'Take heed that ye do nob your alms before men, to be seen of them:
otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. 2.
Therefore, when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet
before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues, and in the
streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you,
They have their reward. 3. But when thou doest alms, let not thy
left hand know what thy right hand doeth; 4. That thine alms may be
in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, Himself shall
reward thee openly. 5. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as
the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the
synagogues, and in the corners of the streets, that they may be
seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.'--MATT.
vi. 1-5.
Our Lord follows His exposition of the deepened sense which the old law
assumes in His kingdom, by a warning against the most subtle foes of
true righteousness. He first gives the warning in general terms in verse
1, and then flashes its light into three dark corners, and shows how
hankering after men's praise corrupts the beneficence which is our duty
to our neighbour, the devotion which is our duty to God, and the
abstinence which is our duty to ourselves. We deal now with the two
former.
We have first the general warning, given out like the text of a sermon,
or the musical phrase which underlies the various harmonies of some
concerto. The first word implies that the evil is a subtle and seducing
one. 'Take heed' as of something which may steal into and mar the
noblest lives. The serpent lies coiled under the leaves, and may sting
and poison the unwary hand. The generality of the warning, and the
logical propriety of the whole section, require the adoption of the
reading of the Revised Version, namely, 'righteousness.' The thing to be
taken heed of is not the doing it 'before men,' which will often be
obligatory, often necessary, and never in itself wrong, but the doing it
'to be seen of them.' Not the number of spectators, but the furtive
glance of our eyes to see if they are looking at us, makes the sin. We
are to let our good works shine, that men may glorify our Father. Pious
souls are to shine, and yet to be hid,--a paradox which can be easily
solved by the obedient. If our motive is to make God's glory more
visible, we shall not be seeking to be ourselves admired. The
harp-string's swift vibrations, as it gives out its note, make it
unseen.
The reason for the warning goes on two principles: one that
righteousness is to be rewarded, over and above its own inherent
blessedness; another, that the prospect of the reward is a legitimate
stimulus, over and above the prime reason for righteousness, namely,
that it is righteous. The New Testament morality is not good enough for
some very superfine people, who are pleased to call it selfish because
it lets a martyr brace himself in the fire by the vision of the crown
athwart the smoke. Somehow or other, however, that selfish morality gets
itself put in practice, and turns out more unselfish people than its
assailants manage to produce. Perhaps the motive which they attack may
be part of the reason.
The mingling of regard for man's approbation with apparently righteous
acts absolutely disqualifies them for receiving God's reward, for it
changes their whole character, and they are no longer what they seem.
Charity given from that motive is not charity, nor prayer offered from
it devotion.
I. The general warning is applied to three cases, of which we have to
deal with two. Our Lord speaks first of ostentatious almsgiving. Note
that we are not to take 'blowing the trumpets' as actual fact. Nobody
would do that in a synagogue. The meaning of all attempts, however
concealed, to draw attention to one's beneficence, is just what the
ear-splitting blast would be; and the incongruity of startling the
worshippers with the harsh notes is like the incongruity of doing good
and trying to attract notice. I think Christ's ear catches the screech
of the brazen abomination in a good many of the ways of raising and
giving money, which find favour in the Church to-day. This is an
advertising age, and flowers that used to blush unseen are forced now
under glass for exhibition. No one needs to blow his own trumpet
nowadays. We have improved on the ruder methods of the Pharisees, and
newspapers and collectors will blow lustily and loud for us, and defend
the noise on the ground that a good example stimulates others. Perhaps
so, though it may be a question what it stimulates to, and whether B's
gift, drawn from him in imitation or emulation of A's, is any liker
Christ's idea of gifts than was A's, given that B might hear of it. To
a very large extent, the money getting and giving arrangements of the
modern Church are neither more nor less than the attempt to draw
Christ's chariot with the devil's traces. Christ condemned ostentation.
His followers too often try to make use of it. 'They have their reward.'
