'Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. 25. Therefore I say unto you. Take
no thought for your life.'--Matt. vi. 24-25.
Foresight and foreboding are two very different things. It is not that
the one is the exaggeration of the other, but the one is opposed to the
other. The more a man looks forward in the exercise of foresight, the
less he does so in the exercise of foreboding. And the more he is
tortured by anxious thoughts about a possible future, the less clear
vision has he of a likely future, and the less power to influence it.
When Christ here, therefore, enjoins the abstinence from thought for our
life and for the future, it is not for the sake of getting away from the
pressure of a very unpleasant command that we say, He does not mean to
prevent the exercise of wise and provident foresight and preparation for
what is to come. When this English version of ours was made, the phrase
'taking thought' meant solicitous anxiety, and that is the true
rendering and proper meaning of the original. The idea is, therefore,
that here there is forbidden for a Christian, not the careful
preparation for what is likely to come, not the foresight of the storm
and taking in sail while yet there is time, but the constant occupation
and distraction of the heart with gazing forward, and fearing and being
weakened thereby; or to come back to words already used, foresight is
commanded, and, _therefore_, foreboding is forbidden. My object now
is to endeavour to gather together by their link of connection, the
whole of those precepts which follow my text to the close of the
chapter; and to try to set before you, in the order in which they stand,
and in their organic connection with each other, the reasons which
Christ gives for the absence of anxious care from our minds.
I mass them all into three. If you notice, the whole section, to the end
of the chapter, is divided into three parts, by the threefold repetition
of the injunction, 'Take no thought.' 'Take no thought for your life,
what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what
ye shall put on.' The reason for the command as given in this first
section follows:--Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment?' The expansion of that thought runs on to the close of the
thirtieth verse. Then there follows another division or section of the
whole, marked by the repetition of the command, 'Take no
thought,'--saying, 'What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or,
Wherewithal shall we be clothed?' The reason given for the command in
this second section is--'(for after all these things do the Gentiles
seek): for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God.' And then follows a third
section, marked by the third repetition of the command, 'Take no
thought--for the morrow.' The reason given for the command in this third
section is--'for the morrow shall take thought for the things of
itself.'
Now if we try to generalise the lessons that lie in these three great
divisions of the section, we get, I think, first,--anxious thought is
contrary to all the lessons of nature, which show it to be unnecessary.
That is the first, the longest section. Then, secondly, anxious thought
is contrary to all the lessons of revelation or religion, which show it
to be heathenish. And lastly, anxious thought is contrary to the whole
scheme of Providence, which shows it to be futile. You do not _need_ to
be anxious. It is _wicked_ to be anxious. It is _of no use_ to be
anxious. These are the three points,--anxious care is contrary to the
lessons of Nature; contrary to the great principles of the Gospel; and
contrary to the scheme of Providence. Let us try now simply to follow
the course of thought in our Lord's illustration of these three
principles.
I. The first is the consideration of the teaching of Nature. 'Take no
thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor
yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat,
and the body than raiment?' And then comes the illustration of the fowls
of the air and the lilies of the field.
The whole of these verses fall into these general thoughts: You are
obliged to trust God for your body, for its structure, for its form, for
its habitudes, and for the length of your being; you are obliged to
trust Him for the foundation--trust Him for the superstructure. You are
obliged to trust Him, whether you will or not, for the greater--trust
Him gladly for the less. You cannot help being dependent. After all your
anxiety, it is only directed to the providing of the things that are
needful for the life; the life itself, though it is a natural thing,
comes direct from God's hand; and all that you can do, with all your
carking cares, and laborious days, and sleepless nights, is but to adorn
a little more beautifully or a little less beautifully, the allotted
span--but to feed a little more delicately or a little less delicately,
the body which God has given you. What is the use of being careful for
food and raiment, when down below these necessities there lies the awful
question--for the answer to which you have to hang helpless, in
implicit, powerless dependence upon God,--Shall I live, or shall I die?
