at sundown, midnight, and just before sunrise, and after making it a time of great revelry and wickedness. This fast is a moveable one, and passes round to all seasons of the year. When it falls in midsummer it must be a sore trial to abstain from water in these thirsty countries; they have, however, various ways of getting round the law of the fast, and in some degree modifying the deprivations it would cost them. All the systems of religion in the eastern world lay much stress on fasting, and with many it is carried to an idolatrous extent. They make a saviour of them. That this should be the case with systems that do not take God's Word for the rule of their faith and practice, would not surprise us; but that those who call themselves _Christians_, and profess to found their faith on God's Word, and appeal to it as their rule, should do so, may well grieve us. It is true, that while the Bible is in a general way acknowledged as the Word of God, they do not appeal to it, but to the authority of the church; they have left the word of God,--have rendered it void, that they may "follow their own devices,"--that they may "keep their own traditions." The fasts of the Christian sects are rather a distinction of meats, an abstinence from animal food, than fasts properly so called. The Greeks, in accordance with all the Oriental churches, observe Wednesday and Friday of each week. The Papists, Friday and Saturday. In addition to these weekly fasts, they have others of many days in succession. During one of forty days' continuance, they are not allowed to eat until after twelve o'clock at noon. It is astonishing with what rigidity even small children observe these seasons. A few days since, some dervishes, or Mohammedan priests, who have been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, returned. They came back as holy men, and great crowds went out to see their wonders. I was assured by several persons who witnessed its performance, that boys threw themselves on the ground, in a row as close together as they could lie, with their faces to the earth, making a row of forty or fifty yards, and one of the priests paced his horse over them, the horse literally stepping on their backs. The boys jumped up very briskly, though some of them showed what they were unwilling to acknowledge, that they were slightly hurt. The fact may seem strange, but Christians have tried the experiment, and succeeded as well as the Moslems. Some of the priests thrust spears and swords through their cheeks--a most unnatural thing. The people consider such things in the light of a miracle.