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THOUGHT FOR YOUR LIFE.'
"Why are you to take no thought? Because you cannot serve God and
Mammon. Is taking thought, then, a serving of Mammon?
Clearly.--Where are you now, poor man? Brooding over the frost? Will
it harden the ground, so that the God of the sparrows cannot find
food for His sons? Where are you now, poor woman? Sleepless over the
empty cupboard and to-morrow's dinner? 'It is because we have no
bread?' do you answer? Have you forgotten the five loaves among the
five thousand, and the fragments that were left? Or do you know
nothing of your Father in heaven, who clothes the lilies and feeds
the birds? O ye of little faith? O ye poor-spirited
Mammon-worshippers! who worship him not even because he has given
you anything, but in the hope that he may some future day
benignantly regard you. But I may be too hard upon you. I know well
that our Father sees a great difference between the man who is
anxious about his children's dinner, or even about his own, and the
man who is only anxious to add another ten thousand to his much
goods laid up for many years. But you ought to find it easy to trust
in God for such a matter as your daily bread, whereas no man can by
any possibility trust in God for ten thousand pounds. The former
need is a God-ordained necessity; the latter desire a man-devised
appetite at best--possibly swinish greed. Tell me, do you long to be
rich? Then you worship Mammon. Tell me, do you think you would feel
safer if you had money in the bank? Then you are Mammon-worshippers;
for you would trust the barn of the rich man rather than the God who
makes the corn to grow. Do you say--"What shall we eat? and what
shall we drink? and wherewithal shall we be clothedl?" Are ye thus
of doubtful mind?--Then you are Mammon-worshippers. "But how is the
work of the world to be done if we take no thought?--We are nowhere
told not to take thought. We MUST take thought. The question
is--What are we to take or not to take thought about? By some who do
not know God, little work would be done if they were not driven by
anxiety of some kind. But you, friends, are you content to go with
the nations of the earth, or do you seek a better way--THE way that
the Father of nations would have you walk in?
"WHAT then are we to take thought about? Why, about our work. What
are we not to take thought about? Why, about our life. The one is
our business: the other is God's. But you turn it the other way. You
take no thought of earnestness about the doing of your duty; but you
take thought of care lest God should not fulfil His part in the
goings on of the world. A man's business is just to do his duty: God
takes upon Himself the feeding and the clothing. Will the work of
the world be neglected if a man thinks of his work, his duty, God's
will to be done, instead of what he is to eat, what he is to drink,
and wherewithal he is to be clothed? And remember all the needs of
the world come back to these three. You will allow, I think, that
the work of the world will be only so much the better done; that the
very means of procuring the raiment or the food will be the more
thoroughly used. What, then, is the only region on which the doubt
can settle? Why, God. He alone remains to be doubted. Shall it be so
with you? Shall the Son of man, the baby now born, and for ever with
us, find no faith in you? Ah, my poor friend, who canst not trust in
God--I was going to say you DESERVE--but what do I know of you to
condemn and judge you?--I was going to say, you deserve to be
treated like the child who frets and complains because his mother
holds him on her knee and feeds him mouthful by mouthful with her
own loving hand. I meant--you deserve to have your own way for a
while; to be set down, and told to help yourself, and see what it
will come to; to have your mother open the cupboard door for you,
and leave you alone to your pleasures. Alas! poor child! When the
sweets begin to pall, and the twilight begins to come duskily into
the chamber, and you look about all at once and see no mother, how
will your cupboard comfort you then? Ask it for a smile, for a
stroke of the gentle hand, for a word of love. All the full-fed
Mammon can give you is what your mother would have given you without
the consequent loathing, with the light of her countenance upon it
all, and the arm of her love around you.--And this is what God does
sometimes, I think, with the Mammon-worshippers amongst the poor. He
says to them, Take your Mammon, and see what he is worth. Ah,
friends, the children of God can never be happy serving other than
Him. The prodigal might fill his belly with riotous living or with
the husks that the swine ate. It was all one, so long as he was not
with his father. His soul was wretched. So would you be if you had
wealth, for I fear you would only be worse Mammon-worshippers than
now, and might well have to thank God for the misery of any
swine-trough that could bring you to your senses.
"But we do see people die of starvation sometimes,--Yes. But if you
did your work in God's name, and left the rest to Him, that would
not trouble you. You would say, If it be God's will that I should
starve, I can starve as well as another. And your mind would be at
ease. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon
Thee, because he trusteth in Thee." Of that I am sure. It may be
good for you to go hungry and bare-foot; but it must be utter death
to have no faith in God. It is not, however, in God's way of things
that the man who does his work shall not live by it. We do not know
why here and there a man may be left to die of hunger, but I do
believe that they who wait upon the Lord shall not lack any good.
What it may be good to deprive a man of till he knows and
acknowledges whence it comes, it may be still better to give him
when he has learned that every good and every perfect gift is from
above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.
