III.  It may be a question whether, in verse 8, the emphasis is to be laid on ‘every one’ or on ‘that asketh,’ or, in other words, whether the saying is an assurance that the universal law will be followed in our case, or a statement of the universal condition without which no receiving is possible, and, least of all, the receiving of the gifts of the kingdom by its subjects.  In either case, this verse gives the reason for the preceding exhortation.  Then follows the tender illustration in which the dim-sighted love of earthly fathers is taken as a parable of the all-wise tenderness and desire to bestow which move the hand of the giving God.  There is some resemblance between an Eastern loaf and a stone, and some between a fish and a serpent.  However imperfect a father’s love, he will neither be cruel enough to cheat his unsuspecting child with what looks like an answer to his wish but is useless or hurtful, nor foolish enough to make a mistake.  All human relationships are in some measure marred by the faults of those who sustain them.  What a solemn attestation of universal sinfulness is in these words of Christ’s, and how calmly He separates Himself by His sinlessness from us!  I do not know that there is anywhere a stronger scriptural proof of these two truths than this one incidental clause, ‘ye, being evil.’  I wonder whether the people who pit the Sermon on the Mount against evangelical Christianity are ready to take this part of it into their creeds.  It is noteworthy, also, that the emphasis is laid, not on the earthly father’s willingness, but on his knowing how to give good gifts.  Our Lord seems to think that He need not assure us of the plain truth that of course our Father in heaven is willing, just because He is our Father, to give us all good; but He heartens us with the assurance that His love is wisdom, and that He cannot make any mistakes.  There are no stones mingled with our bread, nor any serpents among the fish.  He gives good, and nothing but good.

IV.  The great precept which closes the section is not only to be taken as an inference from the immediately preceding context, but as the summing up of all the duties to our neighbours, in which Christ has been laying down the law of the kingdom from Matthew v. 17.  This general reference of the ‘therefore’ is confirmed by the subsequent clause, ‘this is the law and the prophets’; the summing up of the whole past revelation of the divine will, and therefore in accordance with our Lord’s previous exposition of the relation between His new law and that former one.  As Luther puts it in his vigorous, homely way, ’With these words He now closes His instructions given in these three chapters, and ties it all up in a little bundle.’