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?’