shall I have a body instinct with vitality, or a body crumbling amidst
the clods of the valley? After all your work, your anxiety gets but such
a little way down; like some passing shower of rain, that only softens
an inch of the hard-baked surface of the soil, and has no power to
fructify the seed that lies feet below the reach of its useless
moisture. Anxious care is foolish; for far beyond the region within
which your anxieties move, there is the greater region in which there
must be entire dependence upon God. 'Is not the life more than meat? Is
not the body more than raiment?' You _must_ trust Him for these;
you may as well trust Him for all the rest.
Then, again, there comes up this other thought: Not only are you
compelled to exercise unanxious dependence in regard to a matter which
you cannot influence--the life of the body--and that is the greater;
but, still further, _God gives you that_. Very well: God gives you
the greater; and God's great gifts are always inclusive of God's little
gifts. When He bestows a thing, He bestows all the consequences of the
thing as well. When He gives a life, He swears by the gift, that He will
give what is needful to sustain it. God does not stop half way in any of
His bestowments. He gives royally and liberally, honestly and
sincerely, logically and completely. When He bestows a life, therefore,
you may be quite sure that He is not going to stultify His own gift by
retaining unbestowed anything that is wanted for its blessing and its
power. You have had to trust Him for the greater; trust Him for the
less. He has given you the greater--no doubt He will give you the less.
'The life is more than meat, and the body than raiment.' 'Which of you,
by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye
thought for raiment?'
Then there is another thought. Look at God's ways of doing with all His
creatures. The animate and the inanimate creation are appealed to, the
fowls of the air and the lilies of the field, the one in reference to
food and the other in reference to clothing, which are the two great
wants already spoken of by Christ in the previous verses. I am not going
to linger at all on the exquisite beauty of these illustrations. Every
sensitive heart and pure eye dwell upon them with delight. The 'fowls of
the air,' the lilies of the field,' 'they toil not, neither do they
spin'; and then, with what an eye for the beauty of God's
universe,--'Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of
these!' Now, what is the force of this consideration? It is
this--_There_ is a specimen, in an inferior creation, of the divine care
which _you_ can _trust_, you men who are 'better than they.' And not
only that:--_There_ is an instance, not only of God's giving things that
are necessary, but of God's giving more, lavishing beauty upon the
flowers of the field. I do not think that we sufficiently dwell upon the
moral and spiritual uses of beauty in God's universe. That everywhere
His loving, wooing hand should touch the flower into grace, and deck all
barren places with glory and with fairness--what does that reveal to us
about Him? It says to us, He does not give scantily: it is not the mere
measure of what is wanted, absolutely needed, to support a bare
existence, that God bestows. He 'taketh pleasure in the prosperity of
His servants.' Joy, and love, and beauty, belong to Him; and the smile
upon His face that comes from the contemplation of His own fairness
flung out into His glorious creation, is a prophecy of the gladness that
comes into His heart from His own holiness and more ethereal beauty
adorning the spiritual creatures whom He has made to flash back His
likeness. The flowers of the field are so clothed that we may learn the
lesson that it is a fair Spirit, and a loving Spirit, and a bountiful
Spirit, and a royal Heart, that presides over the bestowments of
creation, and allots gifts to men.
But notice further, how much of the force of what Christ says here
depends on the consideration of the inferiority of these creatures who
are thus blessed; and also notice what are the particulars of that
inferiority. We read that verse, 'They sow not, neither do they reap,
nor gather into barns,' as if it marked out a particular in which their
free and untoilsome lives were superior to ours. It is the very
opposite. It is part of the characteristics that mark them as lower than
we, that they have not to work for the future. They reap not, they sow
not, they gather not;--are ye not much better than they? Better in this,
amongst other things, that God has given us the privilege of influencing
the future by our faithful toil, by the sweat of our brow and the labour
of our hands. These creatures labour not, and yet they are fed. And the
lesson for us is--much more may we, whom God has blessed with the power
of work, and gifted with force to mould the future, be sure that He will
bless the exercise of the prerogative by which He exalts us above
inferior creatures, and makes us capable of toil. You can influence
to-morrow. What you can influence by work, fret not about, for you _can_
work. What you cannot influence by work, fret not about, for it is vain.
