MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 9:14-29
(PARALLELS: Matthew 17:14-21; Luke 9:37-43.)
The afflicted child.—Moses, when he descended from the mount, found that the people in his absence had lapsed into idolatry; and our Lord, in descending from the Mount of Transfiguration, found that His followers had been surprised into spiritual impotence and failure. The swift transition from the glories of the Mount to the trials and toils that awaited Him below may be regarded as typical of the life of all Christians,—the mount (Mark 9:9) and the multitude (Mark 9:14); the supreme festival and the fiery trial; to-day, ecstasies and glories that tell of heaven; to-morrow, conflicts with demoniacal degradation and fury that disclose the depths of hell. The appearance of our Lord on the scene wrought an immediate transformation; it was like the arrival of a general on the field of battle in time to retrieve the fortunes of his army when wellnigh defeated. He always comes to succour His own at the right time and with the right blessing: He is “a very present help in trouble.”
I. A distressed child.—The ground of the disorder was natural; the child suffered from a physical complaint, perhaps the most severe form of epileptic lunacy that was brought to Christ for healing. But on this ground a worse spiritual disorder was superinduced. The disorder of the child is a picture of sin as a spiritual evil. The child was deaf; so a sinner refuses to hear the voices of God and conscience. The child was dumb; so the sinner’s tongue is not used for God in testimony and song. The child was mad; so the sinner, under the influence of that “spirit that now worketh [lit. energiseth] in the children of disobedience,” is a maniac.
II. An anxious father.—The colloquy our Lord had with him is a type of the method by which a seeker is led into stronger faith. “The man had said to Him, ‘If Thou canst do’; Jesus retorts upon him, ‘If thou canst believe.’ The man had said, ‘If Thou canst do anything’; Jesus replies, ‘All things are possible’ to faith: ‘My doing all depends on thy believing.’ To impress this still more He redoubles upon the believing: ‘If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’ … Two things are very remarkable here:
(1) The felt and owned presence of unbelief, which only the strength of the man’s faith could have so revealed to his own consciousness.
(2) His appeal to Christ for help against his past unbelief—a feature in the case quite unparalleled, and shewing more than all protestations could have done the insight he had attained of a power in Christ more glorious than any he had besought for his poor child.”
III. The baffled apostles.—In their worshipping exercises on the Mount some of the disciples had to contend with infirmity and sleep; whilst in the activities of public life in the valley others had to contend with impotence and the shame of failure. Possibly the disciples, deprived of the presence of the Master, and the chief apostles, in whom dwelt most of His spirit, had neglected fasting and prayer; the sad prophecy of His death may have damped the spirits of the weakest of them, or they yielded to fear in view of the special virulence of the disorder. The kind of demon that tortured the child required more than ordinary spiritual vigour to expel him—a faith braced up by intense devotion, and such rigorous self-denial as would weaken the hold of the lower nature upon the higher, and aid in spiritual meditation and fellowship.
IV. An effectual Healer.—In the exercises of devotion on the Mount He was declared to be the Master; and in the exercises of active zeal below He asserts His absolute power and dominion—not only over the minds of men, as illustrated in the scribes, the multitude, the father, and the disciples, but also over the rage and malice of demons. Impotence, in some form or other, prevailed in all the actors in the scene except Himself; but “power belonged unto Him”—a power that fell in anger on a malicious demon and in blessing on a helpless child.—J. H. Morgan.
The power and the difficulties of faith.—This story is strikingly illustrative both of the difficulties and the power of faith,—the power of faith, which caused the ultimate healing; the difficulties of faith, which caused the previous failure of that power.
I. The difficulty of believing is very great and very strong.—
1. The disciples of Jesus frequently and very keenly felt this difficulty. Their faith was constantly breaking down; at almost every great crisis it completely failed them: the falsehood and treachery in Pilate’s hall, the desertion at the Cross. Their impotency to heal this epileptic child is an illustration of this. From the context of the narrative it would appear that it was the three most conspicuous of our Lord’s disciples to whom the sorrowing father brought his epileptic child, and that at a time when we should naturally suppose their faith would have been in a condition of the greatest and most triumphant vigour. For they had just descended from the Mount of Transfiguration, they had just been enveloped in the glory of the Lord, and had heard celestial voices testifying to the Divinity of their Master.
