if I fast to reduce the fuel of my sin; if I fast to keep my flesh low; if I fast to make me more free for my best books, for my most inward, spiritual, mystical books--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properly, or spent half an hour in that life which is hidden in God--who of such will deny or doubt that fasting is superseded or neglected to the sure loss of the spiritual life, to the sensible lowering of the religious tone and temper, and to the increase both of the lusts of the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 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 ******* 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 will lay the foundation of a habit of self-denial; ere ever you are aware of what you are doing the habit will consolidate into a character; and what you begin little by little in the body will be made perfect in the soul; till what you did, almost against His command and altogether without His example, yet because you did it for His sake and in His service, will have placed you far up among those who have forsaken all, and themselves also, to follow Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son of God. Only, let this always be admitted, and never for a moment forgotten, that all this is said by permission and not of commandment. Our Lord never fasted as we fast. He had no need. And He never commanded His disciples to fast. He left it to themselves to find out each man his own case and his own cure.
Let no man, therefore, take fasting in any of its degrees, or times, or occasions, on his conscience who does not first find it in his heart. At the same time this may be said with perfect safety, that he who finds it in his heart and then lays it on his conscience to deny himself anything, great or small, for Christ's sake, and for the sake of his own salvation,--he will never repent it. No, he will never repent it.