III. Practice in Modem Times. — The Christians of the Greelc Church observe/bwr regular fasts. The first commences on the loth day of November, or forty days before Christmas. The second is the one which imme- diately precedes Easter. The third begins the week af- ter Whitsunday, and continues till the festival of St. Peter and Paul. The number of days, therefore, com- ])rised m these seasons of fasting is not settled and de- termined, but they are more or less long, according as Whitsunday falls sooner or later. The fourth fast com- mences the 1st of August, and lasts no longer than tiU the 15th. Thesa fasts are observed with great strictness and austerity. The only days when they indulge tliem- selves in drinking wine and using oil are Saturdays and Sundays.
In the English Church Lent was first commanded to be observed in England by Ercombert, seventh king of Kent, before the year 800. The Lenten fast does not embrace all the days included between Ash- Wednesday and Easter, for the Sundays are so many daj'S above the number oi forty. They are excluded because the Lord's day is always held as a festiral, and never as a fast. These six Sundays are therefore called Sundays in Lent, not Sundays of Lent. The principal days of Lent are the first day of Lent {Caput Jejunii, or Dies Cinerum), Ash- Wednesday, and the Passion-week, par- ticularly Thursday and Friday in that week. There is also a solenni ser\'ice appointed i'or Ash-Wednesday, un- der the title of a " Commination or denouncing of God's angei and judgments against sinners.'' The last week of Lent, called Passion-week, has always been considered as its most solemn season. It is called the great tceefc, for the important transactions which are then commem- orated.
Tlie same rules, observations, services, etc., are ob- served in the Protestant Episcopal Church of America as in the Church of England during the solemn season of Lcut.
In nearly all the Protestant churches of Europe, par- ticularly in the Lutheran Church, fasts and Lenten-sea- son rcmaiu up to this day pretty much the same as in the lioman Catholic Church.
See Bellarmine, Opera; Bcrgicr, Diciionnaire de Tht- olof/iv, art. Caremc; Pascal, La Liturrjie catholique, s. v.; Gfrimfs Church History ; Hook, Ch. Diet. s. v.; Eiddle, Christian Antiquities, p. 660,008; UaW, Harmony (see Index); Bible and Missal, p. 170; Walcott, Sac. Ar-
clicEol. p. 348 ; Procter, On Book of Common Prayer, p. 250, 276, 277 ; Wheatlcy, Book of Common Prayer, p. 217 sq. See Fastino.
Leutile (only in the plural Ci'dl?', adashim', prob, from an obsolete root signifying to fodder ; Sept. (paKvc, Yulg. Ie7is) is probably a correct rendering of the plant thus designated (Gen. xxv, 34 ; 2 Sam. xvii, 28 ; xxiii, 11; Ezek. iv, 9). In Syria lentiles are stDl called in Arabic addas (Russel, N. H. of A lepj^o, i, 74). They ap- pear to have been chiefiy used for making a kind of pot- tage. The 7xd pottage, for which Esau bartered his birthright, was of lentiles (Gen. xxv, 29-34). The term red was, as with us, extended to yellowish-brown, which must have been the true color of the pottage if derived from lentiles, being that of the seeds rather than that of the pods, which were sometimes cooked entire (llishna, Skabb. vii, 4). The Greeks and Komans also called len- tiles red (see authorities in Celsius, Hie?-obotanic. i, 105). Lentiles were among the provisions brought to David when he fled from Absalom (2 Sam. xvii, 28), and a field of lentiles was the scene of an exploit of one of David's hei'oes (2 Sam. xxiii, 11). From Ezek. iv, 9, it would appear that lentUes were sometimes used as bread (comp. Athen. iv, 158). This was doubtless in times of scarci- ty, or by the poor (compare Aristoph. Pluf. 1005). Son- nini {Travels, p. 603) assures us that in southernmost Egj'pt, where corn is comparatively scarce, lentiles mix- ed with a little barley form almost the only bread in use among the poorer classes. It is called bettan, is of a golden yelloiv color, and is not bad, although rather heavy. In that country, indeed, probably even more than in Palestine, lentiles anciently, as now, formed a chief article of food among the laboring classes. This is repeatedl}' noticed by ancient authors ; and so much attention was paid to the culture of this useful pulse that certain varieties became remarkable for their ex- cellence (comp. Dioscor. ii, 129). The lentiles of Pelu- sium, in the part of Egypt nearest to Palestine, were esteemed both in Egypt and foreign countries (Virgil, Georg. i, 228), and this is probabh' the valued Egyptian variety which is mentioned in the Mishna {Kilaim, xviii, 8) as neither large nor small. Large quantities of lentiles were exported from Alexandria (Augustine, Comm. in Psa. xlvi). VVmy, in mentioning two Egj-p- tian varieties, incidentally lets us know that one of them was red (compare Diog. Laertius, vii, 3), by remarking that they like a red soil, and by speculating whether the pulse may not have thence derived the reddisli color which it imparted to the pottage made with it {Hisior. Natur. xviii, 12). This illustrates Jacob's red pottage. Dr. Shaw (i, 257) also states that these lentiles easily dissolve in boiling, and form a red or chocolate-colored pottage much esteemed in North Africa and "\^'cstern Asia (see Thomson, Land and Book, i, 409). Dr. Kitto also says that he has often partaken of red pottage, pre- pared by seething the lentiles in water and then adding a little suet to give them a flavor, and that he found it better food than a stranger would imagine ; " the mess," he adds, "had the redness which gained for it the name of adonC' (Pict. Bible, Gen. xxv, 30, 34). Putting these facts together, it is likely that the reddish lentile, which is now so common in Egypt {Descripit. de VEgypte, xix, 65), is the sort to Avhich all these statements refer. The tomb -paintings actually exhibit the operation of pre- paring pottage of lentiles, or, as Wilkinson {Anc. Egyp- tians, ii, 387 j describes it, " a man engaged in cooking