2. When we turn away from the disciples to the distressed and sorrowing father, we find an illustration of the difficulties of believing under changed and opposite circumstances. The disciples were in a state of joy and gladness after the Transfiguration; the father of the epileptic child was in a state of grief and sore affliction. They were in the light on the mountaintop; he was amid the darkness down in the valley. Yet he found the difficulties of believing not less hard than they. “If Thou canst do anything.” “Lord! I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.”
3. Faith is one of the most difficult of Christian exercises. A little faith is more or less common; but much faith is very rare. We all, I suppose, believe in a greater or less degree—a degree at least large enough to justify our repetition of the Church’s creeds. But the faith which statedly recites the creeds is not commonly great faith; it is the ordinary faith of the ordinary Christian—the minimum, without which we could not decently profess to be Christians at all.
4. The difficulty of miracles, according to Christ’s declaration, is not the difficulty of God’s doing, but the difficulty of man’s believing. Not material laws, but spiritual unfaith—this is the insuperable hindrance to miracles.
5. The experience of all the ages fully attests the truth of the explanation of Christ. Extraordinary faith is pre-essential to extraordinary action; the miracle of believing precedes the miracle of doing. It is as impossible to think living thoughts with a dead brain, or to raise heavy weights with a palsied arm, as to do wonders with a doubting soul or a dead faith. Failure, even in miracle, is practically synonymous with faithlessness.
II. In every age power has been given to men in proportion to their faith.—
1. Seldom, indeed, has the power of faith extended to the control of the material universe, though in the instance of Christ frequently, and of others occasionally, even matter has been visibly subjugated to the influences of faith; and modern psychical researches are ever tending more and more clearly to demonstrate the possibility of the interpenetration of matter by will, and therefore a fortiori by faith, which as a spiritual energy is often more powerful than will. But outside the material universe and in the realm of purpose and religion we see the power of faith perpetually exemplified. According to the measure of our faith it is daily done unto us. According to the measure of our faith it is also daily done by us. Great deeds are great faith made visible; great faith is great deeds made possible.
2. Seeing, then, that the experience of the ages attests the truth of Christ’s explanation concerning the rarity of miracles, and also His declaration of the potency of faith, the possibility of believing is for each of us a very momentous possibility. “Canst thou,” is it possible for thee, to “believe”? That is the great question, upon the answer to which everything of real importance in life depends. If thou canst believe, there is possible to thee—everything; but if thou canst not believe, there is possible to thee—nothing!
3. The difficulties of belief in our age are without denial peculiarly great. It is not merely that doubt is in the air; that the intellectual and academic atmosphere is charged with currents of dubitation; that physical science, which depends for its existence upon experiment and demonstration, and has achieved such striking successes in the department of matter by the diligent use of its own methods, should have been emboldened to try those methods upon religion,—it is not these things which make the difficulties of belief so peculiarly great in the present age.
(1) The moral and spiritual characteristics of our age are not favourable to faith. Our age is an age of great wealth; and an age of great wealth is never an age of great faith, the tendency of wealth being always towards luxury and great comfortableness, and neither luxury nor great comfortableness being a good soil for religious growth. Moreover the effect of spiritual drowsiness among the rich is to produce a similar drowsiness among the poor. The poor perceive that the profession of Christianity by the rich seldom produces anything great or striking in the way of sympathy or self-sacrifice, and they therefore grow largely indifferent to the profession of it among themselves.
(2) But far greater than all other difficulties are the difficulties inherent in our own moral and spiritual constitution. The visible over-masters us; the invisible is less than half real. Our occupations and employments, the urgency of earning our daily bread, the need for concentrating our thoughts upon worldly things in order to gain subsistence and make progress in our trade or profession—all unite in giving prominence to temporal realities, and in hiding from view the realities which are eternal. Above all, the natural deceitfulness of the human heart revolts against the constraining power of faith.
4. Yet great as these difficulties are, they are by no means insuperable. Far from it. All things are possible to God; and to that man whose mind is ever dwelling upon the Eternal, the Infinite, the Invisible—whose spirit is thoroughly interpenetrated with the Spirit of God—to that man also most things are possible likewise.—Canon Diggle.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 9:14. The scribes questioning.—The scribes probably argued that failure in one case proved deception in all. How true to nature is this picture! If they had encouraged the disciples to try again with prayer, and had knelt with the father of the boy asking God to give the disciples power, they could have prevented the failure which they denounce! It is like the world—to withhold help, and then give blame for what it might have prevented. Pity the woes of men, so often intensified and perpetuated by men disputing as to who is to blame for them, instead of uniting in the effort to cure.—R. Glover
He came—as always, and to us also—unexpectedly, most opportunely, and for the real decision of the question in hand. There was immediate calm, preceding victory.—A. Edersheim, D.D.
