his pretensions, is a disciple of Jesus
Christ, and secret fasting is one of the first, the easiest, and the most
elementary exercises of New Testament self-denial. And, besides, the
lusts of our flesh and the lusts of our minds are so linked and locked
and riveted together that if one link is loosened, or broken, or even
struck at, the whole thrall is not yet thrown off indeed, but it is all
shaken; it has all received a staggering blow. So much is this the case
that one single act of self-denial in the region of the body will be felt
for freedom throughout the whole prison-house of the soul. And a victory
really won over a sensual sin is already a challenge sounded to our most
spiritual sin. And it is this discovery that has given to fasting the
place it has held in all the original, resolute, and aggressive ages of
the Church. With little or nothing in their Lord's literal teaching to
make His people fast, they have been so bent on their own spiritual
deliverance, and they have heard and read so much about the deliverances
both of body and of soul that have been attained by fasting and its
accompaniments, that they have taken to it in their despair, and with
results that have filled them in some instances with rapture, and in all
instances with a good conscience and with a good hope. You would wonder,
even in these degenerate days,--you would be amazed could you be told how
many of your own best friends in their stealthy, smiling, head-anointing,
hypocritical way deny themselves this and that sweetness, this and that
fatness, this and that softness, and are thus attaining to a strength, a
courage, and a self-conquest that you are getting the benefit of in many
ways without your ever guessing the price at which it has all been
purchased. Now, would you yourself fain be found among those who are in
this way being made strong and victorious inwardly and spiritually? Would
you? Then wash your face and anoint your head; and, then, not denying it
before others, deny it in secret to yourself--this and that sweet morsel,
this and that sweet meat, this and that glass of such divine wine.
Unostentatiously, ungrudgingly, generous-heartedly, and not ascetically
or morosely, day after day deny yourself even in little unthought-of
things, and one of the very noblest laws of your noblest life shall
immediately claim you as its own. That stealthy and shamefaced act of
self-denial for Christ's sake and for His cross's sake wi