A STRIKING SERMON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 234, 1 April 1912, Page 7

A STRIKING SERMON.

THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. An Address given by the Rev.~A. H. COLVILE to men at St. Mary's Churcli, New Plymouth, on Sunday, March 24. "Unto him that hath shall be given".—St. Matthew, chap. 25. I have chosen to speak to you about this parable, because it it. essentially » parable for real men, and not for weaklings, and what we want in th.j Church and tha world to-day arc not shirkers and loafers, wastrels and weaklings, but real men of courage and grit who dars to accept responsibility. We will reverse the usual order in dealing with parables, and begin with the conclusion —the moral, the" final lesson—and go on to consider one special scene which must interest all, and which serves to illustrate its justice and its wisdom. "Unto him that hath shall be given": that is the conclusion—one' that I dare say strikes rather harshly on sensitive ears, and wliieh in some respects seems to cut right across the modern spirit of »entimental altruism which takes at its text, "Penalise the strong and energetic, and bolster up the weak and the incompetent." There is certainly something startling about the words, when we remember that Christ Himself used them, and consecrated them, and drew a lesson ! from them. There is, of course, nothing particularly startling about the words themselves. They express a law, and embody a truth which holds good in the affairs of this world. But are they what one would expect from Christ? He Who always had pity on the poor and weak and helpless; He Who went out of His way to heal the sick and diseased and crippled; He Who gave to so many who "had not"? There is nothing in His life that would stalhp Him as a believer in the somewhat ruthless doctrine of ''the survival of the fittest," and His life expressed the will and character of God the Father. Are these words, then, what we should have expected from Ilim? They do seem hard on the weak and incompetent. Is it worthy of an all-loving Father to give to those who have, and take from those who have not their apparent possessions? Now to "have" implies to "use." If I kept my hand in a sling year after year, though the hand still belonged to me. yet, in a very real sense", I "have" not' a hand. If I constantly refused to use my brain, and led a purely animal life, then people might speak of me with justice of "having no brain." I must "use" in order to "have." Now unto him that "hath" —that is, "uses"—is given, is a natural law of the world we live in, unless artificially interfered with. That is apparent to all. Certainly it is true in 1 financial affairs. "Money comes to money," we say, and "nothing succeeds like success," and it is true. Wealth comes to wealth because wealth creates opportunity. The rich man has by reason of his riches a better chance of making money than the poor man, and though some may consider this unjust, and may assert—as I admit I used to assert in the days of my youth—that it would be a very good thing to put a limit on a man'g income, and that in theory no one ought to have more than "so much" a year, yet now I think that any practical scheme for doing so would, unless you can change human nature, fail in justice, and tend to discourage honest ambition and individual effort. And the same law holds good in other departments of life. The athlete knows that the more he exorcises his muscles the harder they become, and the fitter he .is for the event for which he is training. It is natural, in that case, that he should excel his fellows. He cannot be artificially interfered with. No one would suggest that a great footballer, for insl.uu , Lluaid have a weight tied to his leg to make things "quite level." It would be ridiculous. To the man that "hath" is given. And nowhere do we see that law more ■ completely justified than in the realm of the affections. Tile kindly, affectionate man meets kindness everywhere. He is the object' of everyone's love. The "lonely" man, whose moroseness or egotism has created his own loneliness looks at him enviously, and mutters to himself, "Why does he get all and I nothing?" The truth is that he has all because he fives all, because he "uses." If we want people to love us, we must us the power that we all have got, in a greater or less degree, and show that we love them. Our Lord Himself wont on that plan. He used to the full the divine power of love that was in Him, and we love Him because He first loved us. Unto him that hath shall be given, and if we 'want any further proof of the necessity of that law, we have only to use our imaginations, and picture what lif-> would be like if it were reversed. Sometimes we do see it reversed in our mc.lern life, with disastrous results. When an idle rich man, by the accident of inheritance, obtains a greal deal more money, or when an energetic, able man is rewarded below his desserts, and made to go the pace of the slowest, or when an incompetent, lazy person is rewarded out of proportion to his services, we feel the injustice and unwisdom. But what if the reversal of the law were the rule? How full of discouragement of all honest effort, of all grit and manliness life would be, if to him that had not were always given. No; when we come to look closely into the practical workings of this law I think Me can see (hat our misgivings about its justice w re unnecessary. It is a just law. an. -essary law, a kind law. It makes for the encouragement. of effort and energy and progress, and the discouragement of slackness and idleness, and the old American socialist poet iputs the true spirit into it—t(i; spirit of manly self-reliance so consistent with a strong trust in God, when he cries:

