CHAPTER XXIV--A FAST-DAY IN MANSOUL.
'Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God.'-- _Joel_.
In our soft and self-indulgent day the very word 'to fast' has become an out-of-date and an obsolete word.

We never have occasion to employ that word in the living language of the present day.

The men of the next generation will need to have it explained to them what the Fast-days of their fathers were: when they were instituted, how they were observed, and why they were abrogated and given up.

If your son should ever ask you just what the Fast-days of your youth were like, you will do him a great service, and he may live to recover them, if you will answer him in this way.

Show him how to take his Cruden and how to make a picture to his opening mind of the Fast-days of Scripture.