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Untitled Article
little countenanced by true religion . There is the example of the pharisees indeed ; but their fastings were traditionary and not legal . Moses ordained one day of fasting in the year , and thirty days of feasting . And the dispensation which , he founded was ceremonial , temporary , and introductory . Christianity proclaimed no fast . No precept of the New Testament can be appealed to . If there be efficacy in such an observance it is not derived from
a divine promise , but must be demonstrated by human experience . And how stands our experience just now ? The Scotch first resolved to fast , and immediately the cholera came upon them . The Presbytery determined not to wait for the general fast , but to anticipate it , and yet the cholera went on spreading . They held their fast , but the cholera did not part from them , and has not been banished from their country . In London , if cause
and effect are to be argued from sequence , the proclamation attracted the cholera ; the congregational fast verified its existence in Rotherhithe ; and the observance of the national fast may be expected to extend it over the whole metropolis . This is sorry encouragement . It should make our statesmen and theologians suspect that they do not exactly understand , or correctly represent the principles on which Providence governs the world . It
is « ad enough to see a people heartily united in the faith of an angry and changeful Deity , interrupting vindictively his own wise laws ; and in the practice of forms , ceremonies , and fastings , which are presumed to be potential : but it is worse to see the language which belongs to such notions , solemnly employed in legislation by men who know better , to a nation which knows better , in deference to a little band of bustling bigots .
Almost every day brings fresh evidence , which has long passed the point at which it ought to be convincing , that on no rational principle can the cholera be selected for the bad eminence to which it is raised by the proclamation for a fast . If we must fast for a disease , why not for consumption , which destroyed
almost 5 , 000 persons in London during the last year ? This is the same proportion to the population within the bills of mortality ( 760 , 000 ) , that the number of fatal cases ( about 300 ) of cholera in Newcastle is to 42 , 760 , the population of that town . When we remember that many of these cases were probably doubtful , and that the returns of deaths ascribed to cholera have
never showed a proportionate , but usually a comparatively small , increase in the total of deaths , we shall not hesitate to regard consumption as the worst plague of the two . The average mortality of infants in London is yet larger . Why should it not be projected to redeem by fasting the lives of children from an angry Deity ? Various diseases have , at different times , as may be seen by Mr . Marshall ' s most important work on the mortality of the metropolis , been more devastating than this ; which after all wilJ , we have little doubt , be ascertained to be only an old disease under a
Untitled Article
152 The Fast Day and the Cholera ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1832, page 152, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1808/page/8/
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