cept. Yet as the relief of a very pressing want comes up even in many a man's business career, even here, too, true charity finds plenty of scope for action.

See also notes on S. Matth. 6:19-21, and S. Luke 6:29, 30.

5:43. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy."

Neither national nor private hatred can find place in the ideal Christian life for which we are striving, to which all men must ultimately be brought.

5:44. "But I tell you: Love your enemies," etc.

If we would know how we are to attain to love of neighbor as well as ourselves, we need only follow these explicit practical exhortations: Love those even that natural impulse prompts you to hate. Give expression to your love in prayer for those who despitefully use you and persecute you. For while sometimes circumstances may preclude overt acts of love towards them, while sometimes loving words to them would be met by scorn, prayer to God for them cannot fail of its purpose. In so doing we ourselves become like God and make his will our own.

We thus draw near God's perfection and become partakers of his holiness. So, as Shakespeare puts a very like thought: Mercy

"is an attribute of God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice."

See also note on S. Luke 6:27.

6:1. "Be careful not to do your religious duties before men to be looked at by them."

Spontaneous love, a spirit of self-denial and a desire, to render adoration, constitute the essence of all true relig.

ion. Let love of earthly praise and power usurp the place of these in the giving of assistance to a brother in need, and you have shorn your deed of all that in which the purest and highest form of religion naturally shows itself.

Not the fact of publicity then, but the motive of making it public is what gives a good or a bad character to any action.

The high ideal of a true disciple of Christ is to let his light shine before men without reference to their praise or blame.

See also note on 5:16.

6:3.

"So when you do charitable things." What a contrast we have here?

While the ostentatious man is seeking to make known his good works to others, the true follower of Christ must be careful how even he himself contemplates his own good deeds.

In considering these words of our Lord, we must remember that they have reference to the individual in his private ministration.

In all public, charitable, undertakings on the other hand, when a whole community has joined together to forward such a movement, a certain amount of publicity is a duty we owe to our fellows.

In the erection and carrying on of churches, schools, hospitals and the like, for instance, there must be a more or less public accounting of the funds contributed. This must be done for their protection and for other legitimate and truly religious motives.

See also note on 5:16.

6:6. "When you pray."

This of course has reference to personal prayers. These

should always be of the strictest privacy. Public prayer, at the time of the assembling of the congregation for worship, is not here referred to.

6:7. "Do not use vain repetitions like the heathen do." The word in the original used here for vain repetitions is but poorly rendered in our English version.

Formed from a word which reproduces the repeated attempts of the stammerer to clothe his thoughts in words, it might almost be rendered: "Do not stutter out your prayers. Do not babble them over."

These words describe only too faithfully the act of prayer when it becomes mechanical.

On the other hand, it is made thus manifestly clear, that these words of Christ have no reference to the repetitions incident upon intense emotion and genuine fervor. Our Lord himself prayed three times using the same words.

How far the use of the Lord's Prayer or of the Kyrie Eleison of the Church's Litanies is open to the charge of "vain repetition " is another question.

It is obvious to all that their use may easily become so to any mechanical worshiper of the Pharisaic type. Yet, on the other hand, as an ever accumulating weight of evidence from really devout souls has continually borne witness, such apt and well considered repetitions have always been found helpful in sustaining the emotion without which prayer is dead.

Our Lord is here speaking against the root evil of Pharisaism as well as heathenism. They think they will be heard for their much speaking. They falsely consider prayer as having a quantitive mechanical force, increasing in effectiveness in proportion to the number of prayers offered. If fifty fail, a hundred may prevail.

But all such views of the use and purpose of prayer as

sume the object of prayer to be to change the will of God, or to inform him of what he is ignorant of.

Our Lord here teaches us that in the very fact of such an assumption we vitiate at once the quality of prayer. After this manner therefore pray ye, “Our Father."

6:9. "Our Father."

The first expression of thought in the pattern prayer of the world is a paternal thought: "Our Father."

The first expression of a wish is not an utterance of our wants, but that the name "Our Father" may be hallowed. We are taught to have as our first great wish that, “Our Father's name may be to us and to all men a holy name. -not lightly used in trivial speech, rash assertion, or bitterness of debate, but rather the object of awe, love, adoration.

As it is in the first three Gospels, so in that of S. John, we find Jesus praying: "Father, glorify thy name."

See also note on S. Luke 11:2.

6:12. "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.'

In the very act of prayer we are to remind ourselves that the only condition of our own forgiveness is that we also forgive our debtors.

Even in the free grace of God there is a law of retribu

tion.

The temper that does not forgive cannot be forgiven If we will insist upon the payment of the hundred dollars owed us, we bring back upon us the far heavier debt of the fifty million dollars (Chapt. 18: 23-35).

See also note on S. Mark 11:25, and S. Luke 11:4.

6:19-21. "Do not be laying up for yourselves treasures

on earth."

On the face of them these words teach a doctrine that

is contrary to the whole course of the Christian world. They are directly contrary, not only to miserly hoarding, not only to all miserable stinginess, not only to such hardheartedness as can be laid at the door of those by comparison called rich. They are, thus taken, contrary as well to every species of accumulated wealth. Whether that wealth consists of money or lands or bonds or stocks or anything else beside, these words, on the face of them, are against it.

The same must be said of S. Matthew 5:42; 19: 21'; S. Luke 12:33, 34; 18:22-30.

Yes, and many sayings of our Lord go further than this. Such are S. Matthew 10:9 and its parallels, S. Luke 9:3, IO: 4. These go the length of specific commands to certain persons not to hold any property at all.

Now is this surface meaning the real truth our Lord in these places means to teach?

If it is, then our Lord forbids the laying up of money except as is needful for the supply of our daily wants. He forbids the accumulation of capital on interest. He declares against its employment on the building and keeping up of mills and shops and factories. He is against the working of mines. He is against the building and operating of our great railway systems. He is against all these things because none of them can be maintained or brought into operation except by the laying up of capital, except by the stimulating of desires which are not bound by the supply of daily wants. In short these words of our Lord, on the face of them, are altogether against the existence of great commercial countries such as England and America.

But we have learned that it is not safe to take any text of scripture without its context. It is not safe to take any series of Bible texts without considering well the circum