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.  Therefore, when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues, and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.  Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 3.  But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth; 4.  That thine alms may be in secret:  and thy Father, which seeth in secret, Himself shall reward thee openly. 5.  And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are:  for they love to pray standing in the synagogues, and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.  Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.’—­MATT. vi. 1-5.

Our Lord follows His exposition of the deepened sense which the old law assumes in His kingdom, by a warning against the most subtle foes of true righteousness.  He first gives the warning in general terms in verse 1, and then flashes its light into three dark corners, and shows how hankering after men’s praise corrupts the beneficence which is our duty to our neighbour, the devotion which is our duty to God, and the abstinence which is our duty to ourselves.  We deal now with the two former.