Theology.

A PASTORAL ADDRESS ON FASTING AND PRAYER. THE doctrine and practice of fasting is an important part of Christian revelation. The doctrine has been taught and the practice exemplified by the highest of all authority-the Head of the church, by his own lips, and in his own person. While I open up the general subject of fasting, it is in connection with nothing specific, and apart from ourselves. There may be something in the aspect of the times, or in the circumstances and prospects of our country, to excite alarm, and call for humiliation and special prayer for the Divine mercy and interposition, or there may not. But there is within our fold, within our homes, within our hearts, and attaching to our lives, most abundant cause of humiliation; and the great instruments of humiliation are fasting and prayer. The path is short from the use of anything to the abuse, and then from the abuse to the abandonment. Religious fasting was an exercise provided for by the laws of Moses, and very generally practised by the saints, in a voluntary manner, from the experience of its benefits. John and his disciples fasted; Jesus fasted; the Apostles and the whole primitive church did so. In all these cases it was resorted to, not as an end, but a means; but as the truth became obscured, and notions of human merit grew into strength, fasting, among other things, rose into undue importance. Alms, solitude, watching, fasting, and so forth, were the meritorious deeds which were to be rewarded with pardon and eternal life. The Reformation came, and put an end to this among Protestants, without detracting from the importance of these things, kept in their own place. The Reformers and founders of the Established Churches of England and Scotland were men of exalted piety, and consequently of much and fervent prayer; and themselves taught, by Scripture and experience, the importance of fasting, they frequently resorted to the observance of it. The Puritans and Nonconformists, of early date, did the same. That fervent and long-to-be-remembered season, the period which beheld the great movement of our country that has been called the rise of Methodism, was not more distinguished for anything than for fasting and prayer. This was much observed by the great leaders through life, and for a long time by the body of those who attached themselves to their ministry. It is to be feared that in this present season of security and indulgence, the subject is a theme of impious ridicule and sarcastic ribaldry. This is nothing new. Those who love sin are not likely to respect those that mourn over it: those who despise God are not to be expected to be observant of decorum towards the godly. Hence saith the prophet, "The reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. When I wept, and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach. I made sackcloth also my garment, and I became a proverb to them. They that sit in the gate speak against me, and I was the song of the drunkards." I shall first consider, THE NATURE OF THE DUTY. The term has only one sense in both the Old and New Testament. nifies an entire abstinence from food. Connected with this was the clothing of the person in sackcloth; on special occasions putting on mourning, laying aside ornaments, and the like. In the New Testament we find nothing of this kind either enjoined or practised.

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The degrees of it are various. Moses, Elijah, and Jesus Christ fasted, through supernatural strength, forty days and forty nights. The ordinary period for fasting was one day, from morning to evening. This was the practice of the ancient Christian church. The primitive Christians, in time, soft

ened the severity of the observance, and introduced what was called half-fasts, on Wednesdays and Fridays. For this there is no Scripture example: still something between a full satisfaction of the appetites and the total denial of them is countenanced in Scripture. Daniel mourned three full weeks, during which time he "ate no pleasant bread, neither came wine nor meat within his lips." There can be no doubt that habit is powerful in this respect, as well as in every other.

In the ancient church there were fixed fasts-the seventh, fourth, fifth, and tenth month. But whatever of this sort existed in the Christian church was of man's device, and is of no authority. The Jews had also voluntary fasts, on peculiar emergencies: those of the ancient Christian church were wholly so, as her Head gave no such commands. Let us next consider,

THE REASONS AND ENDS OF FASTING.

The duty is at once natural and preceptive, like the law written in the heart, and the same law written on the tables of Moses.

Whatever creates extraordinary anxiety or emotion leads to abstinence, or absolute fasting. Saul, at the close of his evil reign, when perils gathered thick about him, said, "I am sore distressed, for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me.” He had "eaten no bread all the day, nor all the night. He was fallen all along upon the earth, and there was no strength in him; yet he said, I will not eat, till his servants, together with the woman, compelled him.”

Grief will prompt it: "David, and all the men that were with him, when they heard that the people were fled from the battle, and that many of the people were fallen and dead, and that Saul and Jonathan his son were dead also, they mourned, and wept, and fasted until even, for Saul and Jonathan, and for the house of Israel.'

Sickness of soul-distress of mind, is of all pains the most painful. That is a singular repentance which has no sorrow, no pain; and of all strange things that is the strangest which presents a man sunk in sadness, and overpowered with affliction, concerned about, and indulging in, the pleasures of the table. If a man strongly apprehend the wrath of God, and feel the burden of his guilt in connection with that wrath, it will, for the time being, prove a most effectual antidote to all sensual indulgences. The pleasures of the body will be lost sight of, where the perils of the soul are so great and imminent. Paul, after the fearful vision he had on the way to Damascus, during three days neither ate nor drank. Fools make a mock of sin only because the god of this world has blinded them, lest they should see the fiery gulph to which it will lead them. Tyrants have caused drums to beat on the scaffold, beside dying martyrs, lest their last speech should be heard by the multitude Satan makes the sinner sound the drum and the trumpet for himself, while destroying him! Hear the words of the great and good men who founded the English Church, in their Homily on Fasting: "When men feel in themselves the heavy burden of sin, see damnation to be the reward of it, and behold, with the eye of their mind, the horrors of hell, they tremble, they quake, and are inwardly touched with sorrowfulness of heart, and cannot but accuse themselves, and open their grief unto Almighty God, and call unto him for mercy. This being done seriously, their mind is so occupied, partly with sorrow and heaviness, partly with an earnest desire to be delivered from this danger of hell and damnation, that all desire of meat and drink is laid apart, and loathing of all worldly things and pleasures cometh in place. So that nothing then do they like more than to weep, to lament, to mourn, and both with words and behaviour of body to show themselves weary of life." This is the true philoscphy of the matter. Let us then view

