eth not; and it
shall be given them.

I have been asked to preach this day for the National Schools of
this parish. I do so willingly, because I believe that in them this
course of education is pursued, that conjoined with a sound teaching
in the principles of our Protestant church, and a wholesome and
kindly moral training, there is free and full secular instruction as
far as the ages of the children will allow. Were it not the case, I
could not plead for these schools; above all at this time, when the
battle between ancient superstition and modern enlightenment in this
land seems fast coming to a crisis and a death struggle. I could
not ask you to help any school on earth in which I had not fair
proof that the teachers taught, on physical and human as well as on
moral subjects, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help them God.

SERMON XIII. PROVIDENCE

Matthew vi. 31, 32, 33. Be not anxious, saying, What shall we eat?
or, what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? (for
after all these things do the heathen seek:) for your Heavenly
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things
shall be added unto you.

We must first consider carefully what this text really means; what
'taking no thought for the morrow' really is. Now, it cannot mean
that we are to be altogether careless and imprudent; for all
Scripture, and especially Solomon's Proverbs, give us the very
opposite advice, and one part of God's Word cannot contradict the
other. The whole of Solomon's Proverbs is made up of lessons in
prudence and foresight; and surely our Lord did not come to do away
with Solomon's Proverbs, but to fulfil them. And more, Solomon
declares again and again, that prudence and foresight are the gifts
of God; and God's gifts are surely meant to be used. Isaiah, too,
tells us that the common work of the farm, tilling the ground,
sowing, and reaping, were taught to men by God; and says of the
ploughman, that 'His God doth instruct him to discretion and doth
teach him.' Neither can God mean us to sit idle with folded hands
waiting to be fed by miracles. Would He have given to man reason,
and skill, and the power of bettering his mortal condition by ten
thousand instructions if He had not meant him to use those gifts?
We find that, at the beginning, Adam is put into the garden, not to
sit idle in