'Because thou hast been faithful in a very little,
have thou authority over ten cities... Be thou also
over five cities.'--LUKE xix. 17, 19.
The relation between this parable of the pounds and the other of the
talents has often been misunderstood, and is very noteworthy. They
are not two editions of one parable variously manipulated by the
Evangelists, but they are two parables presenting two kindred and
yet diverse aspects of one truth. They are neither identical, as
some have supposed, nor contradictory, as others have imagined; but
they are complementary. The parable of the talents represents the
servants as receiving different endowments; one gets five; another
two; another one. They make the same rate of profit with their
different endowments. The man that turned his two talents into four
did just as well as he that turned his five into ten. In either case
the capital is doubled. Since the diligence is the same, the rewards
are the same, and to each is given the identical same eulogium and
the same entrance into the joy of his Lord. So the lesson of that
parable is that, however unequal are our endowments, there may be as
much diligence shown in the use of the smallest as in the greatest,
and where that is the case, the man with the small endowments will
stand on the same level of recompense as the man with the large.
But that is not all. This parable comes in to complete the thoughts.
Here all the servants get the same gift, the one pound, but they
make different profits out of it, one securing twice as much as the
other. And, inasmuch as the diligence has been different, the
rewards are different. So the lesson of this parable is that unequal
faithfulness in the use of the same opportunities results in unequal
retribution and reward. Unequal faithfulness, I say, because, of
course, in both parables it is presupposed that the factor in
producing the profit is not any accidental circumstance, but the
earnestness and faithfulness of the servant. Christ does not pay for
results; He pays for motives. And it is not because the man has made
a certain number of pounds, but because in making them he has shown
a certain amount of faithfulness, that he is rewarded. Christ does
not say, 'Well done! good and _successful_ servant,' but 'Well
done! good and _faithful_ servant.'
So, keeping these two sides of the one truth in view, I desire now
to draw out two or three of the lessons which seem to me to lie in
the principle laid down in my texts, of the unequal results of the
unequal diligence of these servants.
I. I would note the solemn view of this present life that underlies
the whole.
'Thou hast been faithful in a very little; have thou authority over
five cities.' Well, that rests upon the thought that all our present
life here is a stewardship, which in its nature is preparatory to
larger work yonder. And that is the point of view from which alone
it is right to look at, and possible to understand, this else
unintelligible and bewildering life on earth. Clearly enough, to
anybody that has eyes in his head, moral ends are supreme in man's
relation to nature, and in man's life. We are here for the sake of
making character, and of acquiring aptitudes and capacities which
shall be exercised hereafter. The whole of our earthly career is the
exercise of stewardship in regard to all the gifts with which we
have been entrusted, in order that by the right exercise of that
stewardship we may develop ourselves and acquire powers.
Now if it is clear that the whole meaning and end of the present
life are to make character, and that we have to do with the material
and the transient only, in order that, like the creatures that build
up the coral reefs, we may draw from the ever-varying waves of the
ocean that welters around us solid substance which we can pile up
into an enduring monument--is this process of making character, and
developing ourselves, to be cut short by such a contemptible thing
as the death of the body? One very distinguished evolutionist, who
has been forced onwards from his position to a kind of theism,
declares that he is driven to a belief in immortality because he
must believe in the reasonableness of God's work. And it seems to me
that if indeed--as is plainly the case--moral ends are supreme in
our life's history, it brings utter intellectual bewilderment and
confusion to suppose that these ends are kept in view up till the
moment of death, and that then down comes the guillotine and cuts
off all. God does not take the rough ore out of the mine, and deal
with it, and change it to polished steel, and shape His weapons, and
then take them when they are at their highest temper and their
sharpest edge, and break them across His knee. No! if here we are
shaped, it is because yonder there is work for the tool.
So all here is apprenticeship, and the issues of to-day are recorded
in eternity. We are like men perched up in a signal-box by the side
of the line; we pull over a lever here, and it lifts an arm half a
mile off. The smallest wheel upon one end of a shaft may cause
another ten times its diameter to revolve, at the other end of the
shaft through the wall there. Here we prepare, yonder we achieve.