Henry Rogers almost worships John Howe, but John Howe's Fast- days pass his modern biographers patience; till, if you would see a nineteenth-century case made out against a seventeenth-century Fast-day, you have only to turn to the author of _The Eclipse of Faith_ on the author of _Delighting in God_.

And, no doubt, when we get back our Fast- days, we shall leave more of the time to reading pertinent books at home and to secret fasting and to secret prayer, and shall enjoin our preachers, while they are pertinent and authoritative in their sermons, not to take up the whole day with their sermons even at their best.

And then, as to fasting, discredited and discarded as it is in our day, there are yet some very good reasons for desiring its return and reinstatement among us.

Very good reasons, both for health and for holiness.

But it is only of the latter class of reasons that I would fain for a few words at present speak.