k through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do
not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will
your heart be also.[1] No man can serve two masters: for either he
will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to one and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.[2] 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. Is not the
life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of
the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into
barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better
than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his
stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of
the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet
I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field,
which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not
much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought,
saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal
shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek;
for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God,[3] and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take
therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought
of the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof."[4]

[Footnote 1: Compare Talm. of Bab., _Baba Bathra_, 11 _a_.]

[Footnote 2: The god of riches and hidden treasures, a kind of Plutus
in the Phoenician and Syrian mythology.]

[Footnote 3: I here adopt the reading of Lachmann and Tischendorf.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. vi. 19-21, 24-34. Luke xii. 22-31, 33, 34, xvi. 13.
Compare the precepts in Luke x. 7, 8, full of the same simple
sentiment, and Talmud of Babylon, _Sota_, 48 _b_.]

This essentially Galilean sentiment had a decisive influence on the
destiny of the infant sect. The happy flock, relying on the heavenly
Father for the satisfaction of its wants, had for its first principle
the regarding of the cares of life as an evil which choked the germ of
all good in man.[1] Each day they asked of God th