no reward of your Father which is in heaven.” Then follows, “But when thou doest alms.” When He says, “But thou,” what else does He mean but, Not in the same manner as they? What, then, does He bid me do? “But when thou doest alms,” says He, “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” Hence those other parties so act, that their left hand knoweth what their right hand doeth. What, therefore, is blamed in them, this thou art forbidden to do. But this is what is blamed in them, that they act in such a way as to seek the praises of men. And therefore the left hand seems to have no more suitable meaning than just this delight in praise. But the right hand means the intention of fulfilling the divine commands. When, therefore, with the consciousness of him who does alms is mixed up the desire of man’s praise, the left hand becomes conscious of the work of the right hand: “Let not, therefore, thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth;”254 i.e. Let there not be mixed up in thy consciousness the desire of man’s praise, when in doing alms thou art striving to fulfil a divine command. 9. “That thine alms may be in secret.”255 What else is meant by “in secret,” but just in a good conscience, which cannot be shown to human eyes, nor revealed by words? since, indeed, the mass of men tell many lies. And therefore, if the right hand acts inwardly in secret, all outward things, which are visible and temporal, belong to the left hand. Let thine alms, therefore, be in thine own consciousness, where many do alms by their good intention, even if they have no money or anything else which is to be bestowed on one who is needy. But many give alms outwardly, and not inwardly, who either from ambition, or for the sake of some temporal object, wish to appear merciful, in whom the left hand only is to be reckoned as working. Others again hold, as it were, a middle place between the two; so that, with a design which is directed Godward, they do their alms, and yet there insinuates itself 37 into this excellent wish also some desire after praise, or after a perishable and temporal object of some sort or other. But our Lord much more strongly prohibits the left hand alone being at work in us, when He even forbids its being mixed up with the works of the right hand: that is to say, that we are not only to beware of doing alms from the desire of temporal objects alone; but that in this work we are not even to have regard to God in such a way as that there should be mingled up or united therewith the grasping after outward advantages. For the question under discussion is the cleansing of the heart, which, unless it be single, will not be clean. But how will it be single, if it serves two masters, and does not purge its vision by 254 “With complete modesty; secret, noiseless giving” (Chrysostom). No reference to a counting of the money by the left hand (Paulus, De Wette). Luther’s comment is quaint and characteristic: “When thou givest alms with thy right hand, take heed that thou dost not seek with the left to take more, but put it behind thy back.” Trench pronounces this discussion concerning the meaning of the left hand “laborious, and, as I cannot but think, unnecessary;” but it is ingenious and interesting. 255 Pii lucent et tamen latent (Bengel). 91 Chapter II