Passion Week.

The last seven days of Lent is called Passion Week, in reference to the
apparent passage of the sun across the Celestial equator at the Vernal
Equinox or 21st of March; the ancient astrologers having conceived the
idea that the sun stood still for the space of three days at each of
the cardinal points, and making it represent the figurative death of
the genius of that luminary, it was observed as the anniversary of the
Vernal crucifixion or passion of the incarnate Saviours; and in
commemoration of their imaginary sufferings and death it was the custom
to expose in the temples during the last three days of Passion Week
figures representing their dead bodies, over which the votaries of
solar worship, especially the women, made great lamentation. It was in
reference to one of these images, laid out in the temple at Jerusalem,
to which the jealous Jehovah, considering it a great abomination in his
own house, is made to direct the attention of Ezekiel, the prophet,
who, looking, beheld "Women weeping for Tammuz" as recorded in the
eighth chapter. This divinity was the Phoenician prototype of the
Grecian Adonis, to whom the women of Judea preferred to pay homage.

It was during the last three days of Passion Week that the votaries of
solar worship performed their severest penance. Besides fasting and
prayer, the more devout flagellated and slashed themselves and others
with knives and thongs, and carried heavy crosses up steep acclivities.
In all ultra-Catholic countries the priests, in imitation of the
ancient custom, expose in the churches figures representing the dead
Saviour, over which the laity, especially the women, weep and mourn;
and the more devout men cut and slash themselves, and each other, with