Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: To-day, the Greek church recognizes more fasts than the Latin. It is among Asiatic Christians that fasting is the most strictly observed, and in fact with the Maron- ites, Syrians, and Armenians fasting is so highly esteemed, that the greater part of the year is composed of fast days. It is very wearisome to reflect upon such stories as these ; but it is still more so to see in other respects capable persons maintain a verbal belief therein. This arises in a great measure from ignorance, and an undetermined early education in which the study of the scriptures is so bound together with our affection for those who taught us, that we mingle indiscriminately the teachings of these things with our most tender remembrances, thus rendering most difficult every change in the souvenirs of our childhood. If our fathers had studiously endeavored to attach such stories as these to the great principles of Christianity, and render an account of the edification they had derived therefrom, they would, we believe, have found it a most difficult task to perform. THE CASTING OP JOHN THE BAPTIST INTO PRISON. By comparing this event, as narrated by St. Matthew and St. John, with a second event (the journeyof Christ into Galilee), we find great discordance in the time. Thus, St. Matthew 4 : 12, " Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee." As a subsequent event which marks the time of this first journey into Galilee, Jesus is made, ch. 4 : 18-21, " to choose, while there, four of his disciples, Peter, Andrew, James and John." Contrary to this, St. John informs us, ch. 1 : 40, 41, " That the disciples Peter and Andrew were chosen before Christ went into Galilee," and he completes the contradiction by saying, some time after the election of th...