'Then he which had received the one talent came and
said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man,
reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where
thou hast not strawed: 25. And I was afraid, and went
and hid thy talent in the earth.'-MATT. xxv. 24, 25.
That was a strangely insolent excuse for indolence. To charge an
angry master to his face with grasping greed and injustice was
certainly not the way to conciliate him. Such language is quite
unnatural and incongruous until we remember the reality which the
parable was meant to shadow--viz., the answers for their deeds which
men will give at Christ's judgment bar. Then we can understand how,
by some irresistible necessity, this man was compelled, even at the
risk of increasing the indignation of the master, to turn himself
inside out, and to put into harsh, ugly words the half-conscious
thoughts which had guided his life and caused his unfaithfulness.
'Every one of us shall give account of himself to God.' The
unabashed impudence of such an excuse for idleness as this is but
putting into vivid and impressive form this truth, that then a man's
actions in their true character, and the ugly motives that underlie
them, and which he did not always honestly confess to himself, will
be clear before him. It will be as much of a surprise to the men
themselves, in many cases, as it could be to listeners. Thus it
becomes us to look well to the under side of our lives, the unspoken
convictions and the unformulated motives which work all the more
mightily upon us because, for the most part, they work in the dark.
This is Christ's explanation of one very operative and fruitful
cause of the refusal to serve Him.
I. I ask you, then, to consider, first, the slander here and the
truth that contradicts it.
'I knew thee that thou art an hard man,' says he, 'reaping where
them hast not sown' (and he was standing with the unused talent in
his hand all the while), 'and gathering where thou hast not
strawed.' That is to say, deep down in many a heart that has never
said as much to itself, there lies this black drop of gall--a
conception of the divine character rather as demanding than as
giving, a thought of Him as exacting. What He requires is more
considered than what He bestows. So religion is thought to be mainly
a matter of doing certain things and rendering up certain
sacrifices, instead of being regarded, as it really is, as mainly a
matter of receiving from God. Christ's authority makes me bold to
say that this error underlies the lives of an immense number of
nominal Christians, of people who think themselves very good and
religious, as well as the lives of thousands who stand apart from
religion altogether. And I want, not to drag down any curtain by my
own hand, but to ask you to lift away the veil which hides the ugly
thing in your hearts, and to put your own consciousness to the bar
of your own conscience, and say whether it is not true that the
uppermost thought about God, when you think about Him at all, is,
'Thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown.'
It is not difficult to understand why such a thought of God should
rise in a heart which has no delight in Him nor in His service.
There is a side of the truth as to God's relations to man which
gives a colour of plausibility to the slander. Grave and stringent
requirements are made by the divine law upon each of us; and our
consciences tell us that they have not been kept. Therefore we seek
to persuade ourselves that they are too severe. Then, further, we
are, by reason of our own selfishness, almost incapable of rising to
the conception of God's pure, perfect, disinterested love; and we
are far too blind to the benefits that He pours upon us all every
day of our lives. And so from all these reasons taken together, and
some more besides, it comes about that, for some of us, the blessed
sun in the heavens, the God of all mercy and love, has been darkened
into a lurid orb shorn of all its beneficent beams, and hangs
threatening there in our misty sky. 'I knew Thee that Thou art an
hard man.' Ah! I am sure that if we would go down into the deep
places of our own hearts, and ask ourselves what our real thought of
God is, many of us would acknowledge that it is something like that.
Now turn to the other side. What is the truth that smites this
slander to death? That God is perfect, pure, unmingled, infinite
love. And what is love? The infinite desire to impart itself. His
'nature and property' is to be merciful, and you can no more stop
God from giving than you can shut up the rays of the sun within
itself. To be and to bestow are for Him one and the same thing. His
love is an infinite longing to give, which passes over into
perpetual acts of beneficence. He never reaps where He has not sown.
