of us for anything.  With the praise or blame of men we have nought to do.  Their blame may be a good thing, their praise cannot be.  But the worst sort of the praise of men is the praise we give ourselves.  We must do nothing to be seen of ourselves.  We must seek no approbation even, but that of God, else we shut the door of the kingdom from the outside.  His approbation will but quicken our sense of unworthiness.  What! seek the praise of men for being fair to our own brothers and sisters?  What! seek the praise of God for laying our hearts at the feet of him to whom we utterly belong?  There is no pride so mean—­and all pride is absolutely, essentially mean—­as the pride of being holier than our fellow, except the pride of being holy.  Such imagined holiness is foulness.  Religion itself in the hearts of the unreal, is a dead thing; what seems life in it, is the vermiculate life of a corpse.

There is one word in the context, as we have it in the authorized version, that used to trouble me, seeming to make its publicity a portion of the reward for doing certain right things in secret:  I mean the word openly, at the ends of the fourth, the sixth, and the eighteenth verses, making the Lord seem to say, ’Avoid the praise of men, and thou shalt at length have the praise of men.’—­’Thy father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.’ Thy reward shall be seen of men! and thou seen as the receiver of the reward! In what other way could the word, then or now, be fairly understood?  It must be the interpolation of some Jew scribe, who, even after learning a little of the Christ, continued unable to conceive as reward anything that did not draw part at least of its sweetness from the gazing eyes of the multitude.  Glad was I to find that the word is not in the best manuscripts; and God be thanked that it is left out in the revised version.  What shall we think of the daring that could interpolate it!  But of like sort is the daring of much exposition of the Master’s words.  What men have not faith enough to receive, they will still dilute to the standard of their own faculty of reception.  If any one say, ’Why did the Lord let the word remain there so long, if he never said it?’ I answer:  Perhaps that the minds of his disciples might be troubled at its presence, arise against it, and do him right by casting it out—­and so Wisdom be justified of her children.

But there are some who, if the notion of reward is not naturally a trouble to them, yet have come to feel it such, because of the words of certain objectors who think to take a higher stand than the Christian, saying the idea of reward for doing right is a low, an unworthy idea.  Now, verily, it would be a low thing for any child to do his father’s will in the hope that his father would reward him for it; but it is quite another thing for a father whose child endeavours to please him, to let him know that he recognizes his childness toward him, and will be fatherly