is, therefore, indeed to be remarked that, as long as the perfection of that primitive church remained inviolable, this observance of quadragesima (Lent) did not exist at all; but when the multitude of the faithful, abandoning that apostolic devotion, daily gave themselves up to their wealth, etc., it then pleased the body of priests, that men, bound by secular cares, and almost ignorant of continence or compunction, should be recalled to holy work by canonical obligation of fasting, and compel them by the necessity of a legal tenth (thirty-six days is tenth of 360, or nearly a year )".

What a history of Lent in the way of devotion! and think of apostolic tradition! The reader will not think that I attach great value to Lent or tradition; but I have quoted these passages because Lent has been selected as a point brought forward as a matter of apostolic tradition for a thing not in scripture. We have seen now what, in this carefully selected case, such an assertion is worth, and what solid authority the Fathers are.

We are not in the immediate context directed to the person of Him Who makes all this folly and evil manifest; nor have we dogmatic unfolding of the gospel; but grand moral principles of the utmost moment are laid down. There is room for all, but each in its season, as God is pleased to suit His word to every one who hears the Shepherd's voice. "To the pure all things are pure." How plain and assuring to those who are subject to the Lord! How vain, in presence of such a declaration, to say that "the church" forbids flesh to be eaten on a Friday or in Lent! The value of a real fast is not denied thereby: it is really of grace in presence of adequate passing occasion, and never in the New Testament a general law, still less the sham of eating fish and eggs. Scripture, however, goes farther still, and, not content with maintaining the holy liberty of the Christian, denounces solemnly those who would infringe it.

Then follows the appeal of the apostle to the backsliding Galatians, who were fast falling away from grace and turning to the weak and beggarly elements. Verses 8-10 are of much interest and significance. They were heathen, and knowing not God, they served idols. Now, as being converted, they had known God, or rather God had known them. Turning to Judaism, to the law with its ordinances, meant, for them, a turning back to the weak and beggarly elementary things in which they were as heathen. They were, practically, turning again to that which they had left--"how turn ye again?" As heathen they had ceremonies, different offerings, and they observed different days by which they tried to please their supposed gods. Ritualistic observances upon Christian ground are more than a perverted gospel: they are heathenish in principle. Some African fetich-priest attires himself in a fantastic costume. He takes a rattle, dances and mumbles something in an unintelligible way. Then he declares what he does will induce the gods to send rain. In a magnificent edifice caged "church" stands a man who wears different colored robes. This man goes through different ceremonies, bows and crosses himself, mumbles something in a foreign language, then lifts up a receptacle before which the people bow in worship. He claims that, through him, blessing comes upon the people. Both, the African heathen-priest and the ritualistic-priest follow the same principle, and the practice of the so-called "Christian priest" is as much heathenish as the practice of the other. And so as to the observance of special holy days, months and years. "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain." The gospel knows nothing of the observance of days and seasons such as saint-days, Lent, etc. All these special saint-days and most of the feast-days kept in Christendom were taken from the heathen.

They were Judaism, though the Galatians were not Jews; but that is what they were getting back to, i.e., to live in the flesh. And so, in early times, there was a constant effort to use and to improve the world. St. Augustine actually says that the drunkenness that marked their feasts might at least be sanctified by its being observed to saints, and not to devils. The "Lupercalia" were feasts at the time of the shortest day, in honour of the new energy of the sun, about to be put forth in the spring. Indeed they are observed to this day in the East Indies; all heathen observed them; so they put Christ's birth there and sanctified the time, and that is Christmas. It was done by Gregory, first in Africa, and then elsewhere. Augustine himself went to preach against getting tipsy in honour of the saints, and they nearly killed him. The forty days of Lent were not settled until the fifth century; Jerome gives the account of it. Paulinus could not get the Christians to be sober; and so he tried by means of pictures, fine arts, I and the like to set them free from their drunkenness; that is! what they call the primitive Church!

But an outward observance of times and seasons belongs not to those who worship God in the Spirit, as themselves already by faith risen with Christ, and therefore no longer in the flesh. Viewed' in this light, the life which we now live in the flesh is a seven days' feast of unleavened bread; Christ, our passover, having been sacrificed for us, our present calling is to keep the feast; feeding now in spirit on the living Bread, and watchfully endeavouring to shun all forms of evil in communion with Him whose love is our life and hope. The shadowy ordinances have fled into oblivion before the bright shining of the living Truth. "The body is of Christ" (Col. 2:17). From Him, and not from Moses, they who are His house receive the law of their behaviour and the ordinances of their worship. He has given them a new commandment, which they keep only who abide in Him (John 15:12). He has charged us with a service of remembrance whose demand upon our conscience is forgotten in the weight of its appeal to our hearts (1 Cor. 11:24-25). The teacher of formalism is the spirit of error and of bondage, not of truth and grace. And if it should be asked, may not a Christian voluntarily hallow and observe those seasons and events in the life of our Lord that correspond historically with the typical observances which shadowed them before, it would ill become any who hold in due reverence the emotional longings of true piety to deny peremptorily such a form of spiritual liberty. If all other things are lawful, though not all expedient, surely this may be held in some cases both lawful and expedient. For whatever is done by believers at the dictate of their love to Christ has intrinsic value in His eyes, and should have also in the eyes of all who have His mind. But to impose such observances on Christians as things necessary is to repeat, with far less excuse, the sin of those who laboured to bring the Churches of Galatia under the legal yoke. It should be well remembered also that spiritual sentiment, though claiming always Christian sympathy, affords no solid ground for faith to walk on. It is moreover in its nature adverse to true edification, if indulged without due regard to the positive teachings of the Spirit in the written word. For although believers are not under the law, but under grace, obedience is the virtue most esteemed of God in the children whom He calls His own. His will, and not their own religious feeling, is their proper guide, and an unrequired yet fixed and formal habit of observance is, in the nature of it, "will-worship" rather than the genuine work of faith.

