Then:  contrary to the lessons of Nature, contrary to the teachings of Religion, contrary to the scheme of Providence; weakening your strength, distracting your mind, sucking the sunshine out of every landscape, and casting a shadow over all the beauty—­the curse of our lives is that heathenish, blind, useless, faithless, needless anxiety in which we do indulge.  Look forward, my brother, for God has given you that royal and wonderful gift of dwelling in the future, and bringing all its glories around your present.  Look forward, not for life, but for heaven; not for food and raiment, but for the righteousness after which it is blessed to hunger and thirst, and wherewith it is blessed to be clothed.  Not for earth, but for heaven, let your forecasting gift of prophecy come into play.  Fill the present with quiet faith, with patient waiting, with honest work, with wise reading of God’s lessons of nature, of providence, and of grace, all of which say to us, Live in God’s future, that the present may be bright:  work in the present, that the future may be certain! They may well look around in expectation, sunny and unclouded, of a blessed time to come, whose hearts are already ’fixed, trusting in the Lord.’  He to whom there are a present Christ, and a present Spirit, and a present Father, and a present forgiveness, and a present redemption, may well live expatiating in all the glorious distance of the unknown to come, sending out (if I may use such a figure) from his placid heart over all the weltering waters of this lower world, the peaceful seeking dove, his meek hope, that shall come back again from its flight with some palm-branch broken from the trees of Paradise between its bill.  And he that has no such present has a future dark, chaotic, a heaving, destructive ocean; and over it there goes for ever—­black-pinioned, winging its solitary and hopeless flight—­the raven of his anxious thoughts, which finds no place to rest, and comes back again to the desolate ark with its foreboding croak of evil in the present and evil in the future.  Live in Christ, ’the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever’; and His presence shall make all your past, present, and future—­memory, enjoyment, and hope—­to be bright and beautiful, because all are centred in Him.

JUDGING, ASKING, AND GIVING

’Judge not, that ye be not judged. 2.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged:  and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. 3.  And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 4.  Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye! 5.  Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. 6.  Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither