judges and rulers.  ‘Take no thought.  It shall be given you what ye shall say.’  You have a disagreeable duty to do at twelve o’clock.  Do not blacken nine and ten and eleven, and all between, with the colour of twelve.  Do the work of each, and reap your reward in peace.  So when the dreaded moment in the future becomes the present, you shall meet it walking in the light, and that light will overcome its darkness.  How often do men who have made up their minds what to say and do under certain expected circumstances, forget the words and reverse the actions!  The best preparation is the present well seen to, the last duty done.  For this will keep the eye so clear and the body so full of light that the right action will be perceived at once, the right words will rush from the heart to the lips, and the man, full of the Spirit of God because he cares for nothing but the will of God, will trample on the evil thing in love, and be sent, it may be, in a chariot of fire to the presence of his Father, or stand unmoved amid the cruel mockings of the men he loves.

“Do you feel inclined to say in your hearts:  ’It was easy for Him to take no thought, for He had the matter in His own hands?’ But observe, there is nothing very noble in a man’s taking no thought except it be from faith.  If there were no God to take thought for us, we should have no right to blame any one for taking thought.  You may fancy the Lord had His own power to fall back upon.  But that would have been to Him just the one dreadful thing.  That His Father should forget Him!—­no power in Himself could make up for that.  He feared nothing for Himself; and never once employed His divine power to save Him from His human fate.  Let God do that for Him if He saw fit.  He did not come into the world to take care of Himself.  That would not be in any way divine.  To fall back on Himself, God failing Him—­how could that make it easy for Him to avoid care?  The very idea would be torture.  That would be to declare heaven void, and the world without a God.  He would not even pray to His Father for what He knew He should have if He did ask it.  He would just wait His will.

“But see how the fact of His own power adds tenfold significance to the fact that He trusted in God.  We see that this power would not serve His need—­His need not being to be fed and clothed, but to be one with the Father, to be fed by His hand, clothed by His care.  This was what the Lord wanted—­and we need, alas! too often without wanting it.  He never once, I repeat, used His power for Himself.  That was not his business.  He did not care about it.  His life was of no value to Him but as His Father cared for it.  God would mind all that was necessary for Him, and He would mind the work His Father had given Him to do.  And, my friends, this is just the one secret of a blessed life, the one thing every man comes into this world to learn.  With what authority it comes to us from the lips of Him who knew all about it, and ever did as He said!