Is there any place where He has not sown? Is there any heart on
which there have been no seeds of goodness scattered from His rich
hand? The calumniator in the text was speaking his slanders with
that in his hand which should have stopped his mouth. He who
complained that the hard master was asking for fruit of what He had
not given would have had nothing at all, if he had not obtained the
one talent from His hand. And there is no place in the whole wide
universe of God where His love has not scattered its beneficent
gifts. There are no fallow fields out of cultivation and unsown, in
His great farm. He never asks where He has not given.
He never asks until after He has given. He begins with bestowing,
and it is only after the vineyard has been planted on the very
fruitful hill, and the hedge built round about it, and the winepress
digged, and the tower erected, and miracles of long-suffering mercy
and skilful patience have been lavished upon it, that then He looks
that it should bring forth grapes. God's gifts precede His
requirements. He ever sows before He reaps. More than that, He gives
_what_ He asks, helping us to render to Him the hearts that He
desires. He, by His own merciful communications, makes it possible
that we should lay at His feet the tribute of loving thanks. Just as
a parent will give a child some money in order that the child may go
and buy the giver a birthday present, so God gives to us hearts, and
enriches them with many bestowments. He scatters round about us good
from His hand, like drops of a fragrant perfume from a blazing
torch, in order that we may catch them up and have some portion of
the joy which is especially His own--the joy of giving. It would be
a poor affair if our sole relation to God were that of receiving. It
would be a tyrannous affair if our sole relation to God were that of
rendering up. But both relations are united, and if it be 'more
blessed to give than to receive,' the Giver of all good does not
leave us without the opportunity of entering in even to that
superlative blessing. We have to come to Him and say, when we lay
the gifts, either of our faculties or of our trust, of our riches or
of our virtues, at His feet, 'All things come of Thee, and of Thine
own have we given Thee.'
He asks for our sakes, and not for His own. 'If I were hungry I
would not tell thee, for the cattle upon a thousand hills are Mine.
Offer unto God praise, and pay thy vows unto the Most High.' It is
blessed to us to render. He is none the richer for all our giving,
as He is none the poorer for all His. Yet His giving to us is real,
and our giving is real and a joy to Him. That is the truth lifted up
against the slander of the natural heart. God is love, pure giving,
unlimited and perpetual disposition to bestow. He gives all things
before He asks for anything, and when He asks for anything it is
that we may be blessed.
But you say, 'That is all very well--where do you learn all that about
God?' My answer is a very simple one. I learn it, and I believe there
is no other place to learn it, at the Cross of Jesus Christ. If that
be the very apex of the divine love and self-revelation; if, looking
upon it, we understand God better than by any other means, then there
can be no question but that instead of gathering where He has not
strawed, and reaping where He has not sown, God is only, and always,
and utterly, and to every man, infinite love that bestows itself. My
heart says to me many a time, 'God's laws are hard, God's judgment is
strict. God requires what you cannot give. Crouch before Him, and be
afraid.' And my faith says, 'Get thee behind me, Satan!' 'He that
spared not His own Son, ... how shall He not with Him also freely give
us all things?' The Cross of Christ is the answer to the slander, and
the revelation of the giving God.
II. Secondly, mark here the fear that dogs such a thought, and the
love that casts out the fear.
'I was afraid.' Yes, of course. If a man is not a fool, his emotions
follow his thoughts, and his thoughts ought to shape his emotions.
And wherever there is the twilight of uncertainty upon the great
lesson that the Cross of Jesus Christ has taught us, _there_
there will be, however masked and however modified by other
thoughts, deep in the human heart, a perhaps unspoken, but not
therefore ineffectual, dread of God. Just as the misconception of
the divine character does influence many a life in which it has
never been spoken articulately, and needs some steady observation of
ourselves to be detected, so is it with this dread of Him. Carry the
task of self-examination a little further, and ask yourselves
whether there does not lie coiled in many of your hearts this dread
of God, like a sleeping snake which only needs a little warmth to be
awakened to sting. There are all the signs of it. There are many of
you who have a distinct indisposition to be brought close up to the
thought of Him. There are many of you who have a distinct sense of
discomfort when you are pressed against the realities of the
Christian religion. There are many of you who, though you cover it
over with a shallow confidence, or endeavour to persuade yourselves
into speculative doubts about the divine nature, or hide it from
yourselves by indifference, yet know that all that is very thin ice,
and that there is a great black pool down below---a dread at the
heart, of a righteous Judge somewhere, with whom you have somewhat
to do, that you cannot shake off. I do not want to appeal to fear,
but it goes to one's heart to see the hundreds and thousands of
people round about us who, just because they are afraid of God, will
not think about Him, put away angrily and impatiently solemn words
like these that I am trying to speak, and seek to surround
themselves with some kind of a fool's paradise of indifference, and
to shut their eyes to facts and realities. You do not confess it to
yourselves. What kind of a thought must that be about your relation
to God which you are afraid to speak? Some of you remember the awful
words in one of Shakespeare's plays: 'Now I, to comfort him, bid him
he should not think of God. I hoped there was no need to trouble
himself with any such thoughts yet.' What does that teach us? 'I
knew Thee that Thou art an hard man; and I was afraid.'
