Their words fly up, their thoughts remain below;

 Their words fly up, their thoughts remain below;

Words without thoughts never to heaven go." The inclination of the head, the sackcloth and the ashes, - these make not the fast in the eyes of Jehovah. "It is not a mournful expression, a solemn dress, or a thin table that God so much regards. It is the heart, and not the stomach, that he would have empty; and, therefore, if a man carries a luxurious soul in a pining body, or the aspiring mind of a Lucifer on the hanging head of a bulrush, he fasts only to upbraid his Maker, and to disgrace his religion, and to heighten his final reckoning, till he becomes ten times more the son of perdition than those who own their inward love of sin by the open undissembled enmities of a suitable behaviour. Let a man not count himself to have fasted to any purpose, if by it he has not got ground of his corruption, in some measure supplanted his sin, and estranged his affections from the beloved embraces of sinful objects" (South).

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