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The busy ant is to be our minister. The great lesson it teaches is foresight, the duty of rightly improving the passing hour, the wisdom of making the best of our opportunities. The faculty of foresight, the power of doing something for the future, is a faculty most divine. Rightly educated and developed, it gives man peculiar elevation, and invests him with commanding influence. He who sees farthest will rule best. Foresight is not to be confounded with distrust. The wise exercise of foresight makes life pleasant —

1. By economising time. The man who has least to do takes most time to do it in. Our greatest men have been the most severe economists of time.

2. By systematising duties. Some persons have no power of systematising. Such men fret themselves to death, and do not perish alone. The men in the Church who do the least are generally the men of leisure.

3. By diminishing difficulties. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Foresight numbers and weighs contingencies. The person who is destitute of foresight multiplies the difficulties of other people. The ant makes the best of her opportunities. Every life has a summer, and every life a winter. In recommending preparation for life's winter I am not advocating penuriousness. Covetousness is an affront to God. "The liberal soul shall be made fat."

(J. Parker, D.D.)

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KJV: Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:

WEB: Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider her ways, and be wise;