This truth――that our Lord is giving us principles, not laws――will appear only more conspicuously now, when we pass to the next great section of the Sermon; because it will be obvious that our Lord can only be dealing with motives of action――motives such as belong to the secret heart of the individual. He proceeds to inculcate the abandonment of a worldly temper by prohibiting, literally, such religious actions as other men can see. But His own example, His own institution of a corporate religion, His special promises to common worship, His countermaxim “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,” force us to recognize the proverbial character of these prohibitions, and to look for the principle rather than the law. And indeed this sixth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel has one subject throughout. It teaches us one great principle――that the new righteousness, the righteousness of the citizens of the kingdom, looks throughout towards God. God is its motive, God is its aim, God is its object; God, and nothing lower than God. No man is truly a citizen who is not in all his conduct and life looking directly God-ward. We will attend first to verses 1‒18, omitting the positive directions about prayer. Their theme does not vary: The Christian righteousness, in all its departments, looks for divine praise; never for human praise. Our Lord lays this down first of righteousness generally, then of its different branches. Thus, in the first place, of righteousness generally: “Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them: else ye have no reward with your Father which is in heaven.”