For, who that knows anything at all about himself, about his own soul, and about the hindrances and helps to its salvation from sin; who that ever read a page of Scripture properly, or spent half an hour in that life which is hidden in God--who of such will deny or doubt that fasting is superseded or neglected to the sure loss of the spiritual life, to the sensible lowering of the religious tone and temper, and to the increase both of the lusts of the flesh and of the mind?
It may perhaps be that the institution of fasting as a church ordinance has been permitted to be set aside in order to make it more than ever a part of each earnest man's own private life.

Perhaps it was in some ways full time that it should be again said to us, 'Thou, when thou fastest, appear not unto men to fast.' As also, 'Is not this the fast that I have chosen: to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the outcast to thy house ?' Let us believe that the form of the Fast-day has been removed out of the way that the spirit may return and fashion a new form for itself.

And in the belief that that is so, let us, while parting with our fathers' Fast-days with real regret--as with their pertinent and pungent preaching--let us meantime lay in a stock of their pertinent and pungent books, and set apart particular and peculiar seasons for their sin-subduing and grace-strengthening study.
The short is this.

The one real substance and true essence of all fasting is self-denial.

And we can never get past either the supreme and absolute duty of that, or the daily and hourly call to that, as long as we continue to read the New Testament, to live in this life, and to listen to the voice of conscience, and to the voice of God speaking to us in the voice of conscience.