" When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, even these seventy years, did ye at all fast unto Me, even Me f " In these words the Lord overthrows the false notion which they may have entertained, which certainly the Jews now do entertain, that fasting in itself is a meritorious act. He admits that they had fasted long, " seventy years," and often, not only in the fifth but also " in the seventh month," which was the fast appointed for the murder of Gedaliah, which completed the calamities of Jerusalem, and led to the migration of the little remnant to Egypt for fear of the vengeance of the Chaldeans. Moreover, they were very thorough and earnest about their fasts; they not only abstained from food (as in Jewish fasts still, which are one unbroken abstinence from food and drink from sunset to sunset), but they accom panied their fasting with mourning and lamentations the word used in the 5th verse being used for mourning for the dead or for special great public calamities and yet their observance of these fasts was a matter of utter indifference to God. Why? Because even in their fasting and mourning they were centred on themselves; they fasted not unto God. It was not the outward sign and accom paniment of true sorrow and repentance for sin, but of sorrow for their calamities. They were self-imposed, to begin with; and they regarded them, not only as intrinsi cally meritorious, but as an end in themselves rather than as the means of turning away from self and all idea of self-merit to the grace of God. And not only in their fasts but also in their feasts there was the same concentration on self and regardlessness of God. "And when ye eat and when ye drink, do not ye eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? " which is the very opposite of the apostolic exhortation, which really sums up the intention and spirit of the many precepts and commandments of the law " Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God"