The world wants us.—However good it may be to be in nature’s silent retreats for a season, the world wants us; for it is full of evils to be remedied, full of work to be done, full of demons to be cast out. There are calls down as well as up. And we must be as alert to the one call as to the other.—J. Halsey.
Mark 9:16-18. Lessons.—
1. When Jesus Christ absents Himself from us we are nothing.
2. A minister must not expect to have always success in the conversion of sinners.
3. Sometimes the greatest care, application, and talents signify nothing, because God designs to effect the thing by Himself, and to make His ministers more fit for His work by making them more humble.
4. Children diseased and possessed are an evident proof of original sin, because under a just God none are miserable unless they deserve it.
5. Bodily possession is a consequence and emblem of that of the soul, and of the dominion which the devil exercises over the heart by means of the passions.—P. Quesnel.
Mark 9:17. “A dumb spirit.”—The poor lad was a demoniac, and the demon had deprived him of the use of the affiliated organs of speech and hearing (see Mark 9:25). There is nothing incredible in such power, if evil spirits there be at all. Even some men have power to deprive, for the time being, some of their fellow-men of speech, hearing, feeling, seeing. What marvel, then, that unincarnated spirits should have a corresponding power? There are assuredly in existence, as W. G. Palgrave says, “malignant cosmical influences, be they what they may.” “The spirit world,” says Delitzsch, “good as well as bad, has been in all times the background of the events that transpire on earth.”—J. Morison, D.D.
Mark 9:19. Christ’s forbearance to be imitated.—Let us imitate on occasion the obedience and charity of Christ, which detained Him in the world, though the incredulity and contradiction thereof were a continual trouble to Him. How intolerable soever some ministers and pastors, by reason of their want of faith and their other defects, may possible be, yet Christ ceases not mildly to bear with them, to continue with them, according to His promise, to work by their ministry, and even to produce by them extraordinary effects. Whoever finds his endeavours ineffectual on souls enslaved to sin and the devil ought to conduct them to Christ, by addressing himself to Him in more fervent prayers, or by procuring them the assistance of some others of His servants.—P. Quesnel.
Mark 9:23. Faith is in its essence the power by which we grasp the future, the unseen, the infinite, the eternal; and in its application it is a principle of knowledge, a principle of power, a principle of action. It is then on man’s side the condition and the measure of Divine blessing. By faith we lift up the sightless eye, and it is opened: by faith we stretch out the withered arm, and it is made whole: by faith, bound hand and foot with gravecloths, we come forth from the tomb of custom which lies upon us
“With a weight
Heavy as frost and deep almost as life.”
In the Creed I do not simply acknowledge the existence of these Divine Persons of the One Godhead, but I throw myself wholly upon their power and love. I have found and I trust without reserve Him who made, redeemed, sanctifies me. I have gained not a certain conclusion, but an unfailing, an all-powerful Friend. “I believe in Him! He can help me; and He will help me.”—Bishop Westcott.
There is in faith a power to make God’s resources our own tributaries and auxiliaries.—The great reason why we make such slow gains in our own religious life in the warfare with inward sin, selfishness, and pride, is that we make no calculation for any strength but our own, and do not muster in our reserves. We are in this respect where manufacturing was in mechanical life a hundred years ago, when everything was done by hand; where travelling was fifty years ago, when everything was done by stage; where communication was twenty-five years ago, when all messages were sent by post. We do not calculate on a margin. We are doing all by a dead lift.—C.H. Parkhurst, D.D.
Mark 9:24. Prayer for faith.—He who implores faith with tears has it already in his heart.—Canstein.
Doubt and faith.—
1. Doubt and faith can coexist in the heart, and actually do. As creatures of God we must believe; as fallen, disordered, and disorganised creatures we must doubt.
2. The will can choose between doubting and believing. It can control and shape the thoughts; it can throw its weight on one side or the other when the battle rages in the soul. And because it can do this we are responsible for the strength or weakness of our faith.
3. If we choose to believe, God will help.—M. Dix, D.D.
Faith’s progress.—We have here—
1. The birth of faith.
(1) Eager desire.
