The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The following excerpt is from The Gospel of the Kingdom, commentary on Matthew 6:1-2, page 32, Pilgrim Publications."Seek secrecy for your good deeds."
If we give to be seen, we shall be seen, and there will be an end of it: “Ye have no reward of your father which is in heaven”: we lose the only reward worth having. But if we give to please our Father, we shall find our reward at his hands.
To the matter of our intent and design we must “take heed”; for nobody goes right without carefully aiming to do so. Our giving of alms should be a holy duty, carefully performed, not for our own honour, but for God’s pleasure. Let each reader ask himself, how much he has done, in the way the King prescribes.
We must not copy the loud charity of certain vainglorious persons: their character is hypocritical, their manner is ostentatious, their aim is to be seen of men, their reward is in the present. That reward is a very poor one, and is soon over. To stand with a penny in one hand and a trumpet in the other is the posture of hypocrisy.
“Glory of men” is a thing which can be bought: but honour from God is a very different thing. This is an advertising age, and too many are saying, “Behold my liberality!” Those who have Jesus for their King must wear his livery of humility, and not the scarlet trappings of a purse-proud generosity, which blows its own trumpet, not only in the streets, but even in the synagogues.
We cannot expect two rewards for the same action: if we have it now we shall not have it hereafter. Unrewarded alms will alone count in the record of the last day.
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