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SERMON X.

LENT.

DANIEL, X. 2, 3.

"In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks. I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth ... till three whole weeks were fulfilled."

THUS does the Prophet describe a season, in which God was pleased to visit him by His especial power. "From the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God," the angel told him, "thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words." It was not without result, therefore, that he cut off an interval of time from the distractions of ordinary life. A lesson this, the more instructive, because Daniel was a layman, and busied in worldly cares.

In this bustling age, men are apt to find excuses for declining the force of Scriptural warnings. If David "fasted and lay in sackcloth," it

was in the freedom of barbarous times. If St. Paul was "in fastings often," he was an Apostle, who needed to keep no terms with the world, because he had devoted himself to a missionary life. If Cornelius was accepted, when he had prayed with fasting to the ninth hour, he was a heathen. If Our Lord hungered in the wilderness, He was more than man. But what shall be said of Daniel, the inhabitant of a court, the descendant of kings, on whom lay the affairs of the province of Babylon, when we find him devoting weeks to self-denial, prayer, and intercourse with God? This was no Jewish form: it was not superseded therefore by the purer worship of the Church of Christ. It shows in what manner holy men have found it expedient to break in upon that concupiscence of the flesh, which needs at times to be unusually checked, that so the spiritual nature may assert usual supremacy. Thus may we retire for a season with Christ into the mountain, that we may return to mix better in the intercourse of

men.

The practice is sanctioned by St. Paul, 1 Cor. vii. 5, a passage on which Bishop Taylor grounds this observation (Holy Living and Dying, p. 12): "Let him that is most busied set apart some solemn time every year, in which, quitting all worldly business, he may attend wholly to fasting and prayer, and the dressing of his soul by confessions, meditations, and attendance upon God:

that he may make up his accounts, renew his vows, make amends for his carelessness, and retire back again, from whence levity, and the vanities of the world, or the opportunity of temptations, or the distraction of secular affairs have carried him."

Now two dangers, though not its necessary result, seem not unlikely to arise from such a practice. The one, that there seems too much of human choice in men's selecting such seasons of voluntary self-restraint. The other, that such especial consecration of ourselves to religious duties may lead to formality, or to spiritual pride. These evils do not spring necessarily from this practice, more than from any other use of the means of grace, but Satan might build such temptations upon them. No doubt it was to obviate this that our Church has in her wisdom enjoined the use of the present season, and based it moreover on the more especial imitation of the example of Christ. In this manner the temptation to pride is obviated, for none can be puffed up at rendering obedience to a common precept: and the sacred pattern which she sets before us is fitted to absorb any lower thoughts, by which men might otherwise be molested.

Such is the nature of this season of Lent, to which all Church-people are enjoined in one way or another to pay attention; to which many already pay regard; and which I am persuaded will be still more heeded, in proportion as men feel more deeply

the evangelic doctrines of the need of repentance, grace, and union with Christ Our Lord. For although it be true that the clergy are bound by a solemn additional vow to render obedience to the Church's laws, so that carelessness in them would be more heinous guilt, yet the general promises of Baptism plainly require of men such Christian improvement of the means of grace, as opportunity offers. The practical question then is, what use we can each make of this period of Lent; how can we extract from it those benefits, for which Daniel was glad to sacrifice the comforts of his ordinary life?

First, then, it is the Church's time of revival. If duly used, there is none, in which we might hope to see a larger harvest of immortal souls. Is not the world in common too strong for us? Do not we find its allurements too enticing to be resisted? Is it not in vain often that Christ's ministers raise their warning voice, and tell men of the fleeting nature of all transitory joys? Of what signal benefit then might it be, if men were accustomed for this season, at all events, to hold themselves dispensed from the ordinary calls of pleasure, and to open their hearts to the impression and prospect of things divine.

In truth, it is probably because they will not use such salutary intervals, that God's Providence often deals with men by His afflictive dispensations. Many a man, who will not give his ordi

nary employments this interruption, is mercifully interrupted by that chastening hand which would save him from utter perdition. "If we would judge ourselves we should not be judged." How many fits of sickness have been sent in mercy on those, whose hours of health they would never give to God. The enforced meditations of the sleepless night and painful day have been God's merciful provision for securing those occasions of thought, which men's carelessness would not render. How many bereavements have been designed to disgust men with those worldly comforts, which, in scenes of cheerfulness, they would never sacrifice. The bereaved parent, the widowed partner, are thus taught how insipid are earthly joys. Happy if even thus they learn to hold intercourse with Christ their Saviour, to taste the sweetness of prayer, to take delight in sharing His portionif they truly wean themselves from the transitory objects, from which God's chastening hand was designed to recall them. For "when we are judged we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world."

Now it is that such heavy and afflicting remedies may not be needed, that we call men to turn betimes to the service of God. "Judge therefore yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged of the Lord." What is there in truth so appalling to any believing mind, as the uninterrupted prosperity of a careless sinner? He has no checks, because God