O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights, give us grace to use such abstinence that our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may ever obey Thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to Thy honor and glory, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

There are many, very many mistakes about Lent. People generally speak of it as a time of fasting, a season of self-denial, and so it is; but this is not all. There are many persons in the Church who have no definite idea about this holy season, whose notions fall as far short of the truth as those of persons out of the Church. To think or speak of Lent merely as a season of abstinence from food, or as a time in which we are required to eat courser food than we usually do, is very wrong—very much short of the truth. It is a season in which the Church requires her children to “turn unto the Lord with all their hearts, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning,” “worthily lamenting their sins, and acknowledging their wretchedness, that they may obtain of Him who is the God of all mercy perfect remission and forgiveness, through Jesus Christ their Lord.“ The Lenten Fast was established in Apostolic times. It is mentioned in the Apostolic Canons, and by various Christian writers in the second and third centuries. The Council of Nice, A. D. 325, and that of Laodicea, A. D. 365, speak of Lent as an institution, generally observed by the Church. It is a very precious legacy of the primitive Church, and if we make a proper use of it, we shall find it a means of grace full of blessing to our souls.

It is a season during which the Church demands more than ordinary devotion from her children. Her services are increased—are of a more solemn character— are such as are best adapted to lead our thoughts away from the things of this world, to contemplate the mysteries of Redemption. Every day she would have her children prostrate themselves in God's house, and pray that He would “create and make within them new and contrite hearts.” The services of the Church keep two facts prominently before our minds: our sinfulness, Christ's holiness; our need, Christ's sufficiency.

But, beloved, in order that we may learn our own sinfulness, we must subject ourselves to careful and diligent self-examination. To do this thoroughly, we should carry our scrutiny back to the earliest recollections of life, and through the inmost recesses of our thoughts. It is well, therefore, to use some such plan as the following, when we can take time to it, and work out each part carefully:

Let our life be divided into periods, such as childhood, boyhood, youth, early manhood, active life, or such others as may be marked in each one's own history. Then let us take the Ten Commandments, expounded and applied to the various duties of life, as most of us have learned from the Sermon on the Mount, and from the Church Catechism, and the explanations of these, and think whether we have kept each of those laws faithfully, during one period of our lives, before we go on to another. Or, take the vows and promises of Holy Baptism, and let us search and examine ourselves to see how close we have lived up to our profession—“which is to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto Him.” And if we know ourselves to have any particular besetting sin, that is now or has lately been more powerful over us than others, let us be careful to search our the very earliest beginnings of it, and find out, if possible, when and how it stole in upon us, and in what matter we first grievously departed from God.

Of course, this way of proceeding will be a work of days, if not of weeks; but being well done, it will be a real step in our lives, the groundwork of a thorough conversion to God in one who has hitherto lived to himself, or of a solid building up of the spiritual man in one who is already resting on Christ the Rock, with a hearty will “to do the things he has heard.”

Many good people seem to think that religion has been so greatly improved in these latter days that they can get along very well without fasting. But they are mistaken. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. And his Church is the same: the same in its ministry, in its sacraments, in its word; it has the same means of grace now as it had at the first. On the subject of fasting, our Lord has not left us in any doubt; he refers to it often as an undoubted duty, and gives us rules for the proper observance of it. Thus, in St. Matthew vi, 16, he says: “When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites.” He does not enjoin His followers to fast, for he assumes that they would do so. He does not say, “If ye fast, be not as the hypocrites” But taking it for granted that His followers would fast, he tells them how to fast, and says, “When ye fast,” “when thou fastest,” etc. So he had said just before, “When thou doest alms,” “When thou prayest” It is taken as a matter of course, that those who desire to serve God acceptably will do these things according to their abilities and opportunities, with glad and willing minds, without questioning or doubting. The three duties are, in this respect, put upon precisely the same footing. There may be cases in which it would be wrong to fast, in which a man has no alms to bestow, or in which retirement for the purpose of prayer is impossible; but these are the exceptions, not the rule. The Church wisely leaves her members each one to determine for himself how much self-denial he can put upon himself. She gives us no rules. She bids us fast, each one of us according to our ability, but she does not tell us how to do so.

She bids us “give alms of our goods,” but lays down no other rule than that we are to be merciful after our power. “If thou hast much give plenteously: if thou hast little, do thy diligence gladly to give of that little, for so gatherest thou thyself a good reward in the day of necessity.” And just so her rule about fasting—each one must judge for himself the measure of his ability; only let us all be sure that we do “gladly,” after our power.

It is the part and duty of every person who, by baptism, has put on Christ, at all times “to walk answerably to their Christian calling, and as becometh the children of light.” All baptized Christians have renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil, and how far, under ordinary circumstances, they may mingle in the amusements of the world, is a question which each individual must determine for himself. To his own Master he must stand or fall. Yet there are times and seasons when there can be no mistake on this subject, and “when the Church has decided that her children must retire, in a peculiar manner, from this world, to think of that which is to come.” Lent is such a season. Listen to the tones of earnest repentance which the services of the Church breathe forth, and say whether, after giving utterance to these, we can rush at once into the embraces of a world from which we have just prayed to be delivered. It is a miserable mockery for us to go into the Lord's house and pray, “Turn thou us, O good Lord, and so shall we be turned. Be favorable, O Lord, be favorable to thy people, who turn to thee in weeping, fasting and prayer,” and then to go out into the world, to in mingle all its lightness and vanity and sin.

I have thus told you plainly how you must act, what you must do if you would in deed and in truth enjoy the rich blessings which the Lenten season affords to all who properly improve it. Be constant in your attendance on the services of the Church— regular in your private devotions—give gladly of your goods. Judge yourselves—afflict yourselves— bring your bodies into subjection, and keep aloof from the world. Take up your cross daily. Jesus, your Saviour, chose the cross; and what a mockery of the faith that is which gives us all of religion but the trial, which exhibits the Master in hourly tribulation, yet would have His people clothed in soft raiment, as if sanctification were vicarious as well as atonement, and in bearing all our sins He bore all our sufferings also. O my beloved people! if God— severely kind—has not afflicted you, learn in some way to afflict yourselves. Allay the fever of fleshly will by mortification; of ambitious desires by purposed and resolute self-abasement. Exercise your hearts in a loving sympathy with sorrow in every form; soothe it, minister to it, succor it, revere it. It is a relic of Christ in the world, an image of the great Sufferer, a shadow of the cross. It is a holy and a venerable thing.