Then, again, let us learn not to try to abrogate this wise ordinance by onward-looking anxieties.  We have to exercise forethought, and not to possess it is to be a poor creature, below the ant and the bee.  No man is in a favourable position for intellectual or moral growth who has not some certainty in his life, and a reasonable prospect of such perpetuity as is compatible with this changeful state.  But that is a very different thing from the careful, anxious forebodings in which we are all so prone to indulge.  These are profitless and harmful, robbing us of strength and contributing nothing to our wisdom or to our security.  They are contrary to this law of the divine dealings that we shall get our rations as we need them, no sooner; that the path will be opened when we come to it, not till then.  God knows the line of march, and will issue our route each morning.  God looks after the commissariat and saves us the trouble of carrying it.

Let us try not to be ’over-inquisitive to cast the fashion of uncertain evils,’ nor magnify trouble in the fog of our own thoughts, but limit our cares to to-day, and let to-morrow alone, for our God will be in it as He has been in the past.  He will never take us where He will not go with us.  Each day will have its own brightness, as each place its own rainbow.  If we are led into dry lands, there will be a fountain opened in the desert, and He will feed us by His ravens ere we shall want.  Bread shall be given and water made sure.  To-morrow shall be as this day.  Then let the veil still hang, nor try to lift it with the hand of forecasting thought, nor be over-careful to make the future sure by earthly means, but let present blessings be parents of bright hopes.  Remember Him who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.  In Him the past is unwept for and the future sure.  Accept the merciful limitations on His gifts, and let them be the limitations which you set to your own desires while you pray, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’

IV.  The prayer for bread suited to our needs.

‘Daily bread’ clearly cannot be the right rendering, for after ’this day’ that would be weak repetition.

The word is difficult, for it only occurs here and there in Luke.

It may be rendered ‘for the coming (day),’ but that can scarcely be supposed to be our Lord’s meaning, when His precept to take no thought for the morrow is remembered.  A more satisfactory rendering is, ‘sufficient for our subsistence,’ the bread which we need to sustain us.

Such a petition points to desires limited by our necessities.  What we should wish, and what we have a right to ask from God, is what we need—­no more and no less.