"F. D." You enquire, "Is it right for Christians to avail themselves of 'Good Friday' and 'Christmas-day' for the purpose of meeting together for worship and edification?" There is a great deal to be said on both sides of this question. We should, of course, say, all things being equal, it is well to meet together for worship and edification as often as we can, and well too to avail ourselves of every opportunity of bringing people under the sound of the gospel. Furthermore, there are many who are engaged in business or in manual labour all the week, to whom a meeting on a week-day would be a great boon. All this would make the matter plain enough, were there nothing more to be considered. But then there are many who object to aught that might look like a sanction of Christendom's observance of the above named days, an observance resting wholly, as we know, upon a traditional basis, and having no authority whatever in holy Scripture. Who knows whether December 25 and Good Friday are really the anniversaries of the events which they are said to commemorate? There is not a shadow of authority in Scripture for either the one or the other. It is not that the mere fact of the world's observing these days should lead us to object thereto, for on that ground we should also refuse to observe the Lord's Day; but then we must remember the words of the apostle, "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain." If we can avail ourselves of these days, just as we should of any national or local holiday, then by all means let us do so. But, on the other hand, care must be taken not to lend our countenance to superstitious observances resting on a traditional foundation. The careful study of Romans 14 would put the heart into the right attitude touching this question. Whether it be a matter of eating or not eating, observance or non-observance, we are to bear with one another in subjection to the authority of the one Lord. This fine moral principle regulates everything. We have no right to lord it over each other's conscience. For ourselves we must say that we feel only too thankful to attend a meeting for worship, edification, prayer, or gospel testimony, whenever we have an opportunity. But, at the same time, we would desire to respect the conscience of our brethren who feel a difficulty as to Christmas Day and Good Friday.

But Christendom perverted fasting, through vain philosophy, into a reflection on the creative glory of God. And abstinence from meats, which He created for thanksgiving, was early turned into human merit, and the lie of inherent evil in matter. Grace and truth through Jesus Christ were thus denied; and days of fasting were imposed, as ecclesiastical history records, first by custom, and afterward by legal sanction. In the second century, if not in the first, the fatal error also drawn from philosophy was in full swing not for their life and complete cleansing by His blood, but of a twofold rule, the one for the despised flock of God, the other for the spiritual superior; the one the Precepts for all sorts, the other the Counsels of Perfection for those who aspired to a higher life, which issued in asceticism and grew into monasticism. Who can wonder that God poured contempt on these unbelieving efforts to improve the first man, by letting the flesh with all this inflation break out into the grossest immorality on one side, and legendary falsehood against God on the other? But this too was just what was found with older Platonists and Pythagoreans, who taught that it was not only lawful but commendable to deceive and lie, for the sake of truth and piety. Hence, even in those early days the large harvest of forgeries which are coming to light in our days, the witness of the rapid departure from the Christianity taught by the inspired apostles, long before the papal system systematised it and enforced it on pain of death.

We had before the oppositions of science, falsely so called, and the forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats, and we all know it is going on since. In England you can hardly go into a cathedral without finding the monument of a bishop who lived forty days without eating anything: I have seen them when I used to go into such places. Now one may fast very profitably if one has occasion to do it. As such I recognise it: but to set about making a virtue of it in the way usually done is wrong because it went upon the principle that matter was an evil thing, and denied the atonement entirely, for they said that Christ could not have a body. This is the reason the apostle John insists He is come in flesh, and that His disciples had handled Him. It was denied that He was really a man in that way, because they thought all matter was a bad thing; and therefore the great thing to be done was to get the Spirit, which was good in everybody away from matter. Therefore they fasted to keep the matter down. This was a torment to the church. Though some of them were very strict, a great many were grossly immoral. It spread everywhere and affected even the orthodox. The Gnostics died out, but they left their taint in the church, and the whole system of celibacy and monasticism continued. I used once to fast in that way myself. On Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Saturdays I did not eat anything at all, but on the other days I did eat a little bread. I said, If I fast three days I can fast four, and if four, five, and if five, better six, and if six, better seven; and what then? I had better die. Thus there was something that made it impossible to go through with the thing. I went on with it, but God delivered me.