Easter Sunday, 1954

A couple of weeks ago, I found the online archive of the Unitarian Universalist Church, in Muncie, Indiana, and found the summary order of service from April 18, 1954: Easter Sunday.

Here it is:

This was First Universalist Church, as it was know then, and just renamed from St. John’s Universalist Church. Let’s decode the service.

The “tell” is from the first line. The service is the Easter service from Services of Religion, prepended to the “red hymnal,” The Hymns of the Spirit.

This makes the hymns (483) “Fairest Lord Jesus” and (192) Charles Wesley’s famous “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.” The doxology (500) begins “Praise God the love we all may share.”

Responsive Reading 72, entitled “Easter,” is mainly drawn from the third and fourth chapter apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon (the citations in the index should read verses 1-9, not verse 19; it’s a mix of KJV and RV, with some heavy edits) and reads:

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
And there shall no torment touch them.

In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die,
And their departure is taken for misery,
And their going from us to be utter destruction:

But they are in peace: and their hope full of immortality.
And having borne a little chastening, they shall receive great good:

For God proved them, and found them worthy for himself.

And in the time of their visitation they shall shine forth,
And the Lord shall reign over them for ever.

The faithful shall abide with him in love:
Because grace and mercy are to his chosen.

For in the memory of virtue is immortality:
Because it is recognized both before God and before men.

But a righteous man, though he die before his time, shall be at rest.

For honorable old age is not that which standeth in length of time,
Nor is its measure given by length of years:

But understanding is gray hairs unto men,
And an unspotted life is ripe old age.

Being made perfect in a little while,
he fulfilled long years;
For his soul was pleasing unto the Lord:

For the path of the just is as a shining light
That shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

It’s interesting that the anthems proceed thematically from Thursday to Sunday. I tried to track down the organ music and anthems, but none of the titles are distinct enough to shake anything useful out of Google.

And the preacher? The Rev. Sidney Esten (1892-1965) was not the church’s pastor. (That was the famous Russell Lockwood, would be installed that fall; perhaps he hadn’t arrived yet?) After studying at St. Lawrence, Esten was ordained and served at the long-gone Anderson, Indiana Universalist church; he also taught school. Money was tight, and — per his obituary from the Indiana Academy of Science (PDF) — it seems Anderson was his only pastorate. But he married people and supplies pulpits for years. (Sounds familiar.) He later got a graduate degree and taught science in an Indianapolis high school. He was a  “noted authority on birds” — indeed, feeding birds when he died suddenly.

I would have been happy to have been there. Can you image the flowers? Happy Easter to you, when it comes!