Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/153

 life, would affect men more than any à priori demonstration that the medicine was pernicious or deadly. Much more then, since this medicine has been recommended to us by the great Physician of our souls; since it has been beneficial, wherever it has not been substituted for all other means of restoring or maintaining our spiritual health. The only question is,—not whether Fasting be in itself beneficial, but—whether certain regulations concerning it tend to promote or to diminish its efficacy; and in this case, the testimony of those who have proved their value, is manifestly of primary importance; the preconceived opinions of such as have not tried them, are but mere presumptions. If then either in the regulations or the histories of those holy men, through whom these recommendations have become part of the system of our Church, we find indications that they themselves knew from experience the value of what they recommended, we have evidence of the value of their advice, which we may not, without peril of injury to our souls, neglect.

It was in part, by some such process as the preceding, that the writer of these pages was led to consider what one may be allowed to term the less solemn Fasts of the Church, those which Christians now ordinarily pay less regard to; for the first day of Lent, and the annual commemoration of our sufferings, are, I suppose, still very commonly observed. As the history of every mind is, under some modifications, the mirror of many others, it may to some be useful to see by what course of reflection or experience an individual was brought to feel the value of the regulations of the Church in this respect.

It will perhaps to some seem strange to find placed among the foremost of these advantages, the Protection thereby afforded—protection against one's self; protection against the habits and customs of the world, which sorely let and hinder one in systematically pursuing what one imagines might be beneficial. I speak not of course of any known duty; in that case the opinion or practice or invitations of the world were nothing; but with regard to those indefinite duties or disciplines, which one thinks may be performed as well at one period as at another, and which, on that very account, are frequently not performed at all, or at best occasionally only, and superficially. No thoughtful Christian will doubt of the