s--for my Kempis, and my Behmen,
and my Law, and my Leighton, and my Goodwin, and my Bunyan, and my
Rutherford, and my Jeremy Taylor, and my Shepard, and my Edwards, and
suchlike; if I fast for the ends of meditation and prayer; if I fast out
of sympathy with my Bible, and my Saviour, and my latter end, and my
Father's house in heaven--then, no doubt, my fasting will be acceptable
with God, as it will certainly be an immediate means of grace to my
sinful soul. These altars will sanctify many such gifts. For, who that
knows anything at all about himself, about his own soul, and about the
hindrances and helps to its salvation from sin; who that ever read a page
of Scripture properly, or spent half an hour in that life which is hidden
in God--who of such will deny or doubt that fasting is superseded or
neglected to the sure loss of the spiritual life, to the sensible
lowering of the religious tone and temper, and to the increase both of
the lusts of the flesh and of the mind? It may perhaps be that the
institution of fasting as a church ordinance has been permitted to be set
aside in order to make it more than ever a part of each earnest man's own
private life. Perhaps it was in some ways full time that it should be
again said to us, 'Thou, when thou fastest, appear not unto men to fast.'
As also, 'Is not this the fast that I have chosen: to undo the heavy
burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the
outcast to thy house?' Let us believe that the form of the Fast-day has
been removed out of the way that the spirit may return and fashion a new
form for itself. And in the belief that that is so, let us, while
parting with our fathers' Fast-days with real regret--as with their
pertinent and pungent preaching--let us meantime lay in a stock of their
pertinent and pungent books, and set apart particular and peculiar
seasons for their sin-subduing and grace-strengthening study.

The short is this. The one real substance and true essence of all
fasting is self-denial. And we can never get past either the supreme and
absolute duty of that, or the daily and hourly call to that, as long as
we continue to read the New Testament, to live in this life, and to
listen to the voice of conscience, and to the voice of God speaking to us
in the voice of conscience. Without strict and constant self-denial, no
man, whatever his experiences or