the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast 2" Outward display, indeed, and the more common trappings of woe and sorrow, are not unfrequently as unavailing to good as the "sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." They mean nothing and are profitless. Weigh them in the balance of the sanctuary, and they are lighter than vanity itself. But the abuse of a good thing is no argument against its use. In private, we may humble our soul. and keep it low, even as we are bound to do, and none may know it. We may "appear not unto men to fast, but unto our Father which is in secret." But when the trumpet is blown in Zion, and a fast is sanctified, and a solemn assembly is called, then, something more is to be done; "Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them; wherefore should they say among the people, where is their God "." There are solemn times, that is, of mortification, when a land is to confess that the Lord is God, be the people never so 2 Matt. vi. 16. 3 Joel ii. 16, 17. unquiet, and when they are to humble their souls for their sins. Now, at such a time, to make a pretence that a solemn humiliation is a display, is to run directly counter to God's word. Undoubtedly it is our bounden duty so to afflict our souls. We are, in the face of the congregation, worthily to lament our sins, and to acknowledge our wretchedness. With all our heart we are to turn unto the Lord, "with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning;" and although much of the latter will needs be in secret, the act of confession must be in public, and before the Church. It is said with all our heart. The world, that is, is not to divide it, and to cut it in sunder. And with this consideration we shall easily arrive at the fuller sense of the text, which bids us "rend our hearts and not our garments, and turn unto the Lord our God." As we have seen above, the rending of the vesture was a sign of woe, more frequent, however, in the East than with us. But even that is not forbidden. The form of speech implies that not merely the garments should be rent, but something else, that is, the heart. And the lesson conveyed to us is, that we should not rest in a mere outward ceremony of sorrow, but in a real and thorough vexation of soul and spirit for our many and great transgressions. And why?-"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise *!" Vain indeed, though 4 4 * Ps. li. 17. it be our duty to "hear the Church," is all outward religious service, unless the heart be touched, unless the God of the spirits of all flesh have his abode there! And for these and other like reasons, the text is an apt exhortation for the beginning of Lent, which from the earlier days of the Gospel Dispensation has been considered a time appropriate for mortification,—for the examining and sifting of our hearts,-a time confirmed by the custom of the Church, and kept according to the tradition of the Apostles, with reference to Moses' and Elias' fast, but more especially to the forty days and forty nights throughout which our Saviour fasted in the wilderness, or ever He trod down Satan under his feet; though some have imagined an allusion to the time that the Bridegroom was absent, that is, the about forty hours from the afternoon of the crucifixion to the morning of the resurrection. For Jesus had said unto them, “Can the children of the bride-chamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days 5. " Be this as it may, Christian brethren, to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven," and so, there is "a time to weep, and a time to mourn And well is it with those who 5 Mark ii. 19, 20. 6 Eccles. iii. 1. 4. look to their hearts betimes, who "search and try their ways, and turn unto the Lord their God"." Thus throughout the Bible is it commanded unto them to do, and our blessed Lord, when He freed us from the weight of ordinances, which neither the Jews of that day, nor their fathers before them, were able to bear, still called upon us as Christians to afflict and humble our souls. Almsgiving, prayer, fasting, are one and all mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount as appertaining to Christians, though when they do their alms, they are not to sound a trumpet before them, nor when they pray to use vain repetitions, nor when they fast to be of a sad countenance as the hypocrites. And what saith the Apostle who had seen the Lord in the way, and was "in fastings often?" "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway "." And now, having laid before you these considerations relative to fasting, which is ever to be considered as a means leading to an end,—that is, to selfexamination, to sobriety of thought, to our calling upon God, let me at this time call your thoughts to mortification, such as becomes Christians. For thus is it written, "We are debtors, not to the flesh to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the 7 Lam. iii. 40. See Matt. vi. 2. 5. 16. 91 Cor. ix. 27. deeds of the body, ye shall live ':"-" that is, if ye kill and destroy them, if ye wholly cease from them, both as to the outward act of them, and the inward appetite and inclination towards them; for mortification doth not only consist in a formal abstinence from the outward acts of sin, or a superficial skinning over the orifice of its wounds, but searches to the very bottom of that putrid core within, and eats out the inward corruption from whence those outward blisters arise; it purges the heart, as well as the hands, and drains those impure inclinations, which are the springs of all impiety and wickedness 2." Thus the garment is not only rent, but the heart also, which is, as it were, the forge and the workshop of all the evil that is in us. Mortification, then, is the turning away our hearts, our eyes, our hands from evil. It is a doing despite to the flesh, and setting up self-denial in the place of selfishness, pleasure, and lust. "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these,"-and by mortification they are all to be bid farewell to, inasmuch as "they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God,"-namely, "adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like "." By the good Christian, not only 1 Rom. viii. 12, 13. 2 See Scott's Christian Life; Works, vol. iii. P. 494. |