to lay aside the whole habit; whereas, had we begun more modestly, we might in time have arrived, with comparative ease, at the higher measures of it. 3. To watch carefully the effects upon our own minds of any failures or inconsistencies in our practice; for these failures, carefully observed, when we have once begun the practice of fasting, will show its real uses, more, perhaps, than the direct benefits of the practice itself. 4. Accompany the fast not only with increased prayer and meditation, but with other little outward acts of self-denial, for thus the whole day will be more in keeping, and the mind taken off from dwelling too much on the one act of fasting. Thus the brunt of our enemy's attack will not rest upon this one point, (as is likely to be the case if the fasting stand alone,) but, by being divided, will be weakened. "A man," says Bishop Taylor, "when he mourns in his fast, must not be merry in his sport; weep at dinner, and laugh all day after; have a silence in his kitchen, and music in his chamber; judge the stomach, and feast the other senses." So again Bishop Taylor instances "hard lodging, uneasy garments, laborious postures of prayer, journeys on foot, sufferance of cold, paring away the use of ordinary solaces, denying every pleasant appetite, rejecting the most pleasant morsels, as being in the rank of 'bodily exercises,' which, though, as St. Paul says, of themselves they 'profit little,' yet they accustom us to acts of self-denial in inferior instances, and are not useless to the designs of mortifying carnal and sensual lusts." A person would never have selected these instances without having tried them himself, and found their use; and, on the other hand, most persons, probably, who have systematically tried fasting, have experienced the benefits of some of these accessories. Some of these also may be irksome at first, as others would be to many no self-denial at all; but every one knows what, however trifling, would be self-denial to him, and the frequent repetition of these acts is a constant, though gentle, self-discipline. It seems to me part of the foolish wisdom of the day, and its ignorance of our nature, to despise these 'small things,' and to disguise its impatience of restraint under some such general maxim as, that "God, has no pleasure in self-torture, or mortification,"—"God wills to