'They toil not, neither do they spin.' You are lifted above them because
God has given you hands that can grasp the tool or the pen. Man's crown
of glory, as well as man's curse and punishment, is, 'In the sweat of
thy brow shalt thou eat bread.' So learn what you have to do with that
great power of anticipation. It is meant to be the guide of wise work.
It is meant to be the support for far-reaching, strenuous action. It is
meant to elevate us above mere living from hand to mouth; to ennoble our
whole being by leading to and directing toil that is blessed because
there is no anxiety in it, labour that will be successful since it is
according to the will of that God who has endowed us with the power of
putting it forth.
Then there comes another inferiority. 'Your heavenly Father feedeth
them.' They cannot say '_Father!_' and yet they are fed. You are above
them by the prerogative of toil. You are above them by the nearer
relation which you sustain to your Father in heaven. He is their Maker,
and lavishes His goodness upon them: He is your Father, and He will not
forget His child. They cannot trust: you can. They might be anxious, if
they could look forward, for they know not the hand that feeds them; but
you can turn round, and recognise the source of all blessings. So,
doubly ought you to be guarded from care by the lesson of that free
joyful Nature that lies round about you, and to say, 'I have no fear of
famine, nor of poverty, nor of want; for He feedeth the ravens when they
cry. There is no reason for distrust. Shame on me if I am anxious, for
every lily of the field blows its beauty, and every bird of the air
carols its song without sorrowful foreboding, and yet there is no
Father in heaven to them!'
And the last Inferiority is this; 'To-day it is, and to-morrow it is
cast into the oven.' Their little life is thus blessed and brightened.
Oh, how much greater will be the mercies that belong to them who have a
longer life upon earth, and who never die! The lesson is not--These are
the plebeians in God's universe, and you are the aristocracy, and you
may trust Him; but it is--They, by their inferior place, have lesser and
lower wants, wants but for a bounded being, wants that stretch not
beyond earthly existence, and that for a brief span. They are blessed in
the present, for the oven to-morrow saddens not the blossoming to-day.
You have nobler necessities and higher longings, wants that belong to a
soul that never dies, to a nature which may glow with the consciousness
that God is your Father, wants which 'look before and after,' therefore,
you are 'better than they'; and 'shall He not much more clothe you, O ye
of little faith?'
II. And now, in the second place, there is here another general line of
considerations tending to dispel all anxious care--the thought that it
is contrary to all the lessons of Religion, or Revelation, which show it
to be heathenish.
There are three clauses devoted to the illustration of this thought:
'After all these things do the Gentiles seek'; 'your heavenly Father
knoweth that ye have need of all these things'; 'seek ye first the
kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you.'
The first clause contains the principle, that solicitude for the future
is at bottom heathen worldly-mindedness. The heathen tendency in us all
leads to an overestimate of material good, and it is a question of
circumstances whether that shall show itself in heaping up earthly
treasures, or in anxious care. These are the same plant, only the one is
growing in the tropics of sunny prosperity, and the other in the arctic
zone of chill penury. The one is the sin of the worldly-minded rich man,
the other is the sin of the worldly-minded poor man. The character is
the same in both, turned inside out! And, therefore, the words, 'ye
cannot serve God and Mammon,' stand in this chapter in the centre
between our Lord's warning against laying up treasures on earth, and His
warning against being full of cares for earth. He would show us thereby
that these two apparently opposite states of mind in reality spring from
that one root, and are equally, though differently, 'serving Mammon.' We
do not sufficiently reflect upon that. We say, perhaps, this intense
solicitude of ours is a matter of temperament, or of circumstances. So
it may be: but the Gospel was sent to help us to cure worldly
temperaments, and to master circumstances. But _the_ reason why we are
troubled and careful about the things of this life lies here, that our
hearts have taken an earthly direction, that we are at bottom heathenish
in our lives and in our desires. It is the very characteristic of the
Gentile (that is to say, of the heathen) that earth should bound his
horizon. It is the very characteristic of the worldly man that all his
anxieties on the one hand, and all his joys on the other, should be
'cribbed, cabined and confined' within the narrow sphere of the visible.
