Explore "Providence" by Charles Kingsley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Matthew vi. 31, 32, 33. Be not anxious, saying, What shall we eat? / or, what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? (for / after all these things do the heathen seek: ) for your Heavenly / Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye / first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things / shall be added unto you.
We must first consider carefully what this text really means; what / 'taking no thought for the morrow' really is. Now, it cannot mean / that we are to be altogether careless and imprudent; for all / Scripture, and especially Solomon's Proverbs, give us the very / opposite advice, and one part of God's Word cannot contradict the / other. The whole of Solomon's Proverbs is made up of lessons in / prudence and foresight; and surely our Lord did not come to do away / with Solomon's Proverbs, but to fulfil them. And more, Solomon / declares again and again, that prudence and foresight are the gifts / of God; and God's gifts are surely meant to be used. Isaiah, too, / tells us that the common work of the farm, tilling the ground, / sowing, and reaping, were taught to men by God; and says of the / ploughman, that 'His God doth instruct him to discretion and doth / teach him. ' Neither can God mean us to sit idle with folded hands / waiting to be fed by miracles. Would He have given to man reason, / and skill, and the power of bettering his mortal condition by ten / thousand instructions if He had not meant him to use those gifts? / We find that, at the beginning, Adam is put into the garden, not to / sit idle in it, nor to feed merely on the fruits which fall from the / trees, as the dumb animals do, but to dress it, and to keep it; to / use his own reason to improve his own condition, and the land on / which God had placed him. Was not the very first command given to / man to replenish the earth and subdue it? And do we not find in the / very end of Scripture the Apostles working with their own hands for / their daily bread?