[It is not every season that is suited to this duty. At a wedding-feast, for instance, it would be absurd to fast. But on occasion of any great calamity, whether public or private, a fit opportunity would offer itself. In a season of war, famine, pestilence, the deepest humiliation becomes us. So under the pressure of any personal affliction, and especially in a time of spiritual distress, when corruptions are strong, and temptations powerful, and self-reproach is deep, and God has hidden his face from us, it becomes us to betake ourselves to fasting and prayer. Respecting an unclean devil, which the Disciples were not able to eject, our Lord said, " This kind goeth not out but by fasting and prayer0." And so we find on many occasions our lusts too strong for us ; and therefore too strong, because we use not these means of obtaining the victory over them. There are also in domestic life seasons when husband and wife may profitably separate from each other for a short time in order to address themselves more effectually to the discharge of this high duty of fasting and prayer d. And ihus has Solomon informed us ; " There is a time to weep, as well as a time to laugh, and a time to mourn as well as a time to dance e :" and these seasons we ought more particularly to select, even " when the Bridegroom is taken away from us."]
2. The manner —
[Here also discretion is greatly wanted. To carry our austerities so far as to injure our own health, is highly inex- pedient. Such conduct, instead of fitting us the more for the Lord's service, would rather incapacitate us for it, and defeat the very object we had in view. The putting of new wine into leathern bottles that were weakened by use and age, would lead to the destruction of the bottles themselves, and of the wine committed to them. And so would indiscreet austerities operate on us, and on all around us. For, what would the world at large think of a religion that prescribed such things? Would they not cry out against it as a gloomy superstition ? And what would an inquiring soul be ready to feel? Would he not be discouraged and disheartened, and, through a dis- taste for such self-tormenting exercises, be ready to relinquish it altogether ? We must take care then, that in our mode of inculcating these self-denying duties, we do not give occasion for such unfounded sentiments, and such erroneous conceptions.]
3. The end—
[The Pharisees put these services in the place of true eligion, not knowing that they are only as means to an end, and as the scaffolding to the edifice which it is employed to construct. Hence arose their bitter complaint against our
c Matt. xvii. 21i d 1 Cor. v. 7. c Eccl. iii. 4.
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