(2) A sense of utter helplessness.
(3) The acceptance of Christ’s calm assurances.
2. The infancy of faith. The sense of possessing some feeble degree of any virtue or excellence, and the effort to put it forth, is the surest way of discovering how little of it we have. On the other side sorrow for the lack of some form of goodness is itself a proof of the partial possession, in some rudimentary and incipient form, of that goodness.
3. The cry of infant faith. “Help Thou mine unbelief” may have either of two meanings. The man’s desire was either that his faith should be increased and his unbelief “helped” by being removed by Christ’s operation upon his spirit, or that Christ would “help” him and his boy by healing the child, though the faith which asked the blessing was so feeble that it might be called unbelief. “Heal my child, though it is unbelief as much as faith that asks Thee to do it.”
4. The education of faith. Christ paid no heed in words to the man’s confession of unbelief, but proceeded to do the work which answered his prayer in both its possible meanings. He responded to imperfect confidence by His perfect work of cure; and by that perfect work of cure He strengthened the imperfect confidence which it had confessed. Thus He educates us by His answers—His over-answers—to our poor desires; and the abundance of His gifts rebukes the poverty of our petitions more emphatically than any words of remonstrance beforehand could have done. He does not lecture us into faith, but He blesses us into it.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Unbelief helped.—Beautiful to the eye of the father was the lad brought to Jesus, when the spasm was not on him. So is a true faith in Christ. It is the child of the heart. It is the image of all that is parental and Divine in the human soul. The affections so naturally fasten upon it as upon the child given to the arms and the bosom—to the kiss and fondnesses of maternal and paternal love. We so speak of a favourite idea of an author, an artist, a schemer—we say, It is the child of his heart. It stands out, as it were, to his eye as a child born to him, in whom he has garnered up great hopes, and with whom is linked all the happiness of life. More justly may this be regarded the Christian’s faith in immortality, with the light it sheds on present duty, joy, and sorrow. So did Socrates regard his fainter and less beautiful hope of life beyond death. When Socrates held his last conversation with his scholars, it seemed at one time that all the arguments for the immortality of the soul had been overthrown; and as it was a custom for the Greeks to cut off their hair and throw it into the tomb at the time of the burial of a friend, Socrates took hold of the long drooping locks of one of his disciples, and asked if that pretty hair would not be cut off on the morrow—the time he should be dead. He was answered “Yes”; and then he added, “If you take my advice, you will not stay so long!” and explained his meaning that it was more fit that the death of a great hope be mourned than the death of a friend. But the beautiful faith of many a heart does not so much die as it may be said to be affected with spasms. It is tortured. Its harmonies are untuned, and it is a mournful thing. It is as uncontrollable as the poor lad to whom the apostles could bring no help, so that the sorrow of that father is but a picture of the troubles of him whose faith is not healthy, strong, and happy. There is just enough of life in their faith for them to say, “I believe!” but there is weakness enough to make them add, with tears, the confession, “Help my unbelief!” To Christ must the heart come; and the result of patient waiting upon Him shall be, the languid pulse of faith shall be quickened—the “veins shall feel the rosy tide,” and as Christ lifted up the lad and he arose to tremble and to fall no more, so shall belief be released of all the spasms of unbelief and the fire and the flood be feared no more. Take to Christ thy faith. Its weakness will not be despised. Thy tears will be pearls in the treasury of Christ. Bring to Him thy soul by adopting the simple rule, to try by the spirit of His life all doctrines and theories, all creeds and articles.—Henry Bacon.
Mark 9:25. Lessons.—
1. Those who love not either to speak or to hear of God are possessed with a dumb and deaf spirit, from which Christ alone can deliver them. Happy are they into whom he never enters any more!
2. What would not God grant to a faith which is perfect, since even to an imperfect one He grants much more than it asks?
3. Jesus Christ never speaks to the devil but with threats, as to a slave. There are no measures to be kept where there is no longer the least hope of reconciliation or charity.—P. Quesnel.
Mark 9:26-27. Man’s extremity, God’s opportunity.—It is generally when things have come to the worst that God interposes and delivers—and not until then.
1. Because then the need of help is the greatest.
2. Because then there is the clearest evidence of the failure of all human help.
3. Because then deliverance is seen to be of God only. 4 Because then the omnipotence of God is displayed in accomplishing what none other can effect.
