Matthew 25:14-30 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered to them his goods.… It is in the quality more than in the quantity of talents that their true value lies. Given by God they constitute a true, direct, and sacred connection and channel of intercourse between your soul and His. Forget your brethren and think of Him, and realize your direct relationship to Him. When you have done that you may come back into the mass again and see what are the special advantages which belong to a faithful life lived in the average condition, lived with the average capacities of mare 1. Such a life brings out and makes manifest the solid strength which belongs to the simple qualities of manhood. Types of power which can only be developed in supreme joy or supreme sorrow enthrall our imagination; and then some plain man comes who knows not either rapture or despair, who simply has his daily work to do, his friends to help, his enemies to forgive, his children to love and train, his trials to bear, his temptations to conquer, his soul to save; and what a healthiness he brings into our standards, with what a genuine refreshment he fills our hearts. Behold how great are these primary eternal qualities — patience, hope, kindness, intelligence, trust, self-sacrifice. We do not accept them because we cannot have something finer. They show us their intrinsic fineness, and we do them reverence. The arctic frost! The torrid heat! Behold the true strength, the real life of the planet is not in these. It is in the temperate lands that the grape ripens and the wheat turns calmly yellow in the constant sun. 2. The man conscious of mediocrity has the advantage of displaying in "his life and character the intrinsic and essential life of human nature. He is one with his fellow-men, and it is he who — being faithful, pure, serene, brave, hopeful — has power to make his brethren all that he tries himself to be. 3. May not the average life find a self-surrender to the help of other lives more easy, and make that surrender more complete, just in proportion as it is released from that desire for self-assertion, that consciousness of being something which is worthy of men's observation, that self-love which must haunt the lives of those who, in any way, on either side, find themselves separated from the great bulk of their fellow-creatures? 4. And is it not true that all that assertion of the intrinsic value of every life which is the very essence of our Christian faith, all that redemption of the soul, in the profoundest and the truest sense, which was the work of Christ, must come with special welcome and appreciation and delight to any man who feels his insignificance and is in danger of losing himself in the vague mass of his fellows? Christ redeems him. Christ says, "Behold yourself in Me, and see that you are not insignificant." Christ says, "I died for you." Set thus upon his feet, made a new man, or made to be the man he is, with what gratitude and faith and obedience must that man follow the Christ who is his Saviour! (Phillips Brooks, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. |
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