ot the bringing in
of the 'reward' as a motive a woful downcome? and is love that loves for
the sake of reward, love at all? The criticism and questions forget that
the true motive has just been set forth, and that the thought of
'reward' comes in, only as secondary encouragement to a duty which is
based upon another ground. To love because we shall gain something,
either in this world or in the next, is not love but long-sighted
selfishness; but to be helped in our endeavours to widen our love so as
to take in all men, by the vision of the reward, is not selfishness but
a legitimate strengthening of our weakness. Especially is that so, in
view of the fact that 'the reward' contemplated is nothing else than the
growth of likeness to the Father in heaven, and the increase of filial
consciousness, and the clearer, deeper cry, 'Abba, Father.' If longing
for, and having regard to, that 'recompense of reward' is selfishness,
and if the teaching which permits it is immoral, may God send the world
more of such selfishness and of teachers of it!

But the reference to the shrunken love-streams that flow among men
passes again swiftly to the former thought of likeness to God as the
great pattern. Like a bird glancing downwards for a moment to earth, and
then up again and away into the blue, our Lord's words re-soar, and
settle at last by the throne of God. The command, 'Be ye perfect, even
as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,' may be intended to refer
only to the immediately preceding section, but one is inclined to regard
it rather as the summing up of the whole of the preceding series of
commandments from verse 20 onwards. The sum of religion is to imitate
the God whom we worship. The ideal which draws us to aim at its
realisation must be absolutely perfect, however imperfect may be all our
attempts to reproduce it. We sometimes hear it said that to set up
perfection as our goal is to smite effort dead and to enthrone despair.
But to set up an incomplete ideal is the surest way to take the heart
out of effort after it. It is the Christian's prerogative to have ever
gleaming before him an unattained aim, to which he is progressively
approximating, and which, unreached, beckons, feeds hope of endless
approach, and guarantees immortality.

TRUMPETS AND STREET CORNERS

'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.
Th