"I SHOULD like to know a man who just minded his duty and troubled
himself about nothing; who did his own work and did not interfere
with God's. How nobly he would work--working not for reward, but
because it was the will of God! How happily he would receive his
food and clothing, receiving them as the gifts of God! What peace
would be his! What a sober gaiety! How hearty and infectious his
laughter! What a friend he would be! How sweet his sympathy! And his
mind would be so clear he would understand everything His eye being
single, his whole body would be full of light. No fear of his ever
doing a mean thing. He would die in a ditch, rather. It is this fear
of want that makes men do mean things. They are afraid to part with
their precious lord--Mammon. He gives no safety against such a fear.
One of the richest men in England is haunted with the dread of the
workhouse. This man whom I should like to know, would be sure that
God would have him liberal, and he would be what God would have him.
Riches are not in the least necessary to that. Witness our Lord's
admiration of the poor widow with her great farthing.
"But I think I hear my troubled friend who does not love money, and
yet cannot trust in God out and out, though she fain would,--I think
I hear her say, "I believe I could trust Him for myself, or at least
I should be ready to dare the worst for His sake; but my children
--it is the thought of my children that is too much for me." Ah,
woman! she whom the Saviour praised so pleasedly, was one who
trusted Him for her daughter. What an honour she had! "Be it unto
thee even as thou wilt." Do you think you love your children better
than He who made them? Is not your love what it is because He put it
into your heart first? Have not you often been cross with them?
Sometimes unjust to them? Whence came the returning love that rose
from unknown depths in your being, and swept away the anger and the
injustice! You did not create that love. Probably you were not good
enough to send for it by prayer. But it came. God sent it. He makes
you love your children; be sorry when you have been cross with them;
ashamed when you have been unjust to them; and yet you won't trust
Him to give them food and clothes! Depend upon it, if He ever
refuses to give them food and clothes, and you knew all about it,
the why and the wherefore, you would not dare to give them food or
clothes either. He loves them a thousand times better than you
do--be sure of that--and feels for their sufferings too, when He
cannot give them just what He would like to give them--cannot for
their good, I mean.
"But as your mistrust will go further, I can go further to meet it.
You will say, 'Ah! yes'--in your feeling, I mean, not in words,--you
will say, 'Ah! yes--food and clothing of a sort! Enough to keep life
in and too much cold out! But I want my children to have plenty of
GOOD food, and NICE clothes.'
"Faithless mother! Consider the birds of the air. They have so much
that at least they can sing! Consider the lilies--they were red
lilies, those. Would you not trust Him who delights in glorious
colours--more at least than you, or He would never have created them
and made us to delight in them? I do not say that your children
shall be clothed in scarlet and fine linen; but if not, it is not
because God despises scarlet and fine linen or does not love your
children. He loves them, I say, too much to give them everything all
at once. But He would make them such that they may have everything
without being the worse, and with being the better for it. And if
you cannot trust Him yet, it begins to be a shame, I think.
"It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the
day. It is when to-morrow's burden is added to the burden of to-day,
that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves
so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember
this: it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the
future to Him, and mind the present. What more or what else could He
do to take the burden off you? Nothing else would do it. Money in
the bank wouldn't do it. He cannot do to-morrow's business for you
beforehand to save you from fear about it. That would derange
everything. What else is there but to tell you to trust in Him,
irrespective of the fact that nothing else but such trust can put
our heart at peace, from the very nature of our relation to Him as
well as the fact that we need these things. We think that we come
nearer to God than the lower animals do by our foresight. But there
is another side to it. We are like to Him with whom there is no past
or future, with whom a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand
years as one day, when we live with large bright spiritual eyes,
doing our work in the great present, leaving both past and future to
Him to whom they are ever present, and fearing nothing, because He
is in our future, as much as He is in our past, as much as, and far
more than, we can feel Him to be in our present. Partakers thus of
the divine nature, resting in that perfect All-in-all in whom our
nature is eternal too, we walk without fear, full of hope and
courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good
which He is always giving as fast as He can get us able to take it
in. Would not this be to be more of gods than Satan promised to Eve?
To live carelessly-divine, duty-doing, fearless, loving,
self-forgetting lives--is not that more than to know both good and
evil--lives in which the good, like Aaron's rod, has swallowed up
the evil, and turned it into good? For pain and hunger are evils j
but if faith in God swallows them up, do they not so turn into good?
I say they do. And I am glad to believe that I am not alone in my
parish in this conviction. I have never been too hungry, but I have
had trouble which I would gladly have exchanged for hunger and cold
and weariness. Some of you have known hunger and cold and weariness.
Do you not join with me to say: It is well, and better than
well--whatever helps us to know the love of Him who is our God?
"But there HAS BEEN just one man who has acted thus. And it is His
Spirit in our hearts that makes us desire to know or to be another
such--who would do the will of God for God, and let God do God's
will for Him. For His will is all. And this man is the baby whose
birth we celebrate this day. Was this a condition to choose--that of
a baby--by one who thought it part of a man's high calling to take
care of the morrow? Did He not thus cast the whole matter at once
upor the hands and heart of His Father? Sufficient unto the baby's
day is the need thereof; he toils not, neither does he spin, and yet
he if fed and clothed, and loved, and rejoiced in. Do you remind me
that sometimes even his mother forgets him--a mother, most likely,
to whose self-indulgence or weakness the child owes his birth as
hers? Ah! but he is not therefore forgotten, however like things it
may look to our half-seeing eyes, by his Father in heaven. One of
the highest benefits we can reap from understanding the way of God
with ourselves is, that we become able thus to trust Him for others
with whom we do not understand His ways.
