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.'
Obse