for us to evade their force by any limitation of things to which they can possibly refer. Did they refer only to the luxuries, the superfluities, and the pleasures of life, there might be some ground for excluding from their meaning anything and everything that has reference to what are often termed the necessaries and daily wants of life; but when they refer entirely to the latter, to food and raiment, to what we eat and drink and put upon the body, then the dullest amongst us can see how much stronger instead of weaker is their meaning if referred to aught else. 'Take no thought,' says our Blessed Lord, 'for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.' That is, rendering the words literally from the original, Be not over-anxious, restless, and distrustful about such things; make them not matters of primary importance or primary consideration; and above all, suffer them not to occupy your minds and engross your thoughts as the one thing needful, and as the great end of life. And when from the earliest times to the present, amid all the changes of habits, customs, and climes, men, if in nothing else, at least in this over-anxiety and restless solicitude for the things of sense, have been singularly alike, it is easy to see how the words of our text cut right athwart the very first principles of worldly society and the fundamental maxims of worldly men.

There is not a single man who reads this sermon, for instance, who has not taken much thought for his life, and been exceedingly careful, and perhaps, at times, exceedingly anxious for the morrow and its wants. Some about their pleasure, some about their business, and some about even the supply of their daily needs, have all at intervals been more or less concerned and engrossed. The successful man rises up early and late takes rest, and eats the bread of carefulness, to add to his store; whilst the mass of men do the same for their daily bread, envying, coveting, and hankering after the success of the other the while. To one and all of us the words, Take no thought for your life,' sound strange and unpractical, inasmuch as they condemn the very thing we have been doing from childhood, and the very thing from which, if successful, we have derived the greatest pleasure and the greatest reward. Men of acquired possessions, men acquiring possessions, men bent on amusement, men bent on sensual and selfish gratification, and those toiling for a bare subsistence, all shake their heads at the mention of the text, for it applies to them all alike. No thought for one's life, no thought for the morrow, no care for the future, no plotting and scheming! contriving and anticipating, providing and forestalling, they all exclaim, The notion is absurd and impossible, and can never work!' Well, be it so, my brethren, and let one and all of us deride it as we please; but as we deride it let us remember that the notion is Christ's, and no one's else; and the words the words of God, and not of man.

II. And now in the next place, such being the case, let us see what are the reasons that the Blessed Saviour Himself gives for His own words. First and foremost, He assigns the impossibility of men taking anxious thought in opposite directions for opposite ends. Ye cannot serve two masters; ye cannot serve God and mammon,' says He. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life' We often

Short Sermon.

hear much about men making the best of both worlds-enjoying all the good things here, and hoping to enjoy all the good things hereafter. But Scripture, we are bound to observe, invariably preaches a contrary doctrine; and hence arises the obvious danger which worldly possessions, or any undue anxieties concerning them, present to our spiritual welfare. For worldly possessions draw away our affections from God. They become to us practically a substitute for God. They encourage in us a feeling of independence, and blind our sight at last entirely both to the true duty and true end of life. We were created and sent into the world, neither to make money nor to pamper the body, but to obey God and keep His commandments; and if Scripture tells us it is impossible to do both, it is surely our highest wisdom to do the latter and neglect the former. But besides the great and unanswerable argument, considering who it is that advances it, of the impossibility of a double service and divided affections, our Blessed Lord advances several other minor reasons against our anxiety even for the necessaries of life, each of them weighty and well worthy of consideration. Thus He adduces the uselessness and vanity of it. Inasmuch as, do what we can, we are powerless without God, who daily displays His goodness and care before our eyes in providing for all the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and the herbs of the ground, and who therefore would scarcely neglect or be dess loving to those who are made in His own image, and are heirs of His own immortality. Then He adduces the heathenish nature of it, and the heathenish spirit from which it springs, by asserting that after all these things do the Gentiles seek.' That is, those who know not God and live not after His revealed will. Such men, He implies, so live, because they are ignorant of the truth, and know not the future; but to men who are His disciples, and have the glorious hope of the gospel of God for an anchor of their souls, it is nothing less than a sin and a shame if they so live-a sin, because it is the height of faithlessness, distrusting and deriding all the promises of God made to them in every page of Scripture and work of nature; and a shame, because it degrades them below the level of the heathen and the brute. And then, as a climax, He tells us how great is the folly and certain the disappointment of it. If it could ward off and secure us from the inevitable evils of life, then setting aside the next life, well and good ; but the Blessed Saviour tells us it cannot even do that. 'Sufficient unto the day,' He adds, 'is the evil thereof.' The present, He declares, is all we can realise, and all we can be sure of. The morrow may never come, or come, if at all, in a manner and with contingencies wholly unexpected. Why, then, worry and trouble, fidget and be anxious about what is beyond our reach and beyond our care? Why add trouble to trouble, anxiety to anxiety, ill to ill, and evil to evil, and all of our own imagination and own making? Why not be quiet and content, peaceful and trustful, doing our duty in that state of life in which God has placed us; casting all our care upon Him, knowing that He careth for us, and letting the things of this life and of the morrow take thought for themselves?

III. But, lastly, supposing we did, what then? and what would be the practical effect upon society at large and the world in general?

If one and all of us put away our restlessness and care, anxiety and concern, about money-getting and money-hoarding, indulgence of the body and thought of the morrow, would society be hurt and the world thrown back? The worldling and the man of pleasure might both answer in one breath, Yes! Such maxims are visionary, and utterly subversive of all progress and work.

But why so? we may ask. The Blessed Saviour and His religion say nothing about the neglect of necessary duties and necessary work; they only speak to us decisively about the true spirit in which all duties and all work ought always to be done. They tell us again and again, that all selfishness, covetousness, self-seeking, indulgence of the flesh, living for things of sense, and engrossing thought about them, are radically wrong and hateful to God.

And supposing, by the mercy of God and the power of His grace, all men, or even a large proportion of them, could suddenly be brought to acknowledge and feel and act upon the truth of this; so that, as the apostle St. Paul says, 'It remains that they that weep become as though they wept not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and they that buy as though they bought not, and they that possess as though they possessed not, and they that use this world as not abusing it; wherein, may we ask, would things needful and things Christ-like, things pure and things lovely, things honest and of good report, be injured or impeded? It might happen in such a day that many hard-headed and hard-hearted business men, bent only on amassing wealth, might do as St. Barnabas, the Son of Consolation, did-bring all that they had and make distribution to such as had need. It might happen that many dealers in things dishonest, as Zaccheus the publican, might restore fourfold to such as they had wronged. It might happen that many votaries of pleasure and slaves of sin, as St. Mary Magdalene, might renounce the evil practices of years, and the hateful passions that had long enthralled them. But what of that? Would a general spread of Christian love amongst the wealthy, honesty and fair dealing amongst those in businesses and professions, and purity and selfsacrifice for Christ amongst us all, do very much harm? The world, indeed, progresses at a fearful pace, and there is thought enough and to spare amongst all classes and ranks for the meat that perisheth and the things that defile.

Oh, happy, thrice happy would it be for some of us if such progress could be checked and such thought laid aside; and if while there is time, and ere it be too late, we could lay to heart the warning words of our Blessed Lord, and follow them to the letter, unworldly and unpractical though they seem.

A SWISS LEGEND.