from Paradise into a land of curses. On this same day the flood took place, in the time of Noah, and destroyed all mankind; and thereon also Satan warred with the First-Born of men, viz. on the last of the forty days, as he did on the day of the Passion.
CHAPTER V.
Of Fasting, Prayer, and Almsgiving.
The foundation of the virtues of true godliness with such as believe in the resurrection, and exercise themselves therein in hope of the world to come, consists of these three. Fasting, Prayer, and Mercy, wrought with the end enjoined in the Gospel, and not from any other motive. As one of our sages has said: "Fasting is superior to all passiveness, and Prayer superior to all other action; but Mercy is the being like God."
Now Fasting is of two kinds: outward, from food; and inward, from evil. It tends to induce the rich to show mercy to others, for by tasting the bitterness of hunger and thirst themselves, they are made to feel what the poor experience. It moreover tends to sanctify the senses, purify the thoughts, and to make us resemble the angels.
Prayer is not only the key of the Lord's treasury, but a spiritual converse, as one of the fathers has said: "My son, when thou art engaged in prayer, thou dost speak with God; and when thou readest the Scriptures, God speaketh with thee."
Mercy doth not only make us resemble God, Whom there is none like, but it is also a medium for the exercise of wisdom on the part of the followers of Christ, Who, through the needy, sends forward to heaven those things which we love and esteem, and declares that in them we shall have joy and exultation without end: "Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up unto yourselves treasures in heaven, … for where your treasure is there will your heart be also." There is a passage in the life of Saint Thomas the Apostle, which beautifully illustrates this Scripture. Having undertaken to
