And more, I think if we look carefully at these words, we shall find that they tell us the very reason why we are to work, and to look forward, and to believe that God will bless our labour. And what is this reason? It is this, that we have a _Father_ in heaven; not a mere Maker, not a mere Master, but a _Father_. All turns on that one Gospel of all Gospels, _your Father in heaven_. For our Lord seems to me to say, 'Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or drink, or wear. Is not the life more than meat? Has not your Heavenly Father given you a higher life than the mere life which must be kept up by food, which He has given to the animals? He has made you reasonable souls; He has given to you wisdom from His own wisdom, and a share of the Light which lights every man who comes into the world, the Light of Christ His Son; He has created you in His own likeness, that like Him you may make things, be makers and inventors, each in his place and calling, each according to his talents and powers, even as your Heavenly Father, the Maker and Creator of all things. And if He has given you all these wonderful powers of mind and soul, surely He has given you the less blessing, the mere power to earn your own food? If He has made you so much wiser than the beasts, surely He has made you as wise as the beasts.' 'And is not the body more than raiment?' Has He not given you bodies which can speak, write, build, work, plant, in a thousand cunning and wonderful ways; bodies which can do a thousand nobler things than merely keep themselves warm, as the beasts do? Then be sure, if He has given you the greater power, He has given you the less also. And as for fine clothes and rich ornaments, 'Is not the body more than raiment?' Is not your body a far more beautiful and nobler thing than all the gay clothes with which you can bedizen it? If your bodies be fair, strong, healthy, useful, it matters little what clothes you put upon them. Why will you not have faith in your Heavenly Father? Why will you not have faith in the great honour which He put on you when He said at first, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let him have dominion over all things on the earth'? Be sure, that God would not have made man, and given him all these powers, and sent him upon this earth, unless this earth had been a right good and fit place for him. Be sure that if you obey the laws of this earth where God has put you, you will never need to be anxious or fret; but you will prosper right well, you and your children after you. For 'Consider the fowls of the air, they neither sow, nor reap, and gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them; and are ye not much better than they?' Surely you are, for you _can_ sow, and reap, and gather into barns. And if God makes the earth work so well that it feeds the fowls who cannot help themselves, how much more will the earth feed you who _can_ help yourselves, because God has given you