When a Christian is living in the foreboding of some earthly sorrow
coming down upon him, and is feeling as if there would be nothing left
if some earthly treasure were swept away, is that not, in the very root
of it, idolatry--worldly-mindedness? Is it not clean contrary to all
our profession that for us 'there is none upon earth that we desire
besides Thee'? Anxious care rests upon a basis of heathen
worldly-mindedness.
Anxious care rests upon a basis, too, of heathen misunderstanding of the
character of God. 'Your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of
all these things.' The heathen thought of God is that He is far removed
from our perplexities, either ignorant of our struggles, or
unsympathising with them. The Christian has the double armour against
anxiety--the name of the Father, and the conviction that the Father's
knowledge is co-extensive with the Father's love. He who calls us His
children thoroughly understands what His children want. And so, anxiety
is contrary to the very name by which we have learned to call God, and
to the pledge of pitying care and perfect knowledge of our frame which
lies in the words 'our Father.' Our Father is the name of God, and our
Father intensely cares for us, and lovingly does all things for us.
And then, still further, Christ points out here, not only what is
the real root of this solicitous care--something very like
worldly-mindedness, heathen worldly-mindedness; but He points out what
is the one counterpoise of it--'seek first the kingdom of God.' It is of
no use only to tell men that they ought to trust, that the birds of the
air might teach them to trust, that the flowers of the field might
preach resignation and confidence to them. It is of no use to attempt to
scold them into trust, by telling them that distrust is heathenish. You
must fill the heart with a supreme and transcendent desire after the
one supreme object, and then there will be no room or leisure left for
anxious care after the lesser. Have inwrought into your being, Christian
man, the opposite of that heathen over-regard for earthly things. 'Seek
first the kingdom of God.' Let all your spirit be stretching itself out
towards that divine and blessed reality, longing to be a subject of that
kingdom, and a possessor of that righteousness; and 'the cares that
infest the day' will steal away from out of the sacred pavilion of your
believing spirit. Fill your heart with desires after what is worthy of
desire; and the greater having entered in, all lesser objects will rank
themselves in the right place, and the 'glory that excelleth' will
outshine the seducing brightness of the paltry present. Oh! it is want
of love, it is want of earnest desire, it is want of firm conviction
that God, God only, God by Himself, is enough for me, that makes me
careful and troubled. And therefore, if I could only attain unto that
sublime and calm height of perfect conviction, that He is sufficient for
me, that He is with me for ever,--the satisfying object of my desires
and the glorious reward of my searchings,--let life and death come as
they may, let riches, poverty, health, sickness, all the antitheses of
human circumstances storm down upon me in quick alternation, yet in them
all I shall be content and peaceful. God is beside me, and His presence
brings in its train whatsoever things I need. You cannot cast out the
sin of foreboding thoughts by any power short of the entrance of Christ
and His love. The blessings of faith and felt communion leave no room
nor leisure for anxiety.
III. Finally, Christ here tells us, that thought for the morrow is
contrary to all the scheme of Providence, which shows it to be vain.
'The morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof.'
