If, then, you find your religious state unsatisfactory, your prayers lifeless, your sacramental seasons without comfort or enjoyment, your heart heavy under a secret sense of condemnation, let me beg you to examine yourself, and see if the trouble does not lie just here—that you are keeping back something that your Lord requires of you. And if, on an honest search, you find that He calls on you to give up some indulgence to which you are holding fast, or to take up some duty which you have hitherto neglected, let me beg of you to obey on the instant; whatever be the cost, break the idol, banish the intruder, take up the duty, and, so doing, find peace to your soul. Mal. i. Rom. xii. _FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT._ _FASTING._ THE special service for this day sets before us, as the subject of our meditation, our Lord's fast in the wilderness. The collect is founded on it. "O Lord, who for our sakes didst fast forty days!" The Gospel for the day sets forth the story of the same fast, and of the temptation which followed. It was for our sake that the Blessed Jesus fasted. His sinless nature had no need of such discipline. But He was "in all points tempted like as we are," that we might know that "we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." (Heb. iv. 15.) "For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted." (Heb. ii. 18.) Let us, with reverence and godly fear, consider a few of the circumstances of His fasting and temptation. It was immediately after our Lord's baptism, and the wonderful manifestation of the Divine Glory in confirmation of His claims, that He was "led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil." After the privilege came the temptation. If we consider our own experience, we shall often find this to be the case with ourselves. How often, after a season of more than usual earnestness and enjoyment in devotion, does the heart seem to go back with a rebound, as it were, to the vanities of the world! How often, after an act of honest renunciation, does the thing we have given up paint itself to our fancy in more attractive colors than ever, till we think ourselves little better than hypocrites, and are ready to give up in despair! But we have no reason to despair. Nay, we may, if we use them aright, make our very temptations means of grace, drawing from them both encouragement and strength—encouragement, because Satan would not take so much pains to draw us aside if he did not see that we were escaping from his power; strength, if we let our trials make us more watchful against sin, and more earnest in our prayers for help.