Mark 9:27. “Took him by the hand.”—
I. Look at the hand, as the helping organ and instrument of a man.—“Jesus took him by the hand.” “Very well,” some of you say, “how common, how natural! Men take each other by the hand every day.” And therefore, my friends, be sure, since it is so common and so natural, that it is most beautiful and most significant, when we consider it closely. Our most common and familiar actions are the richest in beauty and in meaning. The most precious thoughts lie hid in the most homely things.
II. This action of the Lord appears to be most characteristic of His whole ministry to man.—In Christ the hand of God touched the sick and tormented world and lifted it up; for in Christ God brought Himself into living, loving, and helpful contact with the mass of sin, misery, and corruption wherewith the devil had filled His world.
III. The true form of Christian activity is indicated to us in this hand-helping of our Lord.—The touch of a Christian’s hand, the tones of a Christian’s voice, the strong sympathies of a Christian’s heart, have a magic potency. This is God’s own appointed instrument for healing and blessing the world. You are not following His footsteps if you are not entering yourself into some chambers of sickness, some homes of sorrow, some dens of vice and crime; if sinners are not feeling that you are not afraid of them; that like your Master you have come to seek them, and would rather have it said that you kept company with publicans and sinners than hear your name rung from the trumpet of fame.—J. B. Brown.
Christ’s humanity.—Christ proves His Divinity by His humanity. I know He is Divine because He was so humane.
The helping hand.—What a happiness is it when, amidst the pangs and struggles of conversion, a sinner meets with an enlightened guide, a charitable hand to lift him up in his dejection, to comfort him under his pains, and to lead him into the ways of God! But what docility, what respect, what gratitude, does not the invincible hand of Christ, which is concealed under this visible one, deserve?—P. Quesnel.
Mark 9:28. Dissatisfaction with failure a hopeful sign.—There was hopefulness in the fact that they were dissatisfied with their own failing. As long as the Christian Church is keenly alive to the humiliation which it brings upon itself and the dishonour upon its Master by its failures there is hope of it. It is when the Church is utterly indifferent to its failures in casting out demons that it subsides into a hopeless condition. But whenever the Church of Christ after failing to do its work feels keenly the disgrace of failure and will not tolerate it until at least the secret is explained, but goes to the Master and asks Him in the agony of a keen disappointment, “Why could not we cast him out?” then the very failure will lead up to nobler attainments. The Master will give the secret of successful work, and sooner or later the Church will arouse itself again and rise into the dignity of its calling and its position.—D. Davies.
Mark 9:29. Prayer and fasting.—It is not meant that faith might be omitted (Matthew 17:20); nor that faith must be merged in prayer and fasting: but that faith must be in maximum degree, and that consequently those spiritual exercises which condition its highest attainable exaltation must be realised. There must be prayer, the uplifting of desire till it settle in the will of God. There must be fasting, the denying of all in the periphery of self that would hinder the uprising of the desire to God, or its absolute repose in His will.—J. Morison, D.D.
Prayer and fasting, in the life of Christ, were the human expression of two deeper and Diviner things. His prayers, whether on mountain-slopes or at open grave-sides—whether for the renewal of His own strength or for the benefit of others—were the outcome and expression of a personal intercommunion with God, of which His life was the highest exemplification which the world has ever seen. His fastings were the expression—the manifestation to man—of a self-denial which can only be adequately expressed as absolute and unselfish self-forgetfulness. In this utter and complete self-renunciation and its counterpart of close and unbroken intercommunion with the Father—in His absolute oneness with the Father—Jesus went up to His struggles with evil in its many forms; and before this consecrated and engodded life the evil invariably fell. Demoniacal possessions—no matter what their form or how great their intensity—could not live in the white light that flashed from perfect self-oblation and unbroken intercourse with Heaven. Then why did the disciples fail? Because they fell immeasurably short of the Master’s character. They were not nearly as close to God as He was. There was a great gulf between their puny and imbecile faith and His grand hold of God.—R. H. Starr, D.D.
