to the generations which have gone before.

Still

they will look back with grateful affection and patriotic pride to the mighty mother of empires, who was the parent not only of their national but of their moral growth; and while "keeping the judgments and the statutes of the Lord their God," they will not forget the memory of their first teachers, but will celebrate your Christian wisdom and parental forethought, while they say, SURELY THIS GREAT NATION WAS A WISE AND UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE. FOR WHAT NATION WAS THERE SO GREAT, WHICH HAD GOD SO NIGH

UNTO THEM.

SERMON XV.

TAKE NO THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW.

ST. MATTHEW VI. 34.

TAKE THEREFORE NO THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW; FOR

THE MORROW SHALL TAKE THOUGHT FOR THE THINGS OF ITSELF; SUFFICIENT UNTO THE DAY IS THE EVIL THEREOF.

THE rule of life conveyed in these words, if left unexplained and unguarded, might startle us, as proceeding from the Author of a religion of self-denial. To live for the day, without caring for the morrow; to snatch the transient enjoyments of the present hour, and not suffer them to be disturbed by the evils which the next may have in store for us; to eat and drink, because to-morrow we die; these have been the maxims of a philosophy very different from that of the Gospel. Yet in the sentiment of our text the Epicurean would concur with the Christian. His uncertainty and our certainty as to the future,-our belief in a superintending Providence, and his disbelief of it,-lead in this instance to a similar con

clusion. Views directly contrary to one another, of life, and death, and eternity, appear at first sight to give the same precept for our daily conduct.

I say, their precepts appear, at first sight, the same; for a very slight consideration will shew that the resemblance is only apparent and superficial. It is true, they both call our attention from the morrow that is coming, and fix it upon the day that is present; but they agree no farther. For, the reason why we are to do this, and the objects to which we are to devote our energies thus concentrated on the present, are, in the two systems, not only different, but opposite. The theory of the sensualist teaches him to regard enjoyment as the great end of existence, and life as a state in which pleasures are to be enjoyed, intense indeed and exquisite, but short-lived and uncertain in their recurrence. On such a view, man best fulfils the objects of his ephemeral being, when he gives himself up most entirely to the delights of the passing hour, and does not suffer his sense of joy to be blunted by a future over which he has no command. Of the present alone he is certain, and that at least he will make sure of, since Fate itself cannot rob him of the sweets which the bygone moment has borne with it. He acknowledges no superior power, watching over his present, and caring for his future happiness, and he has therefore nothing to depend upon, nothing to trust or to reverence but self. Duty is not a word found in his vocabulary, and therefore there is nothing to check him in his career

of self-indulgence. Thus he devotes all his faculties to the enhancing of the voluptuous dream in which he lives, and strives to forget the cares that lie beyond, because he knows that the fickle sunshine in which he is now basking, will soon be chased away by the clouds which hang in the horizon. The very statement of such a system is sufficient to shew for how opposite a reason, and with how different a purpose, the Christian acts upon the maxim of our text. He dismisses from his mind the anxieties of the morrow, in order, not that he may more keenly enjoy the pleasures, but that he may more uninterruptedly fulfil the duties, of the day. He devotes himself to the present, not because his future is wrapped in darkness and uncertainty, but because, on the contrary, it is spread out so clear and bright before him. If his attention is absorbed by the concerns of the passing hour, it is not that he may snatch some boon of fugitive enjoyment from the fate which hurries him blindly and resistlessly forward, but because, instead of chance or destiny, he believes himself to be under the guidance of a kind and overruling Providence, by whose care in every succeeding moment he will be guarded, as in the past he has been succoured, and in the he is sustained.

present

That these are the feelings, and this the conduct, enforced by the text; that it enjoins a renunciation of our anxiety about temporal concerns, for the sake of enabling us better to fulfil the duties which relate to eternity; and that, as a motive to this, it calls us

to consider the superintending care and love of God; is abundantly evident from the verses immediately before it. Our Saviour introduces the subject by assuming that the great object of our earthly life must be the service of God, and deduces the rules of conduct which follow from the impossibility of our uniting this with the service of Mammon.

"No

man," he says, can serve two masters; ye cannot serve God and Mammon. THEREFORE I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, and what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on." That is to say, you must have some one great end of life, something to pursue, something to live for. No one can be without such a ruling object, which pervades his actions, and gives its colour to his existence, and to which all the other minor objects which he incidentally pursues are made either to subserve or to submit. If this main object then be pleasure, it cannot be duty; if it be selfish enjoyment, it cannot be the good of others; if it be your worldly advancement, it cannot be your progress in holiness. The sovereign end of life must from its very nature be exclusive, to which all your other pursuits, supposing them to clash with it, must bend. If then the desire of pleasing God, if the hope of being in some degree restored to His image, if the wish to co-operate in his work on earth, by promoting the true happiness of your fellow-men, have possession of your heart, then you will cease to harass yourselves with needless anxieties as to what you shall eat, or what you shall