lways
looking out into the future, and vexing ourselves with endless fears as
to how things are to go then. There is no divine promise, that, if a
reckless blockhead leaves his children to starve, they shall not starve.
And a certain inspired volume speaks with extreme severity of the man
who fails to provide for them of his own house. But there is a divine
promise which says to the humble Christian,--"As thy days, so shall thy
strength be." If your affairs are going on fairly now, be thankful,
and try to do your duty, and to do your best, as a Christian man and a
prudent man, and then leave the rest to God. Your children are about
you; no doubt they may die, and it is fit enough that you should not
forget the fragility of your most prized possessions; it is fit enough
that you should sometimes sit by the fire and look at the merry faces
and listen to the little voices, and think what it would be to lose
them. But it is not needful, or rational, or Christian-like, to be
always brooding on that thought. And when they grow up, it may be hard
to provide for them. The little thing that is sitting on your knee may
before many years be alone in life, thousands of miles from you and from
his early home, an insignificant item in the bitter price which Britain
pays for her Indian Empire. It is even possible, though you hardly for a
moment admit _that_ thought, that the child may turn out a heartless
and wicked man, and prove your shame and heartbreak: all wicked and
heartless men have been the children of somebody; and many of them,
doubtless, the children of those who surmised the future as little as
Eve did when she smiled upon the infant Cain. And the fireside by which
you sit, now merry and noisy enough, may grow lonely,--lonely with the
second loneliness, not the hopeful solitude of youth looking forward,
but the desponding loneliness of age looking back. And it is so with
everything else. Your health may break down. Some fearful accident may
befall you. The readers of the magazine may cease to care for your
articles. People may get tired of your sermons. People may stop buying
your books, your wine, your groceries, your milk and cream. Younger
men may take away your legal business. Yet how often these fears prove
utterly groundless! It was good and wise advice, given by one who had
managed, with a cheerful and hopeful spirit, to pass through many trying
and anxious years, to "take short views":--not to vex and worry yourself