Moreover, whoever is familiar with the teachings ascribed to Jesus must know that his first condition of discipleship is _the total surrender of all worldly possessions and the non-accumulation of earthly treasures thereafter_ (Matt. 16: 24; Luke 14: 26, 27; Matt. 19, etc.). Can words be more emphatic than the utterances of Jesus reported in Matt. 6:19-34?—“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.”... “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”... “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”... “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” This absolute unconcern about food and raiment is emphasized by repeating the injunction twice: “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?”... “Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” The attempts of theologians to modify these precepts are most preposterous. They tell us that Jesus meant to discourage _anxious_ thought about worldly possessions and wants—that he intended to condemn undue anxiety and worriment of mind; and they even assert that the original word implies and justifies this rendering. To this it may be replied, We cannot be certain as to what particular words Jesus used, as we have no manuscripts of the Gospels dating back to within four hundred years of his time, and the alleged copies that we have are not authenticated; so that an argument, even if justified by learned criticism, based upon the implied meaning of particular words is useless, unless we are sure, as we cannot be, that Jesus used those very words, and that he intended that his disciples and other unlearned and uncritical hearers should accept the implied rather than the obvious meaning. But, taking the words in the Greek manuscripts of the Gospels now most approved by scholars, we deny that there is anything in them to justify the interpolation of the word “anxious” between the words “no” and “thought.” There is the highest classical authority for the assertion that the verb employed here simply means to “care,” “to be careful,” “to heed,” and is so translated in other portions of the New Testament, as, for examples, in 1 Cor. 7: 32, 33, 34; Phil. 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:7; and in many other passages. When Paul exhorted the Philippians to be “careful for nothing,” because the Lord was about to appear in judgment, he obviously meant that it was not worth while to make any provision for future bodily wants.