eople of many faiths observe a
spring festival of rejoicing, and of prayer for future bounty. Probably
the Easter celebration is like that at Christmas and Thanksgiving--a
survival of some ancient pagan rite that men established out of
overflowing hearts, rejoicing at the end of a good season and praying
for favour at the beginning of a new one.

"To the Christian world Easter symbolises a Divine tragedy. The coming
of Easter, as it is set forth in the Great Book, is a most powerful
story; it is the story of one of the deepest passions that may move the
human heart--the passion of father-love.

"Once there lived in the desert a man and his little child--a very
little boy, who sometimes was a bad little boy, and who did not do as he
was told. On a day when the father was away about his business the
child, playing, wandered out on the desert and was lost. From home the
desert beckoned the little boy; it seemed fair and fine to adventure in.
When the boy had been gone for many hours the father returned and could
not find him, and knew that the child was lost. But the father knew the
desert; he knew how it lured men on; he knew its parching thirst; he
knew its thorns and brambles, and its choking dust and the heat that
beats one down.

"And when he saw that the boy was lost his heart was aflame with
anguish; he could all but feel the desert fire in the little boy's
blood, the cactus barbs in the bleeding little feet, and the great
lonesomeness of the desert in the little boy's heart; and as from afar
the man heard a wailing little voice in his ears calling, 'Father,
father!' like a lost sheep. But it was only a seeming, and the house
where the little boy had played was silent.

"Then the father went to the desert, and neither the desert fire
murmuring at his brow, nor the sand that filled his mouth, nor the
stones and prickles that cut his feet, nor the wild beasts that lurked
upon the hillsides, could keep out of his ears the bleat of that little
child's voice crying 'Father, father!' When the night fell, still and
cold and numbing, the father pressed on, calling to the child in his
agony; for he thought it was such a little boy, such a poor, lonesome,
terror-stricken little boy out in the desert, lost and in pain, crying
for help, with no one to hear.

"And wandering so, the father died, with his heart full of unspeakable
woe. But they found the wayward child in the light of another day. And
he never knew what his f