Bible Commentaries

Matthew 25:1

The way by which a human soul born in sin becomes a kingdom of heaven, is the way of the New Birth, wherein God takes away our sin by the cleansing of the Precious Blood of Christ, and makes us by the power of His Holy Spirit partakers of the Divine nature.

I. God being the germ of every true human character, if we want to know that true human nature Matthew 25:1

The typical company in the parable represents the vaster company of the kingdom of God, the number "ten" being of no spiritual significance, but yet frequently used as denoting a typical company; the kingdom of God in the language of the Gospels meaning the visible Church of Christ. We understand therefore that these ten virgins are a representative company waiting for the coming of the heavenly Bridegroom, and looking forward to final beatitude in the home which our Lord has formed for His chosen ones.

There are two points to consider: expectancy, as a distinguishing mark of the life of the Church on earth; secondly, the going forth to meet the Messiah, as the chosen state of life of the individual members of His Church.

I. As to expectancy, our state should be a continual looking out for the dawn of the manifestation of Christ. The Christian mind is bent on the hope that we shall see the land that is far off, and follow in the triumphal march of the Bridegroom, and carry our standard safely in the midst of the glory and beauty of the mystical company.

II. These virgins were going forth to meet the Bridegroom. Under this idea is contained the whole life of the individual members of the Mystical Body. It is a "going forth" to meet Him as He comes; true life is a going onward and upward, an animating quickening of the soul which has such expectancy. Our souls are gifted in various degrees, all lawful callings are part of a Divine purpose to be carried on in His kingdom. Our Lord would have them carried out with energy and skill and varied powers. For this purpose our gifts are infinitely various; but in one respect all are alike. The virgins all had one purpose: all were waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom; all were longing to see Him; and the image of the Bridegroom ever dwelt in their minds. And all who are faithful bear that image in their soul as a perpetual power, an ever-prompting influence. We are so made as to form visions in our minds, and these have great influence over us.

And such visions ever have practical teachings, telling us of duties to others; that each is but one of a company, with ever-constant calls of helpfulness, of relative duties, each demanding of us some effort for the forwarding of God's purpose, all and each acting together, even as He himself lived and lives for others, carrying on in heaven the work of love manifested on earth.

—T. T. Carter, The Spirit of Watchfulness, p8.

References.—XXV:1.—Henry Alford, Advent Sermons, p99. H. Scott Holland, Logic and Life, p305. E. Fowle, Plain Preaching to Poor People (2Series), p129. W. Lee, University Sermons, p124. XXV:1-12.—T. De Witt Talmage, Sermons, p24. Rayner Winterbotham, The Kingdom of Heaven, p25. XXV:1-13.—T. Guthrie, Parables of Our Lord, p166. Cosmo Gordon Lang, Thoughts on Some of the Parables of Jesus, p83. R. Stewart, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxvii1890 , p392. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. Matthew XVIII-XXVIII. p175. B. W. Maturin, Practical Studies on the Parables of Our Lord, p138. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlv. No2618 , vol. xlv. No2642.

The Ten Virgins (advent)

Matthew 25:2

I. Our Lord seems to be drawing attention to the combination of outward resemblances and inward differences in the lives of men: the similarity of circumstances which so often conceals dissimilarity of characters.

1. It Matthew 25:2

These five foolish virgins were in some sense friends of the Bridegroom. And they stand here not exactly as representative of the base, but of the good, although there was something seriously the matter with their goodness—that is the point.

The goodness that is not good enough! What is that? Let us say you have here five foolish virgins, and they shall stand for five distinct types of defective goodness.

I. Ecclesiasticism Without Righteousness.— There is one great type of a goodness that is not good enough—formalism without character.

II. Morality Without Godliness.—It is always an advantage for a man to be moral; but, beyond all, it is an infinite advantage for his morality to be founded upon the deep rock.

In South Africa they sometimes come across yellow diamonds. They are really diamonds, but no king would ever put one of them into his crown. And there is many a man Today who is a yellow diamond. His is the morality of the surface, the morality of society, the morality of etiquette, but he has not been transformed in mind and spirit, and he does not walk in the fear of God, and, therefore, God will never know him in the day when He makes up His jewels.