Fasting in relation to Repentance.-Hear the prophet: "Gird yourselves,

and lament, ye priests; howl, ye ministers of the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God. Sanctify ye a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the elders and all the people of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord. Turn ye to me, saith the Lord, with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts, and not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar; and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord!" It is here assumed that the sorrow of true repentance leads to fasting, while fasting deepens and perfects the tenderness and sorrow of repentance. Thus the command of God is founded in a principle of our nature. That conversion is at best not of a wellmarked character which has not been productive of the feeling that constitutes this repentance; and that repentance, after a course of backsliding, is of a most doubtful character, of which the same cannot be affirmed. Ye who complain of hardness of heart and indifferency, of an inability to realize your guilt, to feel your danger, to mourn for sin, resort at once to this duty, as God's method of deliverance from such a condition. Let us view

Fasting in relation to Mortification.-The experience of sinners, as recorded by converts, may be serviceable to saints. They testify how much high living, and everything in the shape of carnal indulgence and excess, tended to harden the heart, to darken the mind, to carnalize the affections, to stupify the soul, to promote headiness and high-mindedness, aversion to good, and proneness to ill. This experience is not lost upon Christians. They have now learned the use of the body to the soul, and its influence over it, mentally, morally, and spiritually. They are therefore spare and temperate, often abstinent, and, as it may be required, they wholly refrain. They keep their bodies under, lest corruption should strengthen, and conceive sin, and sin, when finished, bring forth death. With the Apostle, if they fear the smallest danger, they will be found "in fastings often." They will make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil its lust, but rather mortify it, and be specially on their guard against the possible evils of the fulness of bread. Without solemn attention to this, there is no advancing în sanctification; and the neglect of it sufficiently accounts for the sad and stationary state of many a professor. They live after the flesh; they are "sensual, having not the Spirit." They "feed themselves without fear." In highly-civilized countries, and in great luxurious cities, this is a sore evil which fearfully abounds. Let us next consider Fasting in relation to Prayer, Enterprise, Danger, and Ordination. Enterprise.-Ezra says, "I proclaimed a fast at the river Ahava, that we might afflict our souls before our God, to seek of him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance; and he was entreated of us. The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath are against all them that forsake him. So we fasted and besought our God for this, and he was entreated of us." Nehemiah said, I fasted and prayed before the God of heaven, and said, Prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.' Mercy was granted.

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Danger. When the tribes were smitten, "all the children of Israel went up unto the house of God, and wept and fasted that day until even. Lord said, Go up again; for to-morrow I will deliver them into thine hand." "So Samuel gathered all Israel together," when they were in bondage to the Philistines, and they fasted on that day before the Lord. And when the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel, the Lord thundered upon them with a great thunder, and discomfited them; and they were smitten before Israel." To the above may be added Nineveh, and Ahab, and many more.

Ordination. The appointment of a minister to serve God in the Gospel of his Son was, in the estimation of primitive Christians, a most momentous event. Each of such persons must be a savour of life unto life, or death unto death, to many; must help or hinder the cause of God! Accordingly, it was a matter of fervent prayer, and that prayer might have strong wings to fly to heaven, fasting was always added to it: "There were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." And when they had a second time set apart a day for fasting and prayer, "they fasted, and prayed, and laid their hands on them, and sent them away." They "returned again to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples; and when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, commended them to the Lord." To prayer, then, fasting is an auxiliary, and a most important one. Had we more fasting, we should have purer prayer, and more powerful and prevalent prayer; and most assuredly, that prayer which flows not from the lips of temperance, of abstinence, and of "fastings often," will have little purity and less power. We shall next consider,

THE MANNER OF PERFORMING THE DUTY OF FASTING.
Where it is practicable, there should be

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Total cessation of all business and labour.- "And this shall be a statute for ever unto you: that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all. It shall be a Sabbath of rest unto you, and ye shall afflict your souls," Lev. xvi. 29, 31. "Whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from among his people; and whatsoever soul it be that doeth any work in that same day, the same soul will I destroy from among his people. Ye shall do no manner of work: it shall be unto you a Sabbath of rest," Lev. xxiii. 29-32. There is then to be an entire exclusion from all that belongs to the present life, as if we were spirits passing from one province of Jehovah's mighty dominions to another, and making this earth merely a resting-place. We are, as it were, to disembody ourselves, and proceed to our duties as naked spirits. There is to be

Searching self-examination.-This will turn upon such matters as these: What is the immediate state of our hearts, and how is the work of grace going on? Is our breast a temple of the Holy Ghost, and is the Holy Ghost there? Is Jesus Christ in us, the hope of glory? Is there a readiness to obey him, without reserve, in all things, small and great? Is he enthroned amid our affections? Are we practising self-denial? Are we temperate in all things, still giving the soul the preference to the body? Are we cultivating purity of heart and affections? Seek we to love our neighbour as ourselves? Do we to others as we would they should do to us? Are we just and equitable, true and faithful, merciful and compassionate, charitable and beneficent, charitable in judgment, peace-lovers and peace-makers? Are we sympathetic? Are we courteous? How discharge we the diverse duties arising from the relation of parent and child, husband and wife, master aud servant? Everything is now to be looked at with the stern fidelity of a judge: nothing to be concealed, nothing to be extenuated. Everything is to be searched in the light of the Word, and weighed in the balances of truth. Our doings must be measured by the rule of duty, and our short-comings placed beside our privileges. Our great concern must be, not to make up a good case, but a true one. There must be

Heartfelt confession of sin.-Hear the prophet: "And the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, and with sackcloth, and earth upon them. And the seed of Israel separated themselves from all strangers, and stood and confessed their own sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they read