The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 1 — Section 270

consider and seek his child's good without waiting to be asked? le It otherwise with God? But we are commanded to pray, and this of itself is sufficient jUBtification. Also it is natural-the great mass of men having/rayed without command, This, if not a justification of the practice, shows we shoul see clearly before refusing to fall in with it. Moreover, it is by coming in practical contact with his father's ideas that a child learns to know his father and himself; and the father often keeps back a gift till the uttered request of the child shows he is ripe for it. So by measuring our desires at each step of our life with the will of God, we learn to know him and ourselves, and through the things of this life are brought into true relation uith things eternal. The form of prayer which our Lord here gives, he gives chiefly as a model. To argue from it that he meant us to use forms of prayer is inconeequent. They have their uses-in private to suggest and stimulate; in public to provide for uniformity and seemliness of worship. But when they are used to the extinction or discouragement of unwritten. prayer they do harm in private and in public. The practice of private prayer here inculcated is one of the most difficult duties we have to attempt in life. It is often at this point the battle is lost or won. None of the deeper elements of character can grow without much prayer and converse with God. There are some virtues which can be produced by strength of will, but those which spring from the deeper root of reverence, penitence, render and solemn feeling, can only grow in the retired and peaceful atmo- sphere of God's presence. Prayer is the door opened for God into the whole life of man, and to shut him out here is to shut him out wholly. Our Lord himself could not sustain bis life without prayer; it is vain, therefore, for us to expect to do so. But, though all this is recognized, private prayer decays. If we can use in the world only that power for good which we receive from God, and if prayer is the gauge of this power, it will register an almost infinitesimal strength. We grudge to our intercourse with God either the time or the consideration we give to any communication that con- cerns our business or our friendship. And this means that duties that are seen of men we do, but such as are only seen of our Father, who" seeth in secret," we neglect. It means that we are practically atheists, and do not believe there is a Father who sees in secret. The general scope of the passage is a warning against hypo~isy. The hypocrite who is so intentionally is rare. The hypocrisy which is common is that which is unconscious, and in which the hypocrite is himself deceived. He. seeks the praise of men more than the praise of God ; but he is not himself aware of it. This makes it a fault most difficnlt to eradicate. But to such men there can be no religion; human judgmen t is the highest they seek to be approved by. It is their supreme. Even in the religious world men are liable to put the expectations of their co-religionists above the judgment of God. They fear to rebel lest they be considered as falling away from religion. Such persons, as our Lord says, have their reward. They eam the reputation of sanctity by sacrificing the ree.l possession ofit. Is it another reward that awaits you? Are you conscioUB that God, who sees in secret, has laid up in his remembrance many true prayers, many holy desires, many earnest searchings of heart that he has seen in you? Nothing but learning to live in his presence will deliver us from falseness and self-deceit and from courting the favour of men.-D. Vers.19-34.-Sermon on the mount: 5. Thought/or the mo"O'W, There has been set before us a righteousness, perfect in its outward expression and in its root, and if now we ask-How are we to attain this? we are told-By loving it. That is the only way. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Your likings are the eyes of your inner man; if they are rightly placed your whole life will be right. Just as a man has an organ to guide him in the physical world, so he has an organ for his guiding in the_ moral and spiritual 'l!orld. If the eye is sound, t_he v.:hole b?41y is full of liaht, that 1e, every member receives through the eye all the light 1t requires. But if tl•~ eye be unsound, no other organ can play its part. It is vain for you to give the blind man more light; it is not more light but other eyes he needs. And so, says our Lord, it is vain to profess that your heart is where in fact you see no treasure a~ ~ll. Rather humbly own that you do not see as you ought, and seek to have your v1s10n cleared by him "who came into this world that they that see not might see." In the remainder of the passaae our Lord addresses himself to those who, though not drawn by the attraotiven8BB ~f the heavenly treasure, yet wish to have it a.long with the on. v1. 1-34.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MA.TTHEW. 263