'Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the
things for which the Son of God laid down His life. Thrust yourself in,
if you must, anywhere else, but do not thrust yourself and your
brutish stupidity and your fiendish tempers into the things of the
house of God. Let all parish ministers take for their text that day 2
Samuel 6:6, 7: - And when they came to Nachon's threshing-floor,
Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the
oxen shook it. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah;
and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of
God.
(3) There is a third lesson here, but it is a lesson for ministers, and I
shall take it home to myself.
Chapter 24 - A FAST-DAY IN MANSOUL
'Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the
inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God.' - Joel.
In our soft and self-indulgent day the very word 'to fast' has
become an out-of-date and an obsolete word. We never have occasion
to employ that word in the living language of the present day. The men
of the next generation will need to have it explained to them what the
Fast-days of their fathers were: when they were instituted, how they
were observed, and why they were abrogated and given up. If your
son should ever ask you just what the Fast-days of your youth were
like, you will do him a great service, and he may live to recover them, if
you will answer him in this way. Show him how to take his Cruden and
how to make a picture to his opening mind of the Fast-days of
Scripture. And tell him plainly for what things in fathers and in sons
those fasts were ordained of God. And then for the Fast-days of the
Puritan period let him read aloud to you this powerful passage in the
Holy War. Public preaching and public prayer entered largely into the
fasting of the Prophetical and the Puritan periods; and John Bunyan,
after Joel, has told us some things about the Fast-day preaching of his
day that it will be well for us, both preachers and people, to begin
with, and to lay well to heart.
In the first place, the preaching of that Fast-day was 'pertinent'
and to the point. William Law, that divine writer for ministers, warns
ministers against going off upon Euroclydon and the shipwrecks of
Paul when Christ's sheep are looking up to them for their proper food.
What, he asks, is the nature, the direction, and the strength of that
Mediterranean wind to him who has come up to church under the
plague of his own heart and under the heavy hand of God? You may be
sure that Boanerges did not lecture that Fast-day forenoon in Mansoul
on Acts 27:14. We would know that, even if we were not told what his
text that forenoon was. His text that never-to-be-forgotten Fast-day
forenoon was in Luke 13:7 - 'Cut it down; why cumbereth it the
ground?' And a very smart sermon he made upon the place. First, he
showed what was the occasion of the words, namely, because the fig-
tree was barren. Then he showed what was contained in the sentence,
to wit, repentance or utter desolation. He then showed also by whose
authority this sentence was pronounced. And, lastly, he showed the
reasons of the point, and then concluded his sermon. But he was very pertinent in the application, insomuch that he made all the elders and
all their people in Mansoul to tremble. Sidney Smith says that
whatever else a sermon may be or may not be, it must be interesting if
it is to do any good. Now, pertinent preaching is always interesting
preaching. Nothing interests men like themselves. And pertinent
preaching is just preaching to men about themselves, - about their
interests, their losses and their gains, their hopes and their fears, their
trials and their tribulations. Boanerges took both his text and his
treatment of his text from his Master, and we know how pertinently
The Master preached. His preaching was with such pertinence that the
one half of His hearers went home saying, Never man spake like this
man, while the other half gnashed at Him with their teeth. Our Lord
never lectured on Euroclydon. He knew what was in man and He
lectured and preached accordingly. And if we wish to have praise of
our best people, and of Him whose people they are, let us look into
our own hearts and preach. That will be pertinent to our people which
is first pertinent to ourselves. Weep yourself, said an old poet to a new
beginner; weep yourself if you would make me weep. 'For my own
part,' said Thomas Shepard to some ministers from his death-bed, 'I
never preached a sermon which, in the composing, did not cost me
prayers, with strong cries and tears. I never preached a sermon from
which I had not first got some good to my own soul.'
'His office and his name agree;
A shepherd that and Shepard he.'
And many such entries as these occur in Thomas Boston's golden
journal:
'I preached in Ps. 42:5, and mostly on my own account.' Again:
'Meditating my sermon next day, I found advantage to my own soul, as
also in delivering it on the Sabbath.' And again: 'What good this
preaching has done to others I know not, yet I think myself will not
the worse of it.'
The preaching of that Fast-day was with great authority also.
'There was such power and authority in that sermon,' reports one who
was present, 'that the like had seldom been seen or heard.' Authority
also was one of the well-remembered marks of our Lord's preaching.
And no wonder, considering who He was. But His ministers, if they are
indeed His ministers, will be clothed by Him with something even of His supreme authority. 'Conscience is an authority,' says one of the
most authoritative preachers that ever lived. 'The Bible is an
authority; such is the Church; such is antiquity; such are the words of
the wise; such are hereditary lessons; such are ethical truths; such are
historical memories; such are legal saws and state maxims; such are
proverbs; such are sentiments, presages, and prepossessions.' Now,
the well-equipped preacher will from time to time plant his pulpit on
all those kinds of authority, as this kind is now pertinent and then
that, and will, with such a variety and accumulation of authority,
preach to his people.