The power of prayer.—It is not enough to have seen the vision on the mountain. We must foster the memory of it by our prayers; for prayer is the secret of holiness. It is the witness of our spirituality. It is the promise of the victory which shall be ours. We can do nothing of ourselves—that is the law of the spiritual life. But we can do all things by leaning on a higher Power. When the faith of men and of Churches has proved impotent to cope with the evil which has vitiated the heart of society, then a Divine voice is heard above the tumult, saying only, “Bring him hither to Me.” It is Thy voice, O Lord Jesus, and we will obey it.—J. E. C. Welldon.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 9
Mark 9:19. Lack of faith.—Admiral Dupont was once explaining to Farragut the reason why he failed to enter Charlestown harbour with his fleet of ironclads. He gave this reason, and that reason, and the other reason; and Farragut remained silent until he had got through, and then said, “Ah, Dupont, there was one more reason.” “What is that?” “You didn’t believe you could do it!”
Mark 9:23-24. The use of weak faith.—When the suspension bridge across Niagara was erected, a kite took a string over to the other side; to this string a cord was attached and was drawn over, then a rope which drew a larger rope, and then a cable strong enough to sustain the iron cable which supported the bridge, over which heavily laden trains now pass in safety. This could never have been done but for the small kite, which may represent a faith which, though weak, yet reaches to Christ and heaven.
Little faith in a great God.—There was once a woman who was well known for her simple faith and great calmness in the midst of many trials. Another woman hearing of her, went to learn the secret of her holy, happy life. She accosted her by saying, “Are you the woman with the great faith?” “No,” she replied, “I am not the woman with the great faith; but I am the woman with a little faith in the great God.”
Mark 9:24. Obedience has a firm basis.—The same state of mind, looked at from its two opposite ends, as it were, may be designated faith or unbelief; just as a piece of shot silk, according to the angle at which you hold it, may shew you only the bright colours of its warp or the dark ones of its weft. When you are travelling in a railway train with the sun streaming in at the windows, if you look out on the one hand you will see the illumined face of every tree and blade of grass and house, and if you look out on the other you will see the dark side. And so the same landscape may seem to be all lit up by the sunshine of belief, or to be darkened by the gloom of distrust. If we consider how great and how perfect ought to be our obedience, to bear any due proportion to the firmness of that upon which it is built, we shall not be slow to believe that through life there will always be the presence, more or less, of these two elements. There will be all degrees of progress between the two extremes of infantile and mature faith.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Fluctuations of faith.—Travelling on the plain, which, notwithstanding, has its risings and fallings, I discovered Salisbury steeple many miles off; coming to a declivity, I lost the sight thereof, but, climbing up the next hill, the steeple grew out of the ground again. Yea, I often found it and lost it, till at last I came safely to it, and took my lodgings near it. It fareth thus with us while we are wayfaring to heaven. Mounted on the Pisgah top of some good meditation, we get a glimpse of our celestial Canaan; but when either on the flat of an ordinary temper, or in the fall of an extraordinary temptation, we lose the view thereof. Thus, in the sight of our soul, heaven is discovered, covered, and recovered; till, though late, at last, though slowly, surely, we arrive at the haven of our happiness.—Thomas Fuller.
Mark 9:29. Prayer.—I once went to see Channing at Newport, and he told me that a minister had been to see him that day, and bad told how he had once been called in to exorcise a madman. The man was in a paroxysm; but his friends had an idea that it could be relieved by prayer. The minister, himself a man of simple faith, could not refuse the request, and went into the room where the maniac was, took him by the hand, and said, “Let us kneel down and pray.” He said that he never prayed so sincerely in all his life. When he began, the man’s muscles were like iron; as he went on, they gradually relaxed, and when he finished the maniac was quiet and peaceful. Channing thought, and I think, that the strong faith of the minister acted on the patient’s body, through his mind.—J. F. Clarke.
Fasting.—Some years ago, an excellent, well-meaning clergyman preached during Lent on the duty of fasting, which he clearly proved from Scripture. But having done this, he proceeded to discount all he had said by making a series of exceptions. The working-man, for instance, could not be expected to fast, for he had his work to do; the weak and sickly were excepted because of their health, the children on account of their tender years, the old on account of their age, the brain-worker because of the severity of intellectual labour, etc. Doubtless there is some truth in all this, but the answer lies in the word “abstinence.” Many who are unable to fast literally can do so spiritually by taking plain food and avoiding luxuries and self-indulgence. And we should ever look beyond ourselves, and make our self-denial of benefit to others. A good old lady used to have her plateful of meat, cut off from the joint at dinner-time, set aside whilst she ate her dry bread, and then putting it in her basket she would hurry off with it to some poor, sick person in the neighbourhood.