Observe that _have_ means _have received in full_, and note the emphasis
of that _their_. It is all the reward that they will ever get, and all
that they are capable of. The pure and lasting crown, which is a fuller
possession of God Himself, has no charms for them, and could not be
given. And what a poor thing it is which they seek--the praise of men, a
breath, as unsubstantial and short-lived as the blast of the trumpet
which they blew before their selfish benevolence. Their charity was no
charity, for what they did was not to give, but to buy. Their gift was a
speculation. They invested in charity, and looked for a profit of
praise. How can they get God's reward? True benevolence will even hide
the giving right hand from the idle left, and, as far as may be, will
dismiss the deed from the doer's consciousness. Such alms, given wholly
out of pity and desire to be like the all-giving Father, can be
rewarded, and will be, with that richer acquaintance with Him and more
complete victory over self, which is the heaven of heaven and the
foretaste of it now.
In its coarsest forms, this ostentation is out and out hypocrisy, which
consciously assumes a virtue which it has not. But far more common and
dangerous is the subtle, unconscious mingling of it with real
charity--the eye wandering from the poor, whom the hand is helping, to
the bystanders--and it is this mingling which we have therefore to take
most heed to avoid. One drop of this sour stuff will curdle whole
gallons of the milk of human kindness. The hypocrisy which hoodwinks
ourselves is more common and perilous than that which blinds others.
II. We need not dwell at length on the second application of the general
warning--to prayer; as the words are almost, and the thoughts entirely,
identical with those of the former verses. If there be any action of the
spirit which requires the complete exclusion of thoughts of men, it is
prayer, which is the communion of the soul alone with God. It is as
impossible to pray, and at the same time to think of men, as to look up
and down at once. If we think of prayer, as formalists in all times have
done, as so many words, then it will not seem incongruous to choose the
places where men are thickest for 'saying our prayers,' and we shall do
it with all the more spirit if we have spectators. That accounts for a
great deal of the 'devotion' in Mohammedan and Roman Catholic countries
which travellers with no love for Protestant Christianity are so fond of
praising. But if we think of prayer as Christ did, as being the yearning
of the soul to God, we shall feel that the inmost chamber and the closed
door are its fitting accompaniments. Of course, our Lord is not
forbidding united prayer; for each of the assembled worshippers may be
holding communion with God, which is none the less solitary though
shared by others, and none the less united though in it each is alone
with God.
III. Our Lord passes for a time from the more immediate subject of
ostentation to add other teaching about prayer, which still farther
unfolds its true conception. Another corruption arising from the error
of thinking that prayer is an outward act, is 'vain repetition,'
characteristic of all heathen religion, and resting upon a profound
disbelief in the loving willingness of God to help. Of course, earnest,
reiterated prayer is not vain repetition. Jesus is not here condemning
His own agony in Gethsemane when He thrice 'said the same words.' The
persistence in prayer, which is the child of faith, is no relation to
the parrot-like repetition which is the child of disbelief, nor does the
condemnation of the one touch the other. The frenzied priests who
yelled, 'O Baal, hear us!' all the long day; the Buddhists who repeat
the sacred invocation till they are stupefied; the poor devotee who
thinks merit is proportioned to the number of Paternosters and Aves, are
all instances of this gross mechanical conception of prayer. Are there
no similar superstitions nearer home? Are there no ministers or
congregations that we ever heard of, who have a regulation length for
their prayers, and would scarcely think they had prayed at all if their
devotions were as short as most of the prayers in the Bible? Are we in
no danger of believing what Christ here tells us is pure
heathenism--that many words may move God?
The only real remedy against such degradation of the very idea of prayer
lies in the deeper conceptions of God and of it which Christ here gives.
He knows our needs before we ask. Then what is prayer for? Not to inform
Him, nor to move Him, unwilling, to have mercy, as if, like some proud
prince, He required a certain amount of recognition of His greatness as
the price of His favours, but to fit our own hearts by conscious need
and true desire and dependence, to receive the gifts which He is ever
willing to give, but we are not always fit to receive. As St. Augustine
has it, the empty vessel is by prayer carried to the full fountain.