seed, sometimes spring up more
easily within the carefully fenced enclosure of my lord's park than in
the little garden plot of the keeper of his lodge. On the whole,
perhaps, and in proportion to their number, there is less harassing,
wearing anxiety in the homes of the poor than in those of the wealthy.
And what harsh taskmasters our cares can be! How they will lord it over
us! Give them the saddle and the reins, and they will ride us to death.
Seat them on the throne, and they will chastise us not only with whips
but with scorpions. It is no wonder that Christ should set Himself to
free men from this grinding tyranny. He is no true deliverer for us who
cannot break the cruel bondage of our cares.

II

Let us listen, then, to Christ's gracious argument and wise
remonstrances. What, He asks, is the good of our anxiety? What can it do
for us? "Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto his
stature? If, then, ye are not able to do that which is least, why are ye
anxious concerning the rest?" "But, the morrow! the morrow!" we cry.
"Let the morrow," Christ answers, "take care of itself; sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof; learn thou to live a day at a time." "Our
earliest duty," says a great writer of our day, "is to cultivate the
habit of not looking round the corner;" which is but another version of
Christ's simple precept. And the saying, simple and obvious as it may
seem, never fails to justify itself. For one thing, the morrow rarely
turns out as our fears imagined it. Our very anxiety blurs our vision,
and throws our judgment out of focus. We see things through an
atmosphere which both magnifies and distorts. We remember how it was
with Mr. Fearing: "When he was come to the entrance of the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, I thought"--it is Greatheart who tells the story--"I
should have lost my man: not for that he had any inclination to go
back,--that he always abhorred; but he was ready to die for fear. Oh,
the hobgoblins will have me! the hobgoblins will have me! cried he; and
I could not beat him out on't." Yet see how matters fell out. "This I
took very great notice of," goes on Greatheart, "that this valley was as
quiet while he went through it as ever I knew it before or since." And
again, when Mr. Fearing "was come at the river where was no bridge,
there again he was in a heavy case. Now, now, he said, he should be
drowned for ever, and so never see that face with comfort, that he had
c