“Why are you to take no thought?  Because you cannot serve God and Mammon.  Is taking thought, then, a serving of Mammon?  Clearly.—­Where are you now, poor man?  Brooding over the frost?  Will it harden the ground, so that the God of the sparrows cannot find food for His sons?  Where are you now, poor woman?  Sleepless over the empty cupboard and to-morrow’s dinner?  ’It is because we have no bread?’ do you answer?  Have you forgotten the five loaves among the five thousand, and the fragments that were left?  Or do you know nothing of your Father in heaven, who clothes the lilies and feeds the birds?  O ye of little faith?  O ye poor-spirited Mammon-worshippers! who worship him not even because he has given you anything, but in the hope that he may some future day benignantly regard you.  But I may be too hard upon you.  I know well that our Father sees a great difference between the man who is anxious about his children’s dinner, or even about his own, and the man who is only anxious to add another ten thousand to his much goods laid up for many years.  But you ought to find it easy to trust in God for such a matter as your daily bread, whereas no man can by any possibility trust in God for ten thousand pounds.  The former need is a God-ordained necessity; the latter desire a man-devised appetite at best—­possibly swinish greed.  Tell me, do you long to be rich?  Then you worship Mammon.  Tell me, do you think you would feel safer if you had money in the bank?  Then you are Mammon-worshippers; for you would trust the barn of the rich man rather than the God who makes the corn to grow.  Do you say—­“What shall we eat? and what shall we drink? and wherewithal shall we be clothedl?” Are ye thus of doubtful mind?—­Then you are Mammon-worshippers.  “But how is the work of the world to be done if we take no thought?—­We are nowhere told not to take thought.  We must take thought.  The question is—­What are we to take or not to take thought about?  By some who do not know God, little work would be done if they were not driven by anxiety of some kind.  But you, friends, are you content to go with the nations of the earth, or do you seek a better way—­the way that the Father of nations would have you walk in?

“What then are we to take thought about?  Why, about our work.  What are we not to take thought about?  Why, about our life.  The one is our business:  the other is God’s.  But you turn it the other way.  You take no thought of earnestness about the doing of your duty; but you take thought of care lest God should not fulfil His part in the goings on of the world.  A man’s business is just to do his duty:  God takes upon Himself the feeding and the clothing.  Will the work of the world be neglected if a man thinks of his work, his duty, God’s will to be done, instead of what he is to eat, what he is to drink, and wherewithal he is to be clothed?  And remember all the needs of the world come back to these three.  You will