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