OUR COMPULSORY FAST.
" ripHE constantly stuffed body seeth not .secret things." In a 1. learned treatise upon abstinence down which the present writer was running his eye the other day, these words were accredited to a Zulu. Roughly speaking, they sum up the world's experience upon the subject of fasting. With the possible exception of Confu- cianism, abstinence in some form or another has formed part of the discipline of all the great religions. The Zulu's theory is easy to assail by argument, but it has proved impossible to eradicate it from the heart of man. These will always be some among the devout of all communities who will have recourse to it. When the desire for spiritual insight becomes too insistent, so time- honoured an aid to vision will not be altogether rejected. The East has been more willing to fast than the West. Mohammed prescribed a more painful abstinence than even the Greek Church has ever advocated. ,His followers abstain not only from food but from water, from sunrise to sunset during a whole month of the year. No large number of thinking people would continue an act of worship so painful if they were not convinced by experi- ence of some counterbalancing good arising from it. Some increase of fifth, some enhanced perception of spiritual things, must accom- pany the pain of the long thirsty day, at least in the experience of the more religiously minded, otherwise the custom would have lapsed. Mohammedanism is no superstitious cult sacrificing to propitiate cruel deities. It is at least possible that Mohammed saw that he must counteract by discipline the licentious laxity of the ideal of life he had conceived, lest materialism should sap the spirit of Islam. If this is so, experience has justified his genius. Christianity has no analogous period of abstinence. Christ set aside no day or month in which men should afflict their souls. Nevertheless He suffered privations in the wilderness, and, so far from forbidding fasting, He seems in deprecating its parade to take its reasonable uses for granted. Anyhow, His followers began early to fast, though the Church laid down no rule. In The Shepherd of Herrnas, which is generally regarded as the earliest of the Christian writings outside the New Testament, the idea that fasting can be an end in itself is deprecated. Those who fast are recommended to content themselves with bread and vegetables and thank God for these, and, counting the cost of a better meal, to give the difference to the poor. In so saying "The Shepherd" is in accordance with the Jewish prophet who with satiric fervour urged those who practised abstinence to feed the poor and free the oppressed instead of wearing sackcloth.
A growing asceticism soon destroyed Christian liberty in this matter, but even in the fourth century the usages of the various communities were not uniform. Lent was kept by all, but it was kept with many differences of custom. The Church abstained in some parts of Christendom from flesh only, in others from flesh, milk, and eggs. We hear of communities who ate nothing at all until midday, and then whatever they liked. In Constantinople the fast began seven weeks before Easter, but was only enforced upon alternate weeks ; while Rome fasted for three weeks, with indulgence on Saturday and Sunday. We are apt to think of monasticism at its purest time as a system of extreme abstinence, but modern historians declare that in the matter of food the great Rules allowed a standard of comfort above that of the peasantry. The Benedictine Rule was mild, and produced an immense number of learned men on a restricted but by no means ascetic diet. If anywhere secret things were seen at the time of the early Benedictines, it was they who saw them. They pre- served learning, and did the thinking, one might almost say, for Christendom. Their rations, however, must be admitted to have been fairly generous, consisting of two meals a day, no flesh except in illness, no embargo upon fish or fowl or milk or its products, and a pint of wine and a pound of bread daily.
It is remarkable that the Reformation, which abolished so many good customs which had been abused, shattering images and prohibiting prayers for the dead, made no pronouncement against fasting. Even Presbyterians have adhered to the custom in theory, as being of spiritual importance. Hooker tells us that at one time there was a large party within the Anglican Church who maintained that fasting should be recommended "no further than as the tempos,' state of the land doth require the seine for the maintenance of seafaring men and the preservation of the cattle " ; but these voices did not prevail to strike the fasts from the Canon.
In this country at present the exceedingly able organization of a reduced food supply has in effect proclaimed a compulsory fast. That is, the moderate superfluity which is the ideal food condition of Englishmen of all classes is completely suspended. No one has more than enough of anything, and no one has more than a very little meat. Publio health is proclaimed to be good. The effects of the fast differ in individual experience. One man will tell you he never was so well in his life, that he feels an abounding energy, a lightness of spirits, and a capacity to face trouble such as he has never felt before. Another man, perhaps of a like age and build, looks in less than his usual good condition, and complains that his sleep is automatically diminished together with his rations. Obviously the former is getting nothing but good by the change of food, and at first sight we should say the latter was getting only harm. But if we think of the world's experience, we shall perhaps alter our view. The world has thought well to impose fasts upon itself, nob with a view to health—though incidentally in many inrstanoeF and some countries health may have benefited by the temporary impossibility of excess. Men have believed that fasting was "worth while "—for some other cause than health. Excess has rendered in many Protestant minds the expedient ridiculous, but we are forced in times of distress to review many verdicts. There is nothing so absurd or so revolting as perfunctory prayers muttered only for gain, but the great question of prayers for the departed is not affected by fulminations against a system of ecclesiastically licensed fraud. As a nation we are called to face fearful things, and it is impossible but that our faith and our moral should tremble before such a multiplication of tests. No one should to-day make himself absurd by dogmatism ; but is it not possible that as a nation our compulsory sobriety, our compulsory fast, has put us in the best possible state in which to accept whatever of pain or rejoicing
the future has in store for us Could we in " fulness of bread and abundance of idleness" have borne without utter demoralization what we may have to bear There is a phrase which we use in jest that, taken in earnest, reveals one of the great secrets of Christianity. In the power of the human soul to make a virtue of necessity lies a supernatural reserve of strength. Therein lies man's superiority to fate. That is the alchemy of faith. It does not deliver any man from trouble ; it &um; trouble to account.
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