see his creatures happy," and the like: undoubtedly God wills not our death, but our life; not our misery, but our peace; but God often restores our bodily health by bitter herbs, the knife or cautery, and why not our spiritual? Our forefathers knew better, and by disciplining themselves in these little things, attained to greater; they knew that religion is concerned about little things, as well as great; that if we look to great occasions or great instances only, we shall form no habit; and therefore they shrunk not from mentioning all the little instances, if they were only (the case of an aged and pious relative of my own, long since with the Lord,) abstinence from snuff during Lent, or abridging self-indulgence as to morning sleep, which they had found useful to them. 5. Take especial care to practise self-denial as to food at other times also, lest the fast degenerate into a mere opus operatum, a thing good in and for itself, even if followed by acts of an opposite kind. In Bishop Taylor's words, "Let not intemperance (or self-indulgence) be the prologue or the epilogue to your fast. When the fast is done, eat temperately according to the proportion of other meals, lest gluttony keep either of the gates to abstinence." The importance of this caution will probably be felt by those who have tried to fast; or it may be seen in the corruptions of the Romish Church. 6. Let young ministers, or those who hope to be ordained to the ministry, beware lest they be led, by the novelty of this duty, to overvalue it, or to undervalue those who have lived in times when it was not systematically practised. Obedience to a parent is a higher duty than fasting: "God will have mercy, and not sacrifice." If, therefore, a parent object to any particular mode of fasting, let it be laid aside for the time, and let the individual exercise himself in self-denial in this also, that he relinquishes what a parent objects to, while he looks out for himself other modes to which his parent would not object[1]. 7. Omit trying no act of self-denial in little things, which,
- ↑ In like manner, let him not bind himself so to a particular rule as to preclude any real act of charity or kindness to others; but rather let him choose some time for his own ends of retirement, &c., which may be less convenient to himself, i. e. let his rule be a restraint to himself, not a hindrance to benevolence or an occasion of churlishness.
