If Thou, indeed, hast set me free?
Why am I thus, if Thou hast died--
If Thou hast died to ransom me?"

Nothing is more frequently felt and spoken of, as a hinderance to the
inward life of devotion, than the "cares of life;" and even upon the
showing of our Lord himself, the cares of the world are the _thorns_
that choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.

And yet, if this is a necessary and inevitable result of worldly care,
why does the providence of God so order things that it forms so large
and unavoidable a part of every human experience? Why is the physical
system of man arranged with such daily, oft-recurring wants? Why does
his nature, in its full development, tend to that state of society in
which wants multiply, and the business of supply becomes more
complicated, and requiring constantly more thought and attention, and
bringing the outward and seen into a state of constant friction and
pressure on the inner and spiritual?

Has God arranged an outward system to be a constant diversion from the
inward--a weight on its wheels--a burden on its wings--and then
commanded a strict and rigid inwardness and spirituality? Why placed us
where the things that are seen and temporal must unavoidably have so
much of our thoughts, and time, and care, yet said to us, "Set your
affections on things above, and not on things on the earth. Love not the
world, neither the things of the world"? And why does one of our
brightest examples of Christian experience, as it should be, say, "While
we look not on the things which are seen, but on the things which are
not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things
that are not seen are eternal"?

The Bible tells us that our whole existence here is a disciplinary one;
that this whole physical system, by which our spirit is enclosed with
all the joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, and wants which form a part
of it, are designed as an education to fit the soul for its immortality;
and as worldly care forms the greater part of the staple of every human
life, there must be some mode of viewing and meeting it, which converts
it from an enemy of spirituality into a means of grace and spiritual
advancement.

Why, then, do we so often hear the lamentation, "It seems to me as if I
could advance to the higher stages of Christian life, if it were not for
the pressure of my business and the multitude of my worldly cares"? Is
it not God, O Christian, who, in