Easter Dawn

In the squirearchy of Long Island, no gentleman resides more snugly than Col. Henry Stanley Todd of "The Priory," Dix Hills, Huntington. Onetime president of Universal Turbine Co., a Red Cross and Intelligence Division worker during the War, he is tall, grey-mustached and goateed, a benignant neighbor to Huntington villagers. In the evenings he is fond of calling in his Negro servants for some music--they on their guitars, Col. Todd on his drums. And Col. Todd is by no means an obscure country gentleman. The Pope knows of him. So does the Bishop of Liverpool, the King of the Belgians and many a U. S. clergyman. Last week religious plans were buzzing about "The Priory" and about Col. Todd's most prized possession--his portrait of Jesus Christ. _

Turning from engineering to painting in 1894, Col. Todd did portraits of Theodore Roosevelt, Cardinal Newman, Mary Baker Eddy, William McKinley, Frances E. Willard. For years he thought of painting a Christ, but he did not succeed until last year, when in seven hours he finished The Nazarene, or Christ Triumphant, a virile, blond, blue-eyed, silky-haired, silky-bearded Savior (see cut). The Newhouse Galleries in Manhattan and St. Louis held showings of the canvas, in a room by itself. Col. Todd sent reproductions to the Pope, to Albert, King of the Belgians, and to Rt. Rev. Albert Augustus David, Bishop of Liverpool, who recently led some fellow churchmen HI demanding more virile pictures of Christ (TIME, Feb. 27). Praised in the Federal Council Bulletin for its "strength, charm, grace, courage," The Nazarene will be placed in the Hall of Religion at Chicago's World's Fair next summer. This Sunday, 1900th anniversary of Christ's Resurrection, it will figure in an unusual Easter service.

Three weeks ago Long Island churchmen obtained Col. Todd's permission to hold Long Island's first Easter dawn service on a wide clearing in the hills of "The Priory." They arranged for four trumpeters to blow sweetly at dawn's arrival, a chorus of 200 to sing "The Messiah" clergymen from Huntington, Brooklyn and Manhattan to speak. Congregations would come by the busload. The Long Island R. R. would put on a "Sunrise Special." After the service, worshippers would file through Col. Todd's studio to behold his blond Christ.

P: Oldest Easter dawn services in the U. S. are those held in Moravian towns in Pennsylvania, and in Salem, the somnolent, pre-Camel part of Winston-Salem, N. C. Here, beginning at 2 a. m. on Easter morning, bands tour the dark streets playing old Moravian chorales. Toward dawn there is a service at the doorway of old Home Church, then a procession down to the Moravian burying ground, in which the tombstones are all the same size and laid horizontally. Thousands of visitors attend, to hear the Bishop intone "The Lord is risen." The visitors reply, "The Lord is risen, indeed!" For 52 years the Salem service was conducted by Rt. Rev. Edward Rondthaler, Bishop of the Southern Province of the Moravian Church, until his death at 88 in 1931 (TIME, Feb. 9,

P: In Denver, five commanderies of Knights Templars were to join this week in their ninth annual Easter Sunrise Service. Led by the El Jebel Shrine Band, 1,000 Templars would march at 5 123 a. m. to Municipal Auditorium. Presbyterian Dr. David C. Bayliss was to speak. Later, Denver young people would hear the Highlander Boy Trumpet Quartet, the Little Symphony of the United Brethren Church, and an address "Dare We Be Christian?" by Sherwood Eddy, famed author-traveler-Y. M. C. A.ster.

P: Holy Week in Rome found Church and State cooperating with smooth precision. Campaigning for fecundity, Mussolini has ordered 50%-70% fare reductions for Holy Year pilgrims and brought thousands of newlyweds to Rome partly at government expense. Pope Pius XI does his part by promising audiences to each & every couple, giving rosaries to brides, medals to grooms. On Palm Sunday the Pope was given a plaited, ornamented palm by the Bresca family of Bordighera, in accordance with old custom.* He planned to send it to Martin Henry Carmody of Grand Rapids, Mich., Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. This week Pius XI will pontificate at high Easter mass, bless the populace afterwards.

P: In Jerusalem on Easter Day, Jews will be nearing the end of Passover; thousands of Christians will visit the great Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Holy Saturday to see the Latin Patriarch bless a Holy Fire in the courtyard. Moslems will join in dancing, flag-waving processions to Nebi Musa, the reputed tomb of the Prophet Moses--a custom established some 50 years ago by Sultan Abdul Hamid the Damned, as a political maneuver to keep Christian ceremonies from monopolizing the Easter scene in Jerusalem.

P: In parched, sparsely-settled districts of New Mexico and southern Colorado live Los Hermanos Penitentes--the Penitent Brothers, supposed to have degenerated from a pioneer Franciscan order into blood-fanaticism. The Penitents spend Holy Week fasting, chanting Spanish dirges, marching repeatedly over cactus and flogging each other with jagged whips of yucca (Spanish bayonet).* At length, blood streaming from their naked backs, they proceed to their Calvary. One of their number carries a cross. He is gashed in the side, then crucified--but with ropes, not nails as once was done.

* In 1586, the famed obelisk in St. Peter's Square was being put up. The ropes began to slip. Though silence had been enjoined, Sailor Bresca shouted: "Throw some water on the ropes." This was done; the ropes contracted and held; the Brescas were rewarded.

* In an Indian pueblo near Albuquerque last week a squaw named Mrs. Andrea T. Frasue was lashed five times, by order of the Pueblo Council, for professing belief in the Bible and attending Christian prayer meeting. Other Indian women were threatened with similar punishment, until the U. S. Government intervened.

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