on Sunday, November 22, 1925: By the Rev. Edwin M. Poteat "Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have used of all these things. But seek ye firat the Kingdom vf God avd His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.'
Our Lord is here reflecting, reflecting pu two things, on' the Father's care and on the plight the people who do not know anything about it. He calls them' Gentiles here as also in verse 7 jthe same chapter and in both contexts He is saying the Father knows and cares, Considering the fact that He spent His life in the near neighboudhdod of the populous pagan cities one of.which, Seythopolis, was within ten miles of His Nazareth home, it is surprising that He refers so infrequently to the Pagan Mind. There is no ahu. sion, for example, to idolatry and when one. remembers that He must have seen a great deal of it the absence of comment upon it is very striking. In fact, the only re ference which can be interpreted as an allusion to idolatry in all His, teaching is in this sixth chapter of Matthew: "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." It is as though He would say the only deity competing with God for the suffrages of the human heart is Gold. Mark 1042 He makes a notable comment on pagan conceptions of social order, rank, lordship, ete, rebuking the ambitions of James and John for the chief seats in His! kingdom, 'These few references are, however, enough to open a window into' His mind and to let us look in and, see how Pagan-Mindedness impressed Him and to see what a con trast there is between that mind and His own, 1 breath in 20 years," and after that lie' abandoned the' ambition to accumulate and went on living his life of service in the happy. confidence that the Heavenly Father does provide, iron never ask.about whether they are to have' breakfast to-morrow, give themselves no concern about clothing and shelter.
The reason is that confident ly care and the love of father and mother. And Coleridge has told us that the mark of great ness is the carrying of trustingness and simplicity and wonder of childhood into our maturer years, But Our Lord knows He is dealing with mature people hero and He knows better than to say bluntly, be trusting, do not be anxious. He knows that the lesser interests can only be di lodged by a larger interest and so He says, seek first the Kingdom of God and' all th things, the thi namely that the Pagan Mind is set upon, will be added unto you.
8 though He said, "People who fre so concerned about the Kingdom of God as to forget all about: providing for themselves will cer-fainly be provided for by our Father in Heaven." Of course it ought not to be necessary to eay that He is not here speaking of Heaven but of goodness regnant on earth as the one chief concern of our life as with Himself. It ix only in such people that "the sense of the Father's care is com-ete, not in people like, Ananing and Saphira (Acts 5) who would feel 4 little more comfortable about The Pagan Mind is an anxious mind. This He is saying through extended paragraphs in the chapter of Matthew. For example, in matters of worship Ho says the Gentiles are concerned about appearances and in religion this attitude easily falls into pretence and so Jesus has to use the} hard word, Hypocrites, when, speaking of the Pharisees, a word which He does not use in saying, that the Gentiles are given to vain repetitions in prayer. In ancther Paragraph in the same chapter He says that the Pagun Mind in the matter of everyday affairs is, anxious about food and clothes and prosperity and a future competence, or as we would say, getting on and eck." in larger affairs of jovernment, etc., the agau Mind is set upon appearances. Their greater ones, He says, exercise authority over the lesser} ones and men become anxious for! rank and for higher rank in order that they may be looked up to by the multitude below, greatness being estimated by the number of those who look up and not, as in the Kingdom of Heaven, by the service!
Thus in all spheres Paga ness, says Jesus, is characterized by anxiety.
'The Christian Mind is a trusting mind, it looks away from self and from' things to the Father whose benignity and benevolence are ever all the works of His hand and over all the children of His love and all those who know Him thus live on the footing of the sparrows and the! flowers. This blessed mood is complete deliverance from the anxieties mentioned above. A man ence told me that he discovered that his income exceeded hi the fature if there was a rubstantial balance in the bank, but in th Paul who spoke of himself us having nothing yet possessing all. (2 Cor. 6:6)
Now if some questioning soul comes back with, "But what becom of the young teacher who gave these thoughts?" Tam reminded of a conversation in which Henry Drummond said to a Indy, "T don't care." Whereupon she suid, Drummond, do you know what became of Don't Care?" He replied "Yes, Madam, he was crucified on the cross." Then it in not safe to seek the kingdom of God first if to be crucified is to be the fate ct all such, Our Lord would, of course, answer that suggestion 10,000" times no... The trusting mind, no matter how dark the wa never gets to be afraid of Father and when Jesus said from the eross, "Father into thy Teommend my spirit" He was in the mood in which He says in our text, "Your Heavenly Father Knows what things you have need of."
Some years ago I saw a word from the literary otitic, Mr. Middle-ie gave a quotation of which he said that it was the noblest thought in all: modern lit-'The quotation was from (We must not allow our aversion to the present regime in Ruseia to dim the glories of the great Russian writers), The quotation was. this:—"The Russian Wanderer needs the happiness of ail_men wherein to fird his own peace." Tt is bat another way of saying what our Lord said in these familiar words of the text, make of God, that is the high-being of all men, chief concern and you will own peace in the abundance and in the. tenderness of the Father's penses. He was living life but on making that discovery, that it was possible for him to was aroused and for 20 years he watched his pile grow; of course, his interest in it increasing all the while, There came a disaster which swept it all away and he told me, "When I found that T had nothing' but my modest home ana my vegetable garden and my cow' and a pig, £ got the first long
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.