flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, thou wilt surely do much and often,) " anoint thine head and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, will reward thee openly." Of the extraordinary operations of the Holy Spirit, we read, that evil spirits could not be cast out "but by prayer and fasting." (Matt. xvii. 21.) We find fasting and prayer continually associated together at the performance of solemn ministerial duties. (Acts xiii. 3. xiv. 23.) Fasting was one of the most frequent methods whereby St. Paul assures us that he kept under his body, and brought it into subjection. (2 Cor. vi. 5. xi. 27.) He also recommends it to ordinary Christians. (1 Cor. vii. 5.)

These passages contain four important things: 1. Command to fast. 2. Rules for fasting. 3. Promise of reward for fasting. 4. Example of fasting.

With such warranty from Holy Scripture, the Church of Christ has, in all ages, both instituted solemn public fasts, and urged upon her members the practice of private fasting. For many ages the observance of fasting was universal throughout Christendom,-in all ages it has been nominally observed and respected ;-and endeavouring thus to obey her Lord's command, the Church has ever prayed that her members "might have grace to use such abstinence, that their flesh being subdued to the Spirit, they might ever obey his godly motions in

righteousness and true holiness, to the honour and glory of God."

Yet, although the language of Holy Scripture, and the universal practice of the Church, thus strongly urge upon us the exercise of fasting, there are probably few duties which are more neglected, even among those who are really desirous of living under God's grace and in the performance of His will. I shall therefore endeavour, with God's assistance, to examine some of the grounds upon which this duty has fallen into such neglect, and then to show the real importance of it, and the mode in which it ought to be performed.

The first and principal cause of the general disuse and disregard of fasting, is probably to be found in the exaggerated importance assigned to it, and other such acts of mortification, in the Roman Catholic Church. Now it would, perhaps, be reasonably sufficient to urge that a duty is not the less binding upon us because others have misunderstood it, or performed it wrongly. If the Roman Catholics have used undue rigour in enforcing fasts, or held, or encouraged others to hold, unscriptural notions of the worth or merit of fasting, our wisdom would be best shown by recurring to the plain letter of Holy Scripture, and deriving from it the principles by which our practice is to be guided on a matter so important, because so plainly commanded. But there are other points besides this one, in which the cause of true religion

appears to suffer real injury, by too wide and superstitious a departure from all the principles and practices of Rome. Let me not be misunderstood for one moment to wish to defend, or extenuate, the errors of that corrupt Church, which, in its image-worship,-its worship of the sacramental bread, its claim of infallibility, of temporal dominion, and various other points of doctrine and practice, has really departed from the true faith once delivered to the saints, and seceded from the unity of the Christian body. But I apprehend that the danger to which we are now principally exposed, towards which the current of religious opinion now most strongly sets, are exactly of the opposite kind. In the attempt to spiritualize religion, much of the real substance of religion has been lost. Forms have been neglected one by one, and usages discontinued, till much that is not formal, but essential, has been got rid of with them. In respect of alms-doing, of dutiful attachment to the Church, of self-discipline and mortification, including the subject of fasting,-in respect of the dignity, power, and priesthood of the ministry, the necessity of Christian unity, and the guilt of schism,-even the importance of the great characteristical rites of Christianity, the Sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper, it has been too much the custom of Protestant teachers to avoid Roman Catholicism to such excess, as to undervalue real and important parts of the entire

frame of faith, as delivered to us from our Lord and His Apostles. Certainly there never was a time, in the earliest and best ages of the Church, when the more external and formal parts of religion (if I may so term them) were not more highly esteemed than they are now, by many pious and well-intentioned members of the Church. Is it going too far to say, that there are many Protestants who esteem fasting altogether a Roman Catholic usage? I fear not. Assuredly many of us can testify, from our own experience, that such an opinion is really held by some. The dangers into which the Roman Catholic Church has undoubtedly fallen, of sanctioning, or at least conniving at, the notion of real merit in fasting, whereby satisfaction may be given for sin, is indeed one against which we should guard most anxiously, as subversive of the very fundamental truth of religion: but let us learn to distinguish the use from the abuse, and not neglect a duty altogether for fear of performing it corruptly.

The only other ground of the neglect of fasting, of which I shall make any mention, is, that it is thought to savour somewhat of legality. Strange, that men should think that they can pay more acceptable honour to God by neglecting any of the services which He expressly enjoins! For the same objection has been brought against prayer, and alms-giving, and the use of the sacraments. And, if we may venture to add another argument to the

plain injunction of Holy Scripture, surely it shows great ignorance of the nature of man, and his spiritual wants, to undervalue these Christian ordinances. It is, indeed, characteristic of Christian worship, that it should be offered in spirit and in truth; and ordinances, of whatever kind, are valuable only as they tend to further this great spiritual end. But with our mixed and feeble nature, -with our strength of intellect, and weakness of moral purpose, and the temptations to negligence which arise from both;-with our capacities of habit operating ever for good or ill, and if not for good, for great and various and scarcely remediable ill;-and still more with that strange constitution of mind, whereby our moral dispositions, themselves the very perfection of our nature, are made to grow up from the seed (if I may so speak) of our blind and unreasoning passions; we need various outward aids; to answer to the individual a purpose analogous to that answered to the race by the ceremonial ordinances of the Jews,—to be, in some sort, like that law, a schoolmaster to bring us to the pure faith of Christ. The usages which begin with the aid of form and external observance are purified as they hold their way. The habits, undertaken in simple obedience to laws and ordinances, are refined and spiritualized as they advance. Is it not one of the most beautiful instances of the fitness of Christianity to the nature and situation of man, that it thus adopts, as available