than it will bear, exposure to excessive cold or heat, want of cleanliness; any of these may not only distress it for a time, but damage it altogether. When the eye thus becomes evil, darkness ensues. It is no longer a light-bearer, no longer a means or channel of perception and knowledge and comfort. The door is shut. This avenue of the body is closed. Daylight is shut out. Darkness reigns undisturbed. Not so when the eye is single, perfect, without blemish. Then it brings only light, and as much as the body may need; even to the full, even to every part. But let it be ever so slightly deranged, then it is no longer perfect, no longer an exact conductor of light. And hence arise those expressions, a distorted view of things, seeing double; a thing men often do when this organ is vitiated by disease or by excess, and which is literally the opposite to that correct and single eye of which our Lord first speaks. And sometimes the mischief spreads till, the whole source of light having become depraved, the whole body becomes consequently full of darkness. How dark must be that life whose very light is darkness, whose guide misleads! "Sin enters at the eye The organ which was meant to be the avenue of Light to the Body, thereby becomes the channel by which pollution enters and darkness abounds."1 Let us preserve it single, jealously guarding it from whatever might corrupt or pervert it, lest instead of a source of spiritual light, it become a minister of darkness. CXXIV. TWO MASTERS. St. Matthew vi. 24. No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Our Lord does not mean that a man cannot do some sort 1 A Plain Commentary. 2 of service to two different masters; but the word strictly means to be devoted to the service of one, and that is a thing which is impossible in the case of two. By these masters too are meant masters of different sentiments, utterly opposed one to another, deadly enemies, having opposite interests, and sending us on contrary errands. Otherwise, if they agreed together, they would not in this sense be two, but might be taken as one. Mammon literally means money. It is wealth personified. Just as the Greeks had their god Plutus, who was supposed to preside over riches, so had the Jews (however unwilling they might be to acknowledge it) their god Mammon; and so unhappily have Christians. The idol still exists; not in statues and images, as among those Gentiles, but (which is worse) in the hearts of men. There this worship is enshrined, and still men fall down and worship the golden image, and make to themselves idols of silver and of gold. For idolatry is not extinct. We must worship somewhat. This is an instinct of the human heart; and as the human heart is fallen and perverted from its original uprightness, we are prone to worship the false instead of the true. Then, when the Divine light is let in upon our darkness, and conscience is in some degree awakened-unwilling to do the work thoroughly, too indolent, too infatuated to forsake the slavery of Mammon and follow Him fully "whose service is perfect freedom"-we try to make a compromise, to sew a piece of new cloth on to the old garment, to pour fermenting wine into the weak worn-out skins, to serve God and Mammon. Our Lord instances Mammon, or as we say Money; for this is the god of our idolatry; this the most popular idol, the one that is worshipped by the greater number. There is nothing that men will not do for money.* For money a man will barter his own soul. But though See the original word. 2 Beza. 3 In America, which seems given, almost more even than ourselves, to this greed of gain, it has passed into a proverb, and the " Almighty dollar" is a phrase coined to express this very passion. Col. iii, 5. So the pagan satirist (as in this case he was) exclaimed in his day. See Vir. En. iii. 56, and Hor. Ep. I. i. 53, 66. See too Paradise Lost, i. 678, "Mammon led them on," &c. this Mammon means literally money or its equivalent, what money will procure, or what may be converted into money, we may take it as put for any other thing that comes into competition with God's claim to our devoted service. Mammon is the head of a class and stands for all that comes between us and God.1 He does not, we must notice, say, Do not; neither does He say, Ye ought not; but He says simply, Ye cannot. He is not here either dissuading us or forbidding us. He contents Himself with announcing the utter impossibility of the thing; and the inference we are to draw from His announcement is to cease from the vain attempt. Compromise, compound, fear the Lord and worship your own gods-this is the plan of the world. Thou shalt have none other gods but me-this is the first precept of Christ's Church. As Joshua first, and as Elijah after him, challenged the children of his people, "Choose you this day whom ye will serve." "If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow Him." CXXV. AGAINST WORLDLY CARE. St. Matthew vi, 25-27. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fouls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? Our Lord ever taught "as one that had authority." This “I say unto you" recurs continually throughout the Divine less take the universal as intended by the particular. 1 Our Lord seems throughout this context to be warning His hearers against covetousness. See also St. Luke xvi. 9-14. We may neverthe 22 Ki. xvii. 24-41; Josh. xxiv. 15; 1 Ki, xviii. 21. Sce Persius v. 155. discourse. What He here says is a sort of inference from what has gone before. He who chooses the service of God shall find God not wanting to him. He who seeks first the Kingdom of God shall have all needful things added unto him. Let him therefore dismiss from his mind all undue anxiety about the things of this life; those worldly cares which absorb the attention of "the children of this world." The children of a Heavenly Father must not be as the heathen. The words here rendered "Take no thought "1 are not meant to encourage improvidence, or to dissuade us from the duties of our calling. It is over-anxiety that our Lord condemns. There is a carefulness for the body and the things of this life which is a duty; and there is a carefulness for these which is a sin. We are however in most danger of being distrustful and careful over much, like Martha careful and troubled about many things, and therefore our Lord warns us against this state of mind; warns us against excessive anxiety even about lawful, even about necessary things. And this warning He enforces by no less than six considerations, which He puts mostly into the shape of questions, to which the good sense of his hearers can give one only answer. 1. First-it is an argument from the greater to the less-He who gave us our being at the first, will give us the food needful to sustain it. He who prepared for us a body, will provide the necessary raiment. 2. He feedeth the ravens : 2 will He not much more feed His children? "Behold," says the Divine Teacher; pointing, it might be, to the birds of the air, which even then were receiving their meat from God3 on that mountain side. For all your anxiety no one among you will attain to add anything worth speaking of to the measure of his days, to his appointed time upon earth." 4 1 See the original. In St. Luke's similar language on another occasion (xii. 29) we have another word, which explains this. Abp. Trench (Expos. of Sermon on the Mount, p. 280) refers to the abuse of these words by the Manichæans, and by the Euchites, or idle vagabond monks who "affirmed not merely the lawfulness of living without labour, but on the plea of this passage avowed it as a point of perfection to abstain from all toil." 2 So in St. Luke xii. 24. 3 Psalms civ. 12, 21, 27, 28; cxlv. 15, 16. 4 Ps. xxxix. 4, 5. 5 Job. vii. 1; xiv. 5, 14. Our Lord is not speaking of stature, but of the CXXVI. THE SAME SUBJECT-continued. St. Matthew vi. 28-34. And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (for after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. 3. From the first necessary of life our Lord proceeds to the second, pointing, it might be, to the lilies growing wild in the neighbouring vallies. They grow gradually, unconsciously, without any care on their part, into beauty and grace. They toil not, as men do; neither do they spin, as the women. Here is a hint to either sex. And yet even |