make human agency, and so preaching, every thing! How would it, too, build up those who are real Christians, and so raise the standard of Christianity among us! or how would it support, and comfort, and purify, and initiate into the happiness of their coming life, many who are about to part from this! To return to the Ember-days, besides the direct, incalculable blessing which would result from their observation, do not they furnish an opportunity of inculcating, what in these days is much needed, the claims, the importance, the sanctity of the office of the Christian ministry and of the Church, without the appearance of extolling one's self or one's office because it is one's own?
P.S. Some space being left, it may not be amiss to say a few words on some of the prevailing prejudices against fasting.
There is no explicit command to fast in the New Testament. Persons are but little aware how far this argument will go. Any one will find, if he examine, still less proof that he should receive the Communion of his Lord's Body and Blood, still less direct proof that he shall go to Church on the Lord's day, that he may have his infant children ingrafted into Christ, that there is any especial object in morning and evening prayer, that he should read the Scriptures daily, and in fact for almost every practice, which every person who cares about his soul, knows to be needful for him. I omit others, because some might be glad of an excuse for abandoning them also. Now what is the direction about the Lord's Supper? Our Saviour says, "This do, as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of me." And of fasting He says, "When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites:" in both cases, it is implied that the observance shall be followed, and in both, directions are given concerning how it is to be observed: in the one case, "not as the hypocrites," in the other " in remembrance of me." I do not mean that there is not satisfactory proof, that Christ has given His body and blood to be our spiritual food and sustenance, or not full and condemning evidence, by way of inference, that whoso does not "eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood," in His Supper, "has no life in Him;"