Thomas Boston preached at a certain place with such pertinence
and with such authority that it was complained of him by one of
themselves that he 'terrified even the godly.' Let all our young
preachers who would to old age continue to preach with interest, with
pertinence, and with terrifying authority, among other things have by
heart The Memoirs of Thomas Boston, 'that truly great divine.'
A third thing, and, as some of the people who heard it said of it,
the best thing about that sermon was that - 'He did not only show us
our sin, but he did visibly tremble before us under the sense of his
own.' Now I know this to be a great difficulty with some young
ministers who have got no help in it at the Divinity Hall. Are they, they
ask, to be themselves in the pulpit? How far may they be themselves,
and how far may they be not themselves? How far are they to be seen
to tremble before their people because of their own sins, and how far
are they to bear themselves as if they had no sin? Must they keep back
the passions that are tearing their own hearts, and fill the forenoon
with Euroclydon and other suchlike sea-winds? How far are they to be
all gown and bands in the pulpit, and how far sackcloth and ashes?
One half of their people are like Pascal in this, that they like to see and
hear a man in his pulpit; but, then, the other half like only to see and
hear a proper preacher. 'He did not only show the men of Mansoul
their sin, but he did tremble before them under the sense of his own.
Still crying out as he preached to them, Unhappy man that I am! that I
should have done so wicked a thing! That I, a preacher, should be one
of the first in the transgression!' This you will remember was the Fast-
day. And so truly had this preacher kept the Fast-day that the
Communion-day was down upon him before he was ready for it. He
was still deep among his sins when all his people were fast putting on
their beautiful garments. He was ready with the letter of his action-
sermon, but he was not equal to the delivery of it. His colleague,
accordingly, whose sense of sin was less acute that day, took the public
worship, while the Fast-day preacher still lay sick in his closet at home
and wrote thus on the ground: 'I am no more worthy to be called Thy
son,' he wrote. 'Behold me here, Lord, a poor, miserable sinner, weary
of myself, and afraid to look up to Thee. Wilt Thou heal my sores? Wilt
Thou take out the stains? Wilt Thou deliver me from the shame? Wilt
Thou rescue me from this chain of sin? Cut me not off in the midst of
my sins. Let me have liberty once again to be among Thy redeemed
ones, eating and drinking at Thy table. But, O my God, to-day I am an
unclean worm, a dead dog, a dead carcass, deservedly cast out from
the society of Thy saints. But oh, suffer me so much as to look to the
place where Thy people meet and where Thine honour dwelleth.
Reject not the sacrifice of a broken heart, but come and speak to me in
my secret place. O God, let me never see such another day as this is.
Let me never be again so full of guilt as to have to run away from Thy
presence and to flee from before Thy people.' He printed more than
that, in blood and in tears, before God that Communion-morning, but
that is enough for my purpose. Now, would you choose a dead dog like
that to be your minister? To baptize and admit your children and to
marry them when they grow up? To mount your pulpits every
Sabbath-day, and to come to your houses every week-day? Not, I feel
sure, if you could help it! Not if you knew it! Not if there was a
minister of proper pulpit manners and a well-ordered mind within a
Sabbath-day's journey! 'Like priest like people,' says Hosea. 'The
congregation and the minister are one,' says Dr. Parker. 'There are men
we could not sit still and hear; they are not the proper ministers for
us. There are other men we could hear always, because they are our
kith and our kin from before the foundation of the world.' Happy the
hearer who has hit on a minister like the minister of Mansoul, and
who has discovered in him his everlasting kith and kin. And happy the
minister who, owning kith and kin with Boanerges, has two or three
or even one member in his congregation who likes his minister best
when he likes himself worst.
But what about the fasting all this time? Was it all preaching, and was there no fasting? Well, we do not know much about the fasting of
the prophets and the apostles, but the Puritans sometimes made their
people almost forget about fasting, and about eating and drinking too,
they so took possession of their people with their incomparable
preaching. I read, for instance, in Calamy's Life of John Howe that on
the public Fast-days, it was Howe's common way to begin about nine
in the morning and to continue reading, preaching, and praying till
about four in the afternoon. Henry Rogers almost worships John
Howe, but John Howe's Fast-days pass his modern biographers
patience; till, if you would see a nineteenth-century case made out
against a seventeenth-century Fast-day, you have only to turn to the
author of The Eclipse of Faith on the author of Delighting in God. And,
no doubt, when we get back our Fast-days, we shall leave more of the
time to reading pertinent books at home and to secret fasting and to
secret prayer, and shall enjoin our preachers, while they are pertinent
and authoritative in their sermons, not to take up the whole day with
their sermons even at their best. And then, as to fasting, discredited
and discarded as it is in our day, there are yet some very good reasons
for desiring its return and reinstatement among us. Very good
reasons, both for health and for holiness. But it is only of the latter
class of reasons that I would fain for a few words at present speak.
