I do not think the Bible tells us ;-I am sure no man can tell us ;-I am sure our own fancies and thoughts will never tell us

'What worlds, or what vast regions hold

The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook.'

But this I do know; this I can tell you; this I do tell you, that whatsoever or howsoever we may be after death, we can be nowhere, and go nowhere, where the kingdom, the power, and the glory will not belong to our Father in heaven. Through all worlds, through all eternities He is King; He rules them all, He guides them all; for His is the kingdom of them. All strength and power in them are His; for His is the power. All beauty and enjoyment and happiness in them come from Him, reflect His wisdom, His beauty, His love; for His is the glory; and wheresoever we may be, and whatsoever we may be doing, ten million years or ages hence, we shall only be safe, only be happy, only be at peace with ourselves or with God's universe, by the same faith and loyalty, love and obedience, which we owe now, and shall owe for ever, to our Father in heaven, and to that only begotten Son who sacrificed Himself for us before the foundation of the world, and to that Holy Spirit from whom alone comes the holiness of men or of angels, in this world, in the next world, and in all

worlds to come. In Him, wheresoever we be, we shall live, move, and have our being for ever; only by faith in Him, wheresoever we be, can we have Eternal Life. For His is and was the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, and His it ever will be.

SERMON XIII.

PROVIDENCE.

MATTHEW vi. 31, 32, 33.

'Be not anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, what shall we drink, or, wherewithal shall we be clothed? (for after all these things do the heathen seek:) for your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.'

E must first consider carefully what this

WE

text really means; what 'taking no thought for the morrow' really is. Now, it cannot mean that we are to be altogether careless and imprudent; for all Scripture, and especially Solomon's Proverbs, give us the very opposite advice, and one part of God's Word cannot contradict the other. The whole of Solomon's Proverbs is made up of lessons in prudence and foresight; and surely our Lord did not come to do away with Solomon's Proverbs, but to fulfil them. And more, Solomon declares, again and again, that prudence and foresight are the gifts of God; and God's gifts are surely meant to be used. Isaiah, too, tells us that the

common work of the farm, tilling the ground, sowing, and reaping, were taught to men by God; and says of the ploughman, that 'His God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.' Neither can God mean us to sit idle with folded hands, waiting to be fed by miracles. Would He have given to man reason, and skill, and the power of bettering his mortal condition by ten thousand instructions, if He had not meant him to use those gifts? We find that, at the beginning, Adam is put into the garden, not to sit idle in it, nor to feed merely on the fruits which fall from the trees, as the dumb animals do, but to dress it, and to keep it; to use his own reason to improve his own condition, and the land on which God had placed him. Was not the very first command given to man to replenish the earth and subdue it? And do we not find in the very end of Scripture the Apostles working with their own hands for their daily bread?

But what use of many words? It is absurd to believe anything else; absurd to believe that man was meant to live like the butterfly, flitting without care from flower to flower, and, like the butterfly, die helpless at the first shower or the first winter's frost. Whatever the text means, it cannot mean that.

And it does not mean that. I suppose, that three hundred years ago (when the Bible was translated

out of the Greek tongue, in which the Apostles wrote, into English), 'taking thought' meant something different from what it does now: but the plain meaning of the text, if it be put into such English as we talk now, is, 'Do not fret about the morrow. Be not anxious about the morrow.' There is no doubt at all, as any scholar can tell you, that that is the plain meaning of the words in our modern English, and that our Lord is not telling us to be imprudent or idle, but not to be anxious and fretful about the morrow.

And more, I think if we look carefully at these words we shall find that they tell us the very reason why we are to work, and to look forward, and to believe that God will bless our labour.

And what is this reason? It is this, that we have a Father in heaven; not a mere Maker, not a mere Master, but a Father. All turns on that one Gospel of all Gospels, your Father in heaven. For our Lord seems to me to say, 'Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or drink, or wear. Is not the life more than meat? Has not your Heavenly Father given you a higher life than the mere life which must be kept up by food, which He has given to the animals? He has made you reasonable souls; He has given to you wisdom from His own wisdom, and a share of the Light which lights every man who comes into the world,