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.