without your own thought, suggest themselves to you, merely because they are little; such suggestions are generally proved by the result not to have come from ourselves, and, if followed, they lead onward. 8. If one mode of fasting do not suit your health, then, after a time, try another; some persons who could not bear early abstinence, (the loss of a breakfast,) might well endure subsequent privation, such as eating a sparing meal early, as the last in the day, or they might at least decidedly abridge their principal meal, or, again, they might be able to strike off all luxury in their food. 9. Supposing all these attempts to fail, after having been fairly tried, yet a person might keep up the spirit of fasting, by such accessories as those instanced, (No. 4,) and might multiply these in proportion as he is obliged to abandon the other, that so he may be ready to avail himself of his ability to fast, whenever God shall restore it to him. A person of weak health is constantly tempted to self-indulgence in matters which do not concern his health, e.g. indolent postures, taking food at the first moment of craving, &c. &c.; and thus he may exercise real self-discipline, even if physicians pronounce him incapable of fasting without impairing his ability to do his duty where God has placed him. Let any one consider what is the boast of our country—our comforts; and he will see what a tendency these have to make him forget his heavenly country, and that he is but a pilgrim,—to make him think it "good for him to be here." How much may he abridge, and yet, by his self-denial, only not be more disadvantageously situated than others. Or, to take another view, does not this show us how many occasions of self-discipline we are furnished with more than our neighbours, from our very national character and circumstances, and that a person need be at no loss for instances of self-government if he but look for them? 10. If a person acquire the habit, let him recollect how slowly he arrived at the conviction of its necessity, and not be surprised that others are as slow, or appear yet more so; perhaps, without fasting, they are more self-denying than one's self with it. "Let it be done," says Bishop Taylor, "just as a man takes physic, of which no man hath reason to be proud, and no man thinks it necessary but because he is in sickness, or
