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properly, or spent half an hour in that life which is hidden in God—­who of such will deny or doubt that fasting is superseded or neglected to the sure loss of the spiritual life, to the sensible lowering of the religious tone and temper, and to the increase both of the lusts of the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 freedom throughout the whole prison-house of the soul.  And a victory