And let us, like the blind man of the Gospel, ask him to take away our blindness, that we may really see this and believe it; that our eyes may be opened to the light coming from the next world. That will make pain and adversity beautiful and glorious; and we will even hardly wish to hasten the day when, if we are faithful, God himself shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. ------------------------ Sermon XL. Some very important notices have just been read to you, my brethren. Do you know what they are? {148} You ought to by this time, for you have heard them many times before; and yet I am sure that some of you to whom they have been read ten or twenty times already know no more about them now than before you ever heard them at all. Why is this? It is because, as I said last Sunday, you do not listen, and do not try to remember, nor care to understand. What were these notices, then? They were the notices about this great season on which we are entering: the holy season of Lent, the most important one of the whole year. What is the first one of these notices which you have or have not just heard? You don't know. Well, it is this: _All the week-days of Lent, from Ash Wednesday till Faster Sunday, are fast-days of precept, on one meal, with the allowance of a moderate collation in the evening_. Fast-days--do you know what that means? I venture to say that many of you do not; or, if you do, you do not act as if you did. Some people that you would think had more sense seem to think that a fast-day is about the same thing as a Friday through the year, except that it is not so much harm to eat meat on a fast-day as on a Friday. It is hard to understand how any one can be so stupid. What is a fast-day, then? It is a day, as you hear in the notices, on one meal. That does not mean two other full meals besides, and plenty of lunches in between. It means what it says--one full meal, and only one. The church has, it is true, allowed, as the notices say, a moderate collation in the evening What does that mean? As much as you want to take? No. How much, then? Eight ounces is the amount commonly assigned. {149} That is to say, you have your dinner, and a supper of eight ounces in weight. Is that all? No, not quite. Custom has also made it lawful to take a cup of tea or coffee and a small piece of bread, without butter, in the morning. This is an important point; for if this will prevent a headache and enable you to get through with your duties as usual, you are bound to take it, and not get off from the fast on the ground that you cannot keep a strict fast on nothing at all till noon.