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IV.—Fasting is not, as some have thought, a trick of priestcraft. The great Destroyer of priestcraft coupled fasting with prayer. The Old Catholics, when they left the kind and degree and time of fasting to each man's conscience, were careful not to reject it altogether. Our Puritans 250 years ago fasted as rigorously as any hermit. Now we know that the meagre or Lenten fare includes eggs, milk, butter, even fish. These rules of fasting are bequest of vast experience. They show that a low diet tends to mortify the flesh. Vegetarian testimony may not wholly bear out the strong assertion of Dr. Jas. C Jackson^[1]:—

It is morally and physically impossible for any man to remain a drunkard who can be induced to forego the use of tobacco, tea, coffee, spicy condi ments, common salt, flesh meats, and medicinal drugs.

But certainly the vast majority of Vegetarians are teetotalers, though bound by no official pledge. The henroost, the milk-pail, the churn, the hive, do not brutalise, do not offend our instincts of mercy as do the shambles, cattle transports and trucks, the port industry of Chicago, the pigeon-shooting of Hurlingham, the wholesale slaughter of game, the deer forest supplanting our native peasantry. Mr. Collyns declares:—

Morally, I am clearer, happier, and more anxious to serve my fellow-creatures than before.

Vegetarians, even of the V.E.M. persuasion, take an active part in many works of mercy and charity. Many can say, with Mr. Collyns:—

It was not the thought of sickness or death that moved me primarily to change my mode of living. It was rather a higher and, I believe, God-sent feeling within me that a nobler and better course was asked of me, and was due from me.

V.—Our name. Sir H. Thompson says (Nineteenth Century, May 1885, p. 781):—

It is incumbent on the supporters of this system of mixed diet to find a term which conveys the truth, that truth being that they abjure the use, as food, of all animal flesh. The words "vegetable" and "Vegetarian" have not the remotest claim to express that fact, while they have an express meaning of their own in daily use—namely, the obvious one of designating products of the vegetable kingdom. It may not be easy to construct a simple term which differentiates clearly from the true Vegetarian, the person who also uses various foods belonging to the animal kingdom, and who abjures only the flesh of animals. But it is high time that we should be spared the obscure language, or rather the inaccurate statement to which

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1. The Drink Crave—How To Cure, p. 3.