the birds:  and will He not feed me?  God clothes the lilies of the field:  and will He not clothe me?  Ah, me of little faith, who forget daily that in God I live, and move, and have my being, and am, in spite of all my sins, the child of God.  Him I can trust in prosperous times, and in disastrous times; in good harvests and in bad harvests; in life and in death, in time and in eternity.  For He has given all things a law which cannot be broken.  And they continue this day as at the beginning, serving Him.  And if I serve Him likewise, then shall I be in harmony with God, and with God’s laws, and with God’s creatures, great and small.  The whole powers of nature as well as of spirit will be arrayed on my side in the struggle for existence; and all things will work together for good to those who love God.

SERMON XVII.  LIFE.

PSALM CIV. 24, 28-30.

   O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: 
   the earth is full of Thy riches.

That Thou givest them they gather.  Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled with good.  Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled.  Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.  Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created:  and Thou renewest the face of the earth.

What is the most important thing to you, and me, and every man?

I suppose that most, if they answered honestly, would say—­Life.  I will give anything I have for my life.

And if some among you answered—­as I doubt not some would—­No:  not life:  but honour and duty.  There is many a thing which I would rather die than do—­then you would answer like valiant and righteous folk; and may God give you grace to keep in the same mind, and to hold your good resolution to the last.  But you, too, will agree that, except doing your duty, life is the most important thing you have.  The mother, when she sacrifices her life to save her child, shews thereby how valuable she holds the child’s life to be; so valuable that she will give up even her own to save it.

But did you never consider, again—­and a very solemn and awful thought it is—­that this so important thing called life is the thing, above all other earthly things, of which we know least—­ay, of which we know nothing?

We do not know what death is.  We send a shot through a bird, and it falls dead—­that is, lies still, and after a while decays again into the dust of the earth, and the gases of the air.  But what has happened to it?  How does it die?  How does it decay?  What is this life which is gone out of it?  No man knows.  Men of science, by dissecting and making experiments, which they do with a skill and patience which deserve not only our belief, but our admiration, will describe to us the phenomena, or outward appearances, which accompany death, and follow death.  But death itself—­for