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It is a law with the operation of which we are familiar in nature and in the commercial world. It is he who has even a little capital to begin with, and who makes a right use of it, who soon leaves far behind the man who has none, or who neglects to invest what he has. And the more this capital grows, the more rapidly and the more easily is it increased. After a certain point it seems to increase by virtue of its own momentum. So in certain sicknesses, as soon as the crisis of the disease is past and a little health has been funded again in the patient's constitution, this rapidly grows to complete recovery. So with popularity, it begins one scarce knows how, but once begun, the tide flows apace. You may scarcely be able to say why one statesman or one author should be so immeasurably more popular than others; but so it is that, when once a beginning is made, tribute flows in naturally, as water from all sides settle in a hollow. It is this same law which regulates our attainment in the service of Christ. However little grace we seem to have to begin with it is this we must invest, and so nurse it into size and strength. Each time we use the grace we have by responding to the demands made upon it, it returns to us increased. Our capital grows by an inevitable law. The efforts of young or inexperienced Christians to give utterance to the life that is in them may often be awkward, like the movements of most young animals. They may be able to begin only in a very small way, so small a way that sensitive persons are frequently ashamed to begin at all. Having received Christ they are conscious of new desires and of a new strength; they have a regard for Christ, and were they to assert this regard in the circumstances which call for its assertion their regard would be deepened. They have a desire to serve Him, and were they to do so in those small matters with which they have daily concern their desire and ability would be increased. Grace of any kind invested in the actual opportunities of life cannot come back to us as small as it was, but enlarged and strengthened. Such grace, then, as we have, such knowledge as we have of what is due to others, to ourselves, and to God, let us give free expression to. Such investments of Christian principle as are within our reach let us make; such manifestations of a Christian temper and mind as our circumstances daily demand let us exhibit, and it must come to pass that we increase in grace. There is no other way whatever of becoming richly endowed in spirit than by trading with whatever we have to begin with. We cannot leap into a fortune in spiritual things; rich saints cannot bequeath us what their life-long toil has won; they cannot even lend us so that we may begin on borrowed capita]. In the spiritual life all must be genuine; we must work our own way upwards, and by humbly and wisely laying out whatever we now possess make it more or be for ever poor.

(Marcus Dods, D. D.)

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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.

WEB: "For it is like a man, going into another country, who called his own servants, and entrusted his goods to them.