"But let us look at what will be more easily shown--how, namely, He
did the will of His Father, and took no thought for the morrow after
He became a man. Remember how He forsook His trade when the time
came for Him to preach. Preaching was not a profession then. There
were no monasteries, or vicarages, or stipends, then. Yet witness
for the Father the garment woven throughout; the ministering of
women; the purse in common! Hard-working men and rich ladies were
ready to help Him, and did help Him with all that He needed.--Did He
then never want? Yes; once at least--for a little while only.
"He was a-hungered in the wilderness. 'Make bread,' said Satan.
'No,' said our Lord.--He could starve; but He could not eat bread
that His Father did not give Him, even though He could make it
Himself. He had come hither to be tried. But when the victory was
secure, lo! the angels brought Him food from His Father.--Which was
better? To feed Himself, or be fed by His Father? Judg? yourselves,
jinxious people, He sought the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and the bread was added unto Him.
"And this gives me occasion to remark that the same truth holds with
regard to any portion of the future as well as the morrow. It is a
principle, not a command, or an encouragement, or a promise merely.
In respect of it there is no difference between next day and next
year, next hour and next century. You will see at once the absurdity
of taking no thought for the morrow, and taking thought for next
year. But do you see likewise that it is equally reasonable to trust
God for the next moment, and equally unreasonable not to trust Him?
The Lord was hungry and needed food now, though He could still go
without for a while. He left it to His Father. And so He told His
disciples to do when they were called to answer before judges and
rulers. 'Take no thought. It shall be given you what ye shall say.'
You have a disagreeable duty to do at twelve o'clock. Do not blacken
nine and ten and eleven, and all between, with the colour of twelve.
Do the work of each, and reap your reward in peace. So when the
dreaded moment in the future becomes the present, you shall meet it
walking in the light, and that light will overcome its darkness. How
often do men who have made up their minds what to say and do under
certain expected circumstances, forget the words and reverse the
actions! The best preparation is the present well seen to, the last
duty done. For this will keep the eye so clear and the body so full
of light that the right action will be perceived at once, the right
words will rush from the heart to the lips, and the man, full of the
Spirit of God because he cares for nothing but the will of God, will
trample on the evil thing in love, and be sent, it may be, in a
chariot of fire to the presence of his Father, or stand unmoved amid
the cruel mockings of the men he loves.
"Do you feel inclined to say in your hearts: 'It was easy for Him to
take no thought, for He had the matter in His own hands?' But
observe, there is nothing very noble in a man's taking no thought
except it be from faith. If there were no God to take thought for
us, we should have no right to blame any one for taking thought. You
may fancy the Lord had His own power to fall back upon. But that
would have been to Him just the one dreadful thing. That His Father
should forget Him!--no power in Himself could make up for that. He
feared nothing for Himself; and never once employed His divine power
to save Him from His human fate. Let God do that for Him if He saw
fit. He did not come into the world to take care of Himself. That
would not be in any way divine. To fall back on Himself, God failing
Him--how could that make it easy for Him to avoid care? The very
idea would be torture. That would be to declare heaven void, and the
world without a God. He would not even pray to His Father for what
He knew He should have if He did ask it. He would just wait His
will.
"But see how the fact of His own power adds tenfold significance to
the fact that He trusted in God. We see that this power would not
serve His need--His need not being to be fed and clothed, but to be
one with the Father, to be fed by His hand, clothed by His care.
This was what the Lord wanted--and we need, alas! too often without
wanting it. He never once, I repeat, used His power for Himself.
That was not his business. He did not care about it. His life was of
no value to Him but as His Father cared for it. God would mind all
that was necessary for Him, and He would mind the work His Father
had given Him to do. And, my friends, this is just the one secret of
a blessed life, the one thing every man comes into this world to
learn. With what authority it comes to us from the lips of Him who
knew all about it, and ever did as He said!
"Now you see that He took no thought for the morrow. And, in the
name of the holy child Jesus, I call upon you, this Christmas day,
to cast care to the winds, and trust in God; to receive the message
of peace and good-will to men; to yield yourselves to the Spirit of
God, that you may be taught what He wants you to know; to remember
that the one gift promised without reserve to those who ask it--the
one gift worth having--the gift which makes all other gifts a
thousand-fold in value, is the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit
of the child Jesus, who will take of the things of Jesus, and show
them to you--make you understand them, that is--so that you shall
see them to be true, and love Him with all your heart and soul, and
your neighbour as yourselves."
And here, having finished my sermon, I will give my reader some
lines with which he may not be acquainted, from a writer of the
Elizabethan time. I had meant to introduce them into my sermon, but
I was so carried away with my subject that I forgot them. For I
always preached extempore, which phrase I beg my reader will not
misinterpret as meaning ON THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT, OF WITHOUT THE
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