view the contingencies which shall happen to us in the interval between the present hour and the close of life's journey. Let us not "take thought for the morrow: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
Happy is it for us that our unhallowed curiosity is not gratified. Were we to have clearly placed before us all that shall happen to us between this moment and the moment that shall witness our departure from the world, there is not a human being to whom existence would be tolerable. We should not only be constantly looking at the shady side of our existence, and ever meditating on the physical evils which should befall us, and on the sea of mental sorrows and sufferings upon which we should be tossed, and through which we should then have to pass; but we should, there is scarcely a doubt, with the characteristic disposition of man's mind to magnify his misfortunes, make all our evils much greater than they really are in themselves. We should, in other words, not only have our eye constantly fixed on the troubles and trials of life, but we should suffer quite as much, if not more, from the anticipation of evils, as from the actual experience of them.
The futility of out endeavours, without the assistance of Divine Providence, is beautifully expressed in Psalm cxxvii: "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." Every man's experience may furnish him with examples to verify the truth of this position, but none are so striking as those that are furnished by Scripture. No doubt King David, like every other parent, rejoiced at the birth of Absalom,—that very son who drove his
