A Timely Reminder.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 9, 27 February 1902, Page 2

A Timely Reminder.

Timely We are now in the age of Comfort. Christ's narrow and thorny and uphill way to heaven is not sufficiently up-to-date for the taste of many in our time, and they fancy they can get there, as they get to Chtistchurch, lolling luxuriously all the way on padded cushions. In St. Paul's day the cross was, for many, 'foolishness.' And in the same way we have seen —in a set pulpit sermon, too —the clearly worded divine command to fast treated as ' folly ' —' the folly of fasting.' With a spirit abroad so opposed to the mortification of the cross, it is refreshing to see the Christchurch Anglican Temperance Society endeavoring, although in a somewhat halting and apologetic way, to bring before the public something of the true spirit in which the Lenten season should be spent. Catholics in New Zealand and the Australian States are to this hour frequently held up to ridicule for ' the folly of fasting.' But taunts on this score come with a very bad grace and great inconsistency from professing Christians. The overwhelming majority of Christians have ever been in agreement as to the principle of fasting, if not as to the details of its application, from the rigorous Montanists of the second century down to the ' Old Catholics 'of 1871. The early Reformers (says the Protestant historian Schaff; approved of fasting *as a means of self-discipline and a preparation for prayer.' This was the view of fasting taken by Luther in his commentary on the following words of Our Lord : ' And when you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad. For they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward.' Calvin in his Institutiones (iv.) says: ' Holy and legitimate fasting is directed to three ends ; for we practise it as a restraint on the flesh, to preserve it from licentiousness, or as a preparation for prayers and pious meditations, or as a testimony of our humiliation in the presence of God when we are desirous of confessing our guilt before Him.' The Augsburg, Swiss, Bohemian, Gallic, and Westminster Confessions all adopted the principle of fasting. The discipline of fasting was severely enforced, even by the civil laws, in the early days of the Reformation in England. An Act of Edward VI., in 1552, ordered the people to refrain from eating flesh meat on fast days and the Fridays and Saturdays of Lent. Proclamations enforcing the practice were issued by Queen Elizabeth in 1563, 1572, 1576, and 1601; and one of her Acts provides a penalty of ' three pounds or three months' imprisonment without bail ' for such as would venture to ' eat meat on any of the fish days.' The Queen herself would not eat any flesh meat during Lent until dispensed by her archbishop in 1578. Royal proclamations against the use of flesh meat continued, says Hallam, under James and Charles. Down to the present day the Church of England retains in her Book of Common Prayer all our days of fast and abstinence, together with a number of vigils which we no longer keep; and many of her foremost divines urge the Christian duty of fasting as strongly as it is inculcated from the Catholic pulpit. * In the formularies of the Presbyterian Church' religious fasting' (which requires ' total abstinence from food ') is reverently and emphatically laid down (in 'The Directory for the Publick Worship of God ') as * a duty which God expecteth from the nation and people' in certain circumstances. In the 'Confession of Faith' (xxi., 5) solemn fastings are set forth as ' part of the ordinary religious worship of God '; while the ' Directory' contains minute instructions for the conduct of national, congregational, and family fasts (in the section 'Concerning Publick Solemn Fasting'). Unless our memory deceives us, Scottish almanacs to this day publish the fasting days fixed by the various Assemblies. * 1 * Solemn fasting' has been frequently ordered in Scotland England, and other Protestant countries. They were, for instance, proclaimed by the late Queen Victoria in 1854 during the Crimean War and in 1857 during the Indian Mutiny; by King William of Prussia during the war of 1870; by the President of the United States during the great Civil War, and after the murder of President Garfield. The ' Self-denial Weeks ' of the Salvation Army and other church organisations undoubtedly betoken a belief in a direct or indirect spiritual benefit derivable from abstention from certain creature comforts. And lastly, the various Temperance Societies supply a further justification of the Catholic doctrine —abstinence from drink of one kind and abstinence from food of one kind being the same in principle.