nonsense
talked about money being of no consequence. The want of it has made many
a father and mother tremble at the prospect of being taken from their
children; the want of it has embittered many a parent's dying hours.
You hear selfish persons talking vaguely about faith. You find such
heartless persons jauntily spending all they get on themselves, and then
leaving their poor children to beggary, with the miserable pretext that
they are doing all this through their abundant trust in God. Now this is
not faith; it is insolent presumption. It is exactly as if a man should
jump from the top of St. Paul's, and say that he had faith that the
Almighty would keep him from being dashed to pieces on the pavement.
There is a high authority as to such cases,--"Thou shalt not tempt the
Lord thy God." If God had promised that people should never fall into
the miseries of penury under any circumstances, it would be faith to
trust that promise, however unlikely of fulfilment it might seem in any
particular case. But God has made no such promise; and if you leave your
children without provision, you have no right to expect that they
shall not suffer the natural consequences of your heartlessness and
thoughtlessness. True faith lies in your doing everything you possibly
can, and _then_ humbly trusting in God. And if, after you have done your
very best, you must still go, with but a blank outlook for those you
leave, why, _then_ you may trust them to the Husband of the widow and
Father of the fatherless. Faith, as regards such matters, means firm
belief that God will do all He has promised to do, however difficult or
unlikely. But some people seem to think that faith means firm belief
that God will do whatever they think would suit them, however
unreasonable, and however flatly in the face of all the established laws
of His government.

We all have it in our power to make ourselves miserable, if we look
far into Future Years and calculate their probabilities of evil, and
steadily anticipate the worst. It is not expedient to calculate too far
ahead. Of course, the right way in this, as in other things, is
the middle way: we are not to run either into the extreme of
over-carefulness and anxiety on the one hand, or of recklessness and
imprudence on the other. But as mention has been made of faith, it may
safely be said that we are forgetful of that rational trust in God which
is at once our duty and our inestimable privilege, if we are a