the occurrences of the history of each family, the unnumbered instances which make up the life of each individual, no matter what their character. His supreme hand is in and over them all. Those words which we so commonly use in daily speech--chance, accident, strictly and consistently regarded, are untruthful, for there is no such thing as chance, an accident; nothing happens but it has been determined in His wisdom, and is sent, directed, or permitted according to His will. Chance or accident rule in nothing--God's providence in all. What more satisfactory assurance would we desire for that than what is told us in the text? It was a customary thing to see sold in the market-place of Jerusalem, as an article of merchandise, the little creatures here mentioned. The price was a minimum, five sparrows for two farthings, equal at the most, to two cents of our money. Our Lord, in referring to it, calls attention to the little regard taken by men of this poor little bird, and brings out in vivid and grand contrast the regard taken of it by God. "And not one of them is forgotten before God." Elsewhere, in one of the Psalms, God says: "I know all the fowls upon the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are in my sight." We watch in their season of immigration the flight of birds, when in long flocks they cross the sky, passing from the North to the South, or back again. To think that each in those countless tribes is known, as if by name, to its Creator, not one confounded with the other in the view of God! We observe the tiny sparrow as it skips from ground to housetop, busily gathering its food, or the frail materials wherewith to construct its nest below our house roof; how little we reflect that every one of them is numbered in that sight which nothing can escape, and that in the ephemeral history of the poor little bird, of which the great God and Savior deigns to speak, not one item is forgotten, each is seen and known and retained in a faithful memory; "not forgotten," implying a knowledge that lasts, a consideration though the thing known may no longer exist. This, then, is the way we are taught to think about our God. All things that transpire, all that has been and shall be--all are embraced within the circle of God's unforgetting, all-remembering knowledge, vision, providence. That is the Christian doctrine as taught by our Lord in such plain illustrations as this, and as preached by His apostles on the pages of the Old and New Testament throughout.