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of self-denial; nor an age of busy and self-dependant activity for that of a calm and abiding practical recognition, that every thing is in God's hands; nor a period absorbed in the things of sense for thoughtful meditation on things eternal. The predominant evils will indeed appear in the Christian in a subdued form; yet whether the temptation be to an unconscious compliance with them, or unwittingly to oppose evil with evil, the danger lies nearer here than in any other part of duty. And if the salt in any wise lose its savour, wherewith shall the self-corrupting world be preserved? wherewith the salt itself be salted?
The benefits above named are such as depend on the encreased degree of Fasting, exercised in compliance with the directions of the Church, independantly of the consideration of the days or seasons selected for that purpose. The results to be anticipated from a more general adherence to these rules appear, however, to be heightened by that selection. The general objects of the Church were, 1. to impress upon the mind and life the memory of her Saviour's sufferings; 2. to prepare the mind for different solemn occasions, which recur in her yearly service. The first, or the Friday Fast, as above stated, was universally adopted in the early Church, and in all probability was coeval with the Apostles; it was continued uninterruptedly, alike in the Eastern and the "Western Church, and preserved in our own, through the respect which she bore to primitive antiquity, and the experience of the elder Church. It was perhaps at the first adopted, as the natural expression of sorrow for the loss of their Lord and for His bitter sufferings. With this would soon connect itself, almost to the exclusion of the former, sorrow for the sins, which caused those sufferings. "We do not fast,"[1] says Chrysostom, "for the Passion or the Cross, but for our sins;—the Passion is not the occasion of fasting or mourning, but of joy and exultation.—We mourn not for that, God forbid, but for our sins, and therefore we fast." As then the Lord's day was the weekly festival of their Saviour's resurrection, a weekly memorial of our rising again, in Him and through Him, to a new and real life; so was the Friday's fast a
- ↑ Ap. Bingham, b. xxi. c. 1. §. 14. Chrysostom is there speaking of the nt Fast, but the application is the same.
