This closes the first part of the Sermon on the Mount.' The second part is contained in St. Matt. vi. In this the criticism of the Law is carried deeper. The question now is not as concerns the Law in its literality, but as to what constituted more than a mere observance of the outward commandments: piety, spirituality, sanctity. Three points here stood out specially - nay, stand out still, and in all ages. Hence this criticism was not only of special application to the Jews, but is universal, we might almost say, prophetic. These three high points are alms, prayer, and fasting - or, to put the latter more generally, the relation of the physical to the spiritual. These three are successively presented, negatively and positively. [2515] But even so, this would have been but the external aspect of them. The Kingdom of God carries all back to the grand underlying ideas. What were this or that mode of giving alms, unless the right idea be apprehended, of what constitutes riches, and where they should be sought? This is indicated in verses 19 to 21. Again, as to prayer: what matters it if we avoid the externalism of the Pharisees, or even catch the right form as set forth in the Lord's Prayer,' unless we realise what underlies prayer? It is to lay our inner man wholly open to the light of God in genuine, earnest simplicity, to be quite shone through by Him. [2516] It is, moreover, absolute and undivided self-dedication to God. [2517] And in this lies its connection, alike with the spirit that prompts almsgiving, and with that which prompts real fasting. That which underlies all such fasting is a right view of the relation in which the body with its wants stands to God - the temporal to the spiritual. [2518] It is the spirit of prayer which must rule alike alms and fasting, and pervade them: the upward look and self-dedication to God, the seeking first after the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness, that man, and self, and life may be baptized in it. Such are the real alms, the real prayers, the real fasts of the Kingdom of God.
If we have rightly apprehended the meaning of the two first parts of the Sermon on the Mount,' we cannot be at a loss to understand its third part, as set forth in the seventh chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. Briefly, it is this, as addressed to His contemporaries, nay, with wider application to the men of all times: First, the Kingdom of God cannot be circumscribed, as you would do it. [2519] Secondly, it cannot be extended, as you would do it, by external means, [2520] but cometh to us from God, [2521] and is entered by personal determination and separation. [2522] Thirdly, it is not preached, as too often is attempted, when thoughts of it are merely of the external. [2523] Lastly, it is not manifested in life in the manner too common among religionists, but is very real, and true, and good in its effects. [2524] And this Kingdom, as received by each of us, is like a solid house on a solid foundation, which nothing from without can shake or destroy. [2525]
The infinite contrast, just set forth, between the Kingdom as presented by the Christ and Jewish contemporary teaching is the more striking, that it was expressed in a form, and clothed in words with which all His hearers were familiar; indeed, in modes of expression current at the time. It is this which has misled so many in their quotations of Rabbinic parallels to the Sermon on the Mount.' They perceive outward similarity, and they straightway set it down to identity of spirit, not understanding that often those things are most unlike in the spirit of them, which are most like in their form. No part of the New Testament has had a larger array of Rabbinic parallels adduced than the Sermon on the Mount;' and this, as we might expect, because, in teaching addressed to His contemporaries, Jesus would naturally use the forms with which they were familiar. Many of these Rabbinic quotations are, however, entirely inapt, the similarity lying in an expression or turn of words. [2526] Occasionally, the misleading error goes even further, and that is quoted in illustration of Jesus' sayings which, either by itself or in the context, implies quite the opposite. A detailed analysis would lead too far, but a few specimens will sufficiently illustrate our meaning.