Dear friend, there are two religions in this world: there is the
religion of fear, and there is the religion of love; and if you have
not the one, you must have the other, if you have any at all. The
only way to get perfect love that casts out fear is to be quite sure
of the Father-love in heaven that begets it. And the only way to be
sure of the infinite love in the heavens that kindles some little
spark of love in our hearts here, is to go to Christ and learn the
lesson that He reveals to us at His Cross. Love will annihilate the
fear; or rather, if I may take such a figure, will set a light to
the wreathing smoke that rises, and flash it all up into a ruddy
flame. For the perfect love that casts out fear sublimes it into
reverence and changes it into trust. Have you got that love, and did
you get it at Christ's Cross?
III. Lastly, mark the torpor of fear and the activity of love. 'I
was afraid, and I went and hid thy talent in the earth.'
Fear paralyses service, cuts the nerve of activity, makes a man
refuse obedience to God. It was a very illogical thing of that
indolent servant to say, 'I knew that you were so hard in exacting
what was due to you that therefore I determined _not_ to give
it to you.' Is it more illogical and more absurd than what hundreds
of men and women round about us do to-day, when they say, 'God's
requirements are so great that I do _not_ attempt to fulfil
them'? One would have thought that he would have reasoned the other
way, and said, 'Because I knew that Thy requirements were so great
and severe, therefore I put myself with all my powers to my work.'
Not so. Logical or illogical, the result remains, that that thought
of God, that black drop of gall, in many a heart, stops the action
of the hand. Fear is barren, or if it produces anything it is
nothing to the purpose, and it brings gifts that not even God's love
can accept, for there is no love in them. Fear is barren; Love is
fruitful--like the two mountains of Samaria, from one of which the
rolling burden of the curses of the Law was thundered, and from the
other of which the sweet words of promise and of blessing were
chanted in musical response. On the one side are black rocks,
without a blade of grass on them, the Mount of Cursing; on the other
side are blushing grapes and vineyards, the Mount of Blessing. Love
moves to action, fear paralyses into indolence. And the reason why
such hosts of you do nothing for God is because your hearts have
never been touched with the thorough conviction that He has done
everything for you, and asks you but to love Him back again, and
bring Him your hearts. These dark thoughts are like the frost which
binds the ground in iron fetters, making all the little flowers that
were beginning to push their heads into the light shrink back again.
And love, when it comes, will come like the west wind and the
sunshine of the Spring; and before its emancipating fingers the
earth's fetters will be cast aside, and the white snowdrops and the
yellow crocuses will show themselves above the ground. If you want
your hearts to bear any fruit of noble living, and holy
consecration, and pure deeds, then here is the process--Begin with
the knowledge and belief of 'the love which God hath to us'; learn
that at the Cross, and let it silence your doubts, and send them
back to their kennels, silenced. Then take the next step, and love
Him back again. 'We love Him because He first loved us.' That love
will be the productive principle of all glad obedience, and you will
keep His commandments, and here upon earth find, as the faithful
servant found, that talents used increase; and yonder will receive
the eulogium from His lips whom to please is blessedness, by whom to
be praised is heaven's glory, 'Well done! good and faithful
servant.'