A-foot anil light-hearted, I take to the open road, Healthy and free, the world befoie rue, The long brown path before m« Leading, wherever I choose, Henceforth I ask not '"good fortune"; I myself am "good fortune," Henceforth I whim} er no more, postpone no more, r::,ed nothing, ■Strong and content, I travel the open road. So when our Lord takes this law, and consecrates it, and make it a Jaw of His Kingdom, we need not feel astonished, as if He had said some strange thing. Tic is only saying that what is ime in nature, what is true in human life, is true also of the greatest thing in life—religion—that want of capacity is never a reason for total failure, that there if a capacity for religion in every man. a spark of Clod in every one of His sons, and what is wanted is'the force, the compelling power of energy, of eani.-stnm. A man only finds out of what lie is capable when he has enough earnestness to begin to "'use." lie only then fijuh out how great his possessions are. II;; only then discovers the value of ill" greatest lesson of all—the power of Co.I within him. We will now turn to the sf-eiic. in the parable of which I ipokv. The heroes of the world had come, they came and told their stories, and had gone to receive their reward —not a reward of idleness and ease, not retirement and old-age pensions. No; ''be tliou our ruler over many things"—promotion—that, was tl.pil- i-wvnr,!. 1T„t„

the scene is changed. These tonics along the ordinary man, the man with the one talent, the man we meet every day of our life. Was his coming an anti-climax? Can we listen to his story? Won't it < seem very stale and llat after the exeit- 1 ing ventures of the successful men? No; ( the man may be ordinary, but he is lnv 1 human. He may not have been as sue- ; cessful as the others; but it is a very i unimaginative nature that can take an interest only in successful people. After all, this man's story will be the story most of us will have to tell. Surely, too, the Master takes as much interest in him as in the men who come before Him? So we, too, are prepared to listen eagerly to his story. And then comes the great disappointment. There is no story to tell—he has done nothing. We didn't expect anything very exciting, but we did expect a story of sorts, a story with the human interest in it. But the trouble is that there is no story at all. He stands before his Master, convicted of that most dreary of all crimes, a life of utter uselessness. How could such a man receive the reward of promotion? How could he be put in a position of trust? Tor him, and for all useless men, there can only be the sharp words of reproof, and then the sentence, the natural sentence —nothing arbitrary about it. For the man who is oblivious of the duties and privileges and responsibilities of life, there can only be, as a natural result, the darkness of oblivion. But 1 am sure that the ordinary man in the parable Would have had a real story to tell, if he had realised how important he was to tlie world and to God. He did not understand his own importance. No' modesty on his part, but a very useless form of pride. Those who know the game of cricket will understand the truth of this. A moderate fieldsman sees the chance of a catch. If he started at once, if he ran hard, he might just get to it. But he doesn't. He takes a few uncertain steps, stretcl s out one hand in a languid way, ant s the ball fall far beyond him.' Is t.nt his modesty? No; it is his pride. Ho is afraid of failure. lie would mako it seem to all that the catch was impossible from the first. Alwavs go for the catch, however hard you may think it. A young man just .'starting life is often given this advice: ■'Have the courage to say 'no'." I would rather say to him, "Have the, courage to say 'yes ." Attack is the best defence. Say "yes" when the chance comes of doing something for God, the Church, or your neighbor. Don't be afraid of it.' Go for the catch; and if you can hold it, perhaps that sin that, has been '"'in" so long, blocking the way, will be disposed of for the rest of the innings. Let me give you an example of this out of my own experience. A young man came up to London from the country, as thousands do, to enter some business. He was a man of considerable power and great possibilities. He lived alone in lodgings, exposed to all the temptations of a great city. To these temptations he succumbed. At the age of thirty his character was apparently fixed. He had become a confirmed sensualist. One channel for good, how- j ever, was still open. He could not heal j to think that the old people in his little village home should know the sort of life he was living. One day there eame to that man a letter. It was from some friends of liis in the village from which he had come. In effect, it was as follows: "Wo are sending our boy, aged 17, up to London. He is going into a< bank. He is a good boy, but we arej afraid for him of the temptations of the I city. Knowing how much he used to admire you as a youngster, and knowing how splendid it would be for liiui to have a friend in London like you, we are going to ask you a great favor. Will you have him live with you, and do your best to look after him and keep him straight?" You can imagine the man's feelings when he read that letter. "My God!" he said to himself, "I keep anyone straight, when I can't keep straight myself ?" It was a desperately har.l catch and looked almost impossible, yet the letter haunted him for days. He lay awake at night thinking of it. Something—was it not God's Holy Spirit —told him that the chance had come, the possibility of redemption for himself. At the end of a week he took the great resolution. "Bv God," he said to himself (and he meant it), "I'll do it." And bo, through accepting responsibility for another life, that man, by- the mercy of God, conquered his own temptation, and sot his feet once more on the road of progress. So it is true that you and I, ordinary everyday men as we are, are nf the most immense importance to God and the world that He has made. One talent ' at least God has given to us all—the God-power within us, the power of living at our best and of helping others to live at their best. Don't let us think that men who give up their spare time to help in the work of the Church in various ways are very extraordinary,; out-of-the-way men, who ae doing something wonderful. They are ordinary men who have made a great discovery. They have discovered the God-power within them, and are exercising it, and though they make many mistakes, yet, at least, they will have a story to tell when the day of reckoning comes. lam not going to ask you to-day to come to church more often, or to become regular Communicants. These things come naturally when a man feels he needs them, and that they help him. But I want you to feel that you need them. I want you to make the great discovery: to look into your lives, and find the power God has given you, and to make a start with it at once. Begin to use it, and its value to yourself and the world will increase every day. "Unto liim that. hath shall be given." And remember that in the after life the man who received the reward of promotion was not he who had made no mistakes, had just kept himself respectable and nothing more, but the man who had dared many things and had gained for himself the name of one who— Never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never, deemed, though right was worsted, wrong would triumph; Held we only fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake. For such a man there is the reward of promotion. For such a man there is the great "Well done!"