Country life -- Fiction; Vicars, Parochial -- England -- Fiction
“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?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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