III. Sentiment Without Sacrifice.—Take care of your poetry, but mind it is the poetry of life. For, if at the last our religion has been imagination, romance, poetry, æstheticism, it is the goodness that is not good enough, it is the light that fails.

IV. Knowledge Without Obedience.—A man never knows enough until he has cried "God be merciful to me a sinner". A man never knows enough until he knows that he is a new creature in Christ Jesus. A man is not saved by what he knows, but by what he brings to bear on his daily life and action. Thank God for your knowledge. It is a golden lamp. But mind there is in it the oil of grace, the light of truth, and that your life is a life of obedience and sacrifice.

V. Enthusiasm Without Perseverance.—Goodness is a conviction, a passion, a habit. And the light that you want is the light that does not fail; the light that will burn steadily on through the years, and brightest at the last.

—W. L. Watkinson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxvii1905 , p36.

References.—XXV:2.—C. Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii1900 , p385. C. Silvester Home, ibid. vol. lxviii1905 , p187.

The Spirit of Preparation (advent Season)

Matthew 25:2-4

Two great lines of thought are here brought before us:—

I. The Individuality of the Elect II. The Interior life of the Elect

I. The Individuality; the contrast between the company and the several virgin members of whom it is composed. The company has a life of its own, and moves on irrespective of its Matthew 25:4

Here lies the sole difference between the wise and the foolish: the wise had private additional store of oil hid away in their own little vessels, so that the lamp lighted for them may be trimmed and refilled by their own peculiar oil. The common inheritance of grace brought down to us by a catholic church—this is the beginning of salvation. But this cannot carry us through, unless deep in our own secret heart of hearts we have stored up the hidden oil of expectant love... the thoughtful, anxious, careful love, that does not rest in its own vague impulses and shallow fancies, but makes itself ready with given grace of God.

—Canon Scott Holland.

The Patient Waiting (advent Season)

Matthew 25:5

There have been different interpretations of this verse. One ancient Father has spoken of it as "the rest or repose of faith".

Let us consider what we may thus learn as to the cause of the failure of the foolish virgins.

I. The repose of faith implies an imagery corresponding with one of the beautiful antiphons of the Advent season, where St. Paul refers to our mortal life as the night, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand," the night meaning this period of our mortal life.

Another passage in the Canticles explains more tersely the cause of the failure of the unready virgins. The Bride says, "I sleep, but my heart waketh" Within the slumber and the depth of sleep there may yet be the awakened heart, the earnest preparation for anticipatory joy. The heart may be thus far awake in sleep, the throbbing fullness of the light glowing within the soul implying the repose of faith. The absence of oil in the foolish virgins showed the loss of this tendency of the soul.

II. There are, speaking generally, two causes of failure even among the faithful—the want of a true foundation, the want of forethought.

1. It is needful to look closely at the foundations of one's life to see how far one's will is moved in conformity with the Divine call; how far the stability of one's inward resolves rests on faith unfailing and love unquenched.

2. There is the difficulty of waiting—the need of patience. In a long illness, the first prostration seems not difficult to bear; let it continue, and the trial grows. It is the bearing of such continuous strain which is the test of patience. It is the same in all the trials of life, its burdens, its responsibilities—with the questions of doubt and hopelessness. The real character is shown by the way in which one endures a lengthened period of such trial. And for such endurance we need forethought.

III. We are told in this time of waiting to prepare to meet our God, to be patient, and to hope on, not to let the heart shrink back from what it has resolved We are fed with the food of immortality washed in the cleansing Blood. Our faithful prayer is never counted vain. We are surrounded with companions in the race, and each year sets before us examples with a halo of truest witness. But all will depend on the waking heart. We are all together, seemingly one, till the end comes, and then the distinction of one from another will be seen in that awful light.

—T. T. Carter, The Spirit of Watchfulness, p23.

Of Discipline

Matthew 25:5

Our Lord coming into the world taught us that the value of the human nature which He assