words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon
your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.'

'Ye shall lay up these my words in your heart and your soul, and
teach them your children when thou sittest in thine house and when
thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest
up.' That is, thou shalt believe continually in a living God--a God
who is working everywhere at every moment, about thy path and about
thy bed, and spying out all thy ways; and not only about thee, but
about all that thou seest. From him comes alike rain and sunshine;
from him comes the life of man; from him comes all which makes it
possible for man to live upon the earth.

And it is a plain fact that the Jews for a long time did believe
this--at least the prophets, psalmists and good men among them--to
the most intense degree; to a degree in which perhaps no nation has
believed it since. With them God is everything, and man nothing.
Man finds out nothing: God reveals it to him. Man's intellect does
nothing: the Spirit of God gives him understanding to do it--even,
says Isaiah, understanding to plough, and to sow, and to reap his
crops in due season. It is the Spirit of God, according to the
prophets and psalmists, which makes the difference between a man and
a beast. But upon the beasts too, and the green things of the
earth, and on all nature, the Spirit of God works. He is the Lord
and giver of life. Take only those four Psalms, the 8th, 18th,
29th, 104th, and learn from them what the old Jews thought of this
wonderful world in which we live.

'These all wait upon thee'--all living things by land and sea--'that
thou mayest give them meat in due season. When thou givest it them
they gather it. When thou openest thy hand they are filled with
good. When thou hidest thy face they are troubled. When thou
takest away their breath they die, and are turned again to their
dust. When thou lettest thy breath go forth they shall be made, and
thou shalt renew the face of the earth.'

So again, in the world of man, God is the living Judge, the living
overlooker, rewarder, punisher of every man, not only in the life to
come, but in this life. His providence is a special providence.
But not such a poor special providence as men are too apt to dream
of now-a-days, which interferes only now and then on some great
occasion, or on behalf of some very favoured persons, but a special
providence