Well, then, let it be frankly said that there is nothing holy, nothing
saintly, nothing at all meritorious in fasting from our proper food. It is
the motive alone that sanctifies the means. It is the end alone that
sanctifies the exercise. If I fast to chastise myself for my sin; if I fast to
reduce the fuel of my sin; if I fast to keep my flesh low; if I fast to make
me more free for my best books, for my most inward, spiritual,
mystical books - for my Kempis, and my Behmen, and my Law, and my
Leighton, and my Goodwin, and my Bunyan, and my Rutherford, and
my Jeremy Taylor, and my Shepard, and my Edwards, and suchlike; if I
fast for the ends of meditation and prayer; if I fast out of sympathy
with my Bible, and my Saviour, and my latter end, and my Father's
house in heaven - then, no doubt, my fasting will be acceptable with
God, as it will certainly be an immediate means of grace to my sinful
soul. These altars will sanctify many such gifts. For, who that knows
anything at all about himself, about his own soul, and about the
hindrances and helps to its salvation from sin; who that ever read a page of Scripture properly, or spent half an hour in that life which is
hidden in God - who of such will deny or doubt that fasting is
superseded or neglected to the sure loss of the spiritual life, to the
sensible lowering of the religious tone and temper, and to the increase
both of the lusts of the flesh and of the mind? It may perhaps be that
the institution of fasting as a church ordinance has been permitted to
be set aside in order to make it more than ever a part of each earnest
man's own private life. Perhaps it was in some ways full time that it
should be again said to us, 'Thou, when thou fastest, appear not unto
men to fast.' As also, 'Is not this the fast that I have chosen: to undo the
heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break
every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou
bring the outcast to thy house?' Let us believe that the form of the
Fast-day has been removed out of the way that the spirit may return
and fashion a new form for itself. And in the belief that that is so, let
us, while parting with our fathers' Fast-days with real regret - as with
their pertinent and pungent preaching - let us meantime lay in a stock
of their pertinent and pungent books, and set apart particular and
peculiar seasons for their sin-subduing and grace-strengthening
study.
The short is this. The one real substance and true essence of all
fasting is self-denial. And we can never get past either the supreme
and absolute duty of that, or the daily and hourly call to that, as long
as we continue to read the New Testament, to live in this life, and to
listen to the voice of conscience, and to the voice of God speaking to us
in the voice of conscience. Without strict and constant self-denial, no
man, whatever his experiences or his pretensions, is a disciple of Jesus
Christ, and secret fasting is one of the first, the easiest, and the most
elementary exercises of New Testament self-denial. And, besides, the
lusts of our flesh and the lusts of our minds are so linked and locked
and riveted together that if one link is loosened, or broken, or even
struck at, the whole thrall is not yet thrown off indeed, but it is all
shaken; it has all received a staggering blow. So much is this the case
that one single act of self-denial in the region of the body will be felt
for freedom throughout the whole prison-house of the soul. And a
victory really won over a sensual sin is already a challenge sounded to
our most spiritual sin. And it is this discovery that has given to fasting the place it has held in all the original, resolute, and aggressive ages of
the Church. With little or nothing in their Lord's literal teaching to
make His people fast, they have been so bent on their own spiritual
deliverance, and they have heard and read so much about the
deliverances both of body and of soul that have been attained by
fasting and its accompaniments, that they have taken to it in their
despair, and with results that have filled them in some instances with
rapture, and in all instances with a good conscience and with a good
hope. You would wonder, even in these degenerate days, - you would
be amazed could you be told how many of your own best friends in
their stealthy, smiling, head-anointing, hypocritical way deny
themselves this and that sweetness, this and that fatness, this and that
softness, and are thus attaining to a strength, a courage, and a self-
conquest that you are getting the benefit of in many ways without
your ever guessing the price at which it has all been purchased. Now,
would you yourself fain be found among those who are in this way
being made strong and victorious inwardly and spiritually? Would
you? Then wash your face and anoint your head; and, then, not
denying it before others, deny it in secret to yourself - this and that
sweet morsel, this and that sweet meat, this and that glass of such
divine wine. Unostentatiously, ungrudgingly, generous-heartedly, and
not ascetically or morosely, day after day deny yourself even in little
unthought-of things, and one of the very noblest laws of your noblest
life shall immediately claim you as its own. That stealthy and
shamefaced act of self-denial for Christ's sake and for His cross's sake
will lay the foundation of a habit of self-denial; ere ever you are aware
of what you are doing the habit will consolidate into a character; and
what you begin little by little in the body will be made perfect in the
soul; till what you did, almost against His command and altogether
without His example, yet because you did it for His sake and in His
service, will have placed you far up among those who have forsaken
all, and themselves also, to follow Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son of
God. Only, let this always be admitted, and never for a moment
forgotten, that all this is said by permission and not of commandment.
Our Lord never fasted as we fast. He had no need. And He never
commanded His disciples to fast. He left it to themselves to find out
each man his own case and his own cure. Let no man, therefore, take fasting in any of its degrees, or times, or occasions, on his conscience
who does not first find it in his heart. At the same time this may be
said with perfect safety, that he who finds it in his heart and then lays
it on his conscience to deny himself anything, great or small, for