I interpret these two clauses as meaning this: To-morrow has anxieties
enough of its own, alter and in spite of all the anxieties about it
to-day by which you try to free it from care when it comes. _Every_
day--every day will have its evil, have it to the end. And every day
will have evil enough to task all the strength that a man has to cope
with it. So that it just comes to this: Anxiety,--it is all vain. After
all your careful watching for the corner of the heaven where the cloud
is to come from, there will be a cloud, and it will rise somewhere, but
you never know beforehand from what quarter. The morrow shall have its
own anxieties. After all your fortifying of the castle of your life,
there will be some little postern left unguarded, some little weak place
in the wall left uncommanded by a battery; and there, where you never
looked for him, the inevitable invader will come in. After all the
plunging of the hero in the fabled waters that made him invulnerable,
there was the little spot on the heel, and the arrow found its way
_there_? There is nothing certain to happen, says the proverb, but
the unforeseen. To-morrow _will have_ its cares, spite of anything
that anxiety and foreboding can do. It is God's law of Providence that a
man shall be disciplined by sorrow; and to try to escape from that law
by any forecasting prudence, is utterly hopeless, and madness.
And what does your anxiety do? It does not empty to-morrow, brother, of
its sorrows; but, ah! it empties to-day of its strength. It does not
enable you to escape the evil, it makes you unfit to cope with it when
it comes. It does not bless to-morrow, but it robs to-day. For every
day has its own burden. Sufficient for each day is the evil which
properly belongs to it. Do not add to-morrow's to to-day's. Do not drag
the future into the present. The present has enough to do with its own
proper concerns. We have always strength to bear the evil when it comes.
We have not strength to bear the foreboding of it. 'As thy day, thy
strength shall be.' In strict proportion to the existing exigencies will
be the God-given power; but if you cram and condense to-day's sorrows by
experience, and to-morrow's sorrows by anticipation, into the narrow
round of the one four-and-twenty hours, there is no promise that 'as
_that_ day thy strength shall be.' God gives us (His name be
praised!)--God gives us power to bear all the sorrows of His making; but
He does not give us power to bear the sorrows of our own making, which
the anticipation of sorrow most assuredly is.
Then: contrary to the lessons of Nature, contrary to the teachings of
Religion, contrary to the scheme of Providence; weakening your strength,
distracting your mind, sucking the sunshine out of every landscape, and
casting a shadow over all the beauty--the curse of our lives is that
heathenish, blind, useless, faithless, needless anxiety in which we do
indulge. Look forward, my brother, for God has given you that royal and
wonderful gift of dwelling in the future, and bringing all its glories
around your present. Look forward, not for life, but for heaven; not for
food and raiment, but for the righteousness after which it is blessed to
hunger and thirst, and wherewith it is blessed to be clothed. Not for
earth, but for heaven, let your forecasting gift of prophecy come into
play. Fill the present with quiet faith, with patient waiting, with
honest work, with wise reading of God's lessons of nature, of
providence, and of grace, all of which say to us, Live in God's future,
that the present may be bright: work in the present, that the future may
be certain! _They_ may well look around in expectation, sunny and
unclouded, of a blessed time to come, whose hearts are already 'fixed,
trusting in the Lord.' He to whom there are a present Christ, and a
present Spirit, and a present Father, and a present forgiveness, and a
present redemption, may well live expatiating in all the glorious
distance of the unknown to come, sending out (if I may use such a
figure) from his placid heart over all the weltering waters of this
lower world, the peaceful seeking dove, his meek hope, that shall come
back again from its flight with some palm-branch broken from the trees
of Paradise between its bill. And he that has no such present has a
future dark, chaotic, a heaving, destructive ocean; and over it there
goes for ever--black-pinioned, winging its solitary and hopeless
flight--the raven of his anxious thoughts, which finds no place to rest,
and comes back again to the desolate ark with its foreboding croak of
evil in the present and evil in the future. Live in Christ, 'the same
yesterday, and to-day, and for ever'; and _His_ presence shall make all
_your_ past, present, and future--memory, enjoyment, and hope--to be
bright and beautiful, because all are centred in Him.