'Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all
the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your
God.'--_Joel_.
In our soft and self-indulgent day the very word 'to fast' has become an
out-of-date and an obsolete word. We never have occasion to employ that
word in the living language of the present day. The men of the next
generation will need to have it explained to them what the Fast-days of
their fathers were: when they were instituted, how they were observed,
and why they were abrogated and given up. If your son should ever ask
you just what the Fast-days of your youth were like, you will do him a
great service, and he may live to recover them, if you will answer him in
this way. Show him how to take his Cruden and how to make a picture to
his opening mind of the Fast-days of Scripture. And tell him plainly for
what things in fathers and in sons those fasts were ordained of God. And
then for the Fast-days of the Puritan period let him read aloud to you
this powerful passage in the _Holy War_. Public preaching and public
prayer entered largely into the fasting of the Prophetical and the
Puritan periods; and John Bunyan, after Joel, has told us some things
about the Fast-day preaching of his day that it will be well for us, both
preachers and people, to begin with, and to lay well to heart.
1. In the first place, the preaching of that Fast-day was 'pertinent'
and to the point. William Law, that divine writer for ministers, warns
ministers against going off upon Euroclydon and the shipwrecks of Paul
when Christ's sheep are looking up to them for their proper food. What,
he asks, is the nature, the direction, and the strength of that
Mediterranean wind to him who has come up to church under the plague of
his own heart and under the heavy hand of God? You may be sure that
Boanerges did not lecture that Fast-day forenoon in Mansoul on Acts
xxvii. 14. We would know that, even if we were not told what his text
that forenoon was. His text that never-to-be-forgotten Fast-day forenoon
was in Luke xiii. 7--'Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?' And a
very smart sermon he made upon the place. First, he showed what was the
occasion of the words, namely, because the fig-tree was barren. Then he
showed what was contained in the sentence, to wit, repentance or utter
desolation. He then showed also by whose authority this sentence was
pronounced. And, lastly, he showed the reasons of the point, and then
concluded his sermon. But he was very pertinent in the application,
insomuch that he made all the elders and all their people in Mansoul to
tremble. Sidney Smith says that whatever else a sermon may be or may not
be, it must be interesting if it is to do any good. Now, pertinent
preaching is always interesting preaching. Nothing interests men like
themselves. And pertinent preaching is just preaching to men about
themselves,--about their interests, their losses and their gains, their
hopes and their fears, their trials and their tribulations. Boanerges
took both his text and his treatment of his text from his Master, and we
know how pertinently The Master preached. His preaching was with such
pertinence that the one half of His hearers went home saying, Never man
spake like this man, while the other half gnashed at Him with their
teeth. Our Lord never lectured on Euroclydon. He knew what was in man
and He lectured and preached accordingly. And if we wish to have praise
of our best people, and of Him whose people they are, let us look into
our own hearts and preach. That will be pertinent to our people which is
first pertinent to ourselves. Weep yourself, said an old poet to a new
beginner; weep yourself if you would make me weep. 'For my own part,'
said Thomas Shepard to some ministers from his death-bed, 'I never
preached a sermon which, in the composing, did not cost me prayers, with
strong cries and tears. I never preached a sermon from which I had not
first got some good to my own soul.'
'His office and his name agree;
A shepherd that and Shepard he.'
And many such entries as these occur in Thomas Boston's golden journal:
'I preached in Ps. xlii. 5, and mostly on my own account.' Again:
'Meditating my sermon next day, I found advantage to my own soul, as also
in delivering it on the Sabbath.' And again: 'What good this preaching
has done to others I know not, yet I think myself will not the worse of
it.'
2. The preaching of that Fast-day was with great authority also. 'There
was such power and authority in that sermon,' reports one who was
present, 'that the like had seldom been seen or heard.' Authority also
was one of the well-remembered marks of our Lord's preaching. And no
wonder, considering who He was. But His ministers, if they are indeed
His ministers, will be clothed by Him with something even of His supreme
authority. 'Conscience is an authority,' says one of the most
authoritative preachers that ever lived. 'The Bible is an authority;
such is the Church; such is antiquity; such are the words of the wise;
such are hereditary lessons; such are ethical truths; such are historical
memories; such are legal saws and state maxims; such are proverbs; such
are sentiments, presages, and prepossessions.' Now, the well-equipped
preacher will from time to time plant his pulpit on all those kinds of
authority, as this kind is now pertinent and then that, and will, with
such a variety and accumulation of authority, preach to his people.
Thomas Boston preached at a certain place with such pertinence and with
such authority that it was complained of him by one of themselves that he
'terrified even the godly.' Let all our young preachers who would to old
age continue to preach with interest, with pertinence, and with
terrifying authority, among other things have by heart _The Memoirs of
Thomas Boston_, 'that truly great divine.'
3. A third thing, and, as some of the people who heard it said of it,
the best thing about that sermon was that--'He did not only show us our
sin, but he did visibly tremble before us under the sense of his own.'
Now I know this to be a great difficulty with some young ministers who
have got no help in it at the Divinity Hall. Are they, they ask, to be
themselves in the pulpit? How far may they be themselves, and how far
may they be not themselves? How far are they to be seen to tremble
before their people because of their own sins, and how far are they to
bear themselves as if they had no sin? Must they keep back the passions
that are tearing their own hearts, and fill the forenoon with Euroclydon
and other suchlike sea-winds? How far are they to be all gown and bands
in the pulpit, and how far sackcloth and ashes? One half of their people
are like Pascal in this, that they like to see and hear a man in his
pulpit; but, then, the other half like only to see and hear a proper
preacher. 'He did not only show the men of Mansoul their sin, but he did
tremble before them under the sense of his own. Still crying out as he
preached to them, Unhappy man that I am! that I should have done so
wicked a thing! That I, a preacher, should be one of the first in the
transgression!'
This you will remember was the Fast-day. And so truly had this preacher
kept the Fast-day that the Communion-day was down upon him before he was
ready for it. He was still deep among his sins when all his people were
fast putting on their beautiful garments. He was ready with the letter
of his action-sermon, but he was not equal to the delivery of it. His
colleague, accordingly, whose sense of sin was less acute that day, took
the public worship, while the Fast-day preacher still lay sick in his
closet at home and wrote thus on the ground: 'I am no more worthy to be
called Thy son,' he wrote. 'Behold me here, Lord, a poor, miserable
sinner, weary of myself, and afraid to look up to Thee. Wilt Thou heal
my sores? Wilt Thou take out the stains? Wilt Thou deliver me from the
shame? Wilt Thou rescue me from this chain of sin? Cut me not off in
the midst of my sins. Let me have liberty once again to be among Thy
redeemed ones, eating and drinking at Thy table. But, O my God, to-day I
am an unclean worm, a dead dog, a dead carcass, deservedly cast out from
the society of Thy saints. But oh, suffer me so much as to look to the
place where Thy people meet and where Thine honour dwelleth. Reject not
the sacrifice of a broken heart, but come and speak to me in my secret
place. O God, let me never see such another day as this is. Let me
never be again so full of guilt as to have to run away from Thy presence
and to flee from before Thy people.' He printed more than that, in blood
and in tears, before God that Communion-morning, but that is enough for
my purpose. Now, would you choose a dead dog like that to be your
minister? To baptize and admit your children and to marry them when they
grow up? To mount your pulpits every Sabbath-day, and to come to your
houses every week-day? Not, I feel sure, if you could help it! Not if
you knew it! Not if there was a minister of proper pulpit manners and a
well-ordered mind within a Sabbath-day's journey! 'Like priest like
people,' says Hosea. 'The congregation and the minister are one,' says
Dr. Parker. 'There are men we could not sit still and hear; they are not
the proper ministers for us. There are other men we could hear always,
because they are our kith and our kin from before the foundation of the
world.' Happy the hearer who has hit on a minister like the minister of
Mansoul, and who has discovered in him his everlasting kith and kin. And
happy the minister who, owning kith and kin with Boanerges, has two or
three or even one member in his congregation who likes his minister best
when he likes himself worst.
But what about the fasting all this time? Was it all preaching, and was
there no fasting? Well, we do not know much about the fasting of the
prophets and the apostles, but the Puritans sometimes made their people
almost forget about fasting, and about eating and drinking too, they so
took possession of their people with their incomparable preaching. I
read, for instance, in Calamy's _Life of John Howe_ that on the public
Fast-days, it was Howe's common way to begin about nine in the morning
and to continue reading, preaching, and praying till about four in the
afternoon. Henry Rogers almost worships John Howe, but John Howe's Fast-
days pass his modern biographers patience; till, if you would see a
nineteenth-century case made out against a seventeenth-century Fast-day,
you have only to turn to the author of _The Eclipse of Faith_ on the
author of _Delighting in God_. And, no doubt, when we get back our Fast-
days, we shall leave more of the time to reading pertinent books at home
and to secret fasting and to secret prayer, and shall enjoin our
preachers, while they are pertinent and authoritative in their sermons,
not to take up the whole day with their sermons even at their best. And
then, as to fasting, discredited and discarded as it is in our day, there
are yet some very good reasons for desiring its return and reinstatement
among us. Very good reasons, both for health and for holiness. But it
is only of the latter class of reasons that I would fain for a few words
at present speak. Well, then, let it be frankly said that there is
nothing holy, nothing saintly, nothing at all meritorious in fasting from
our proper food. It is the motive alone that sanctifies the means. It
is the end alone that sanctifies the exercise. If I fast to chastise
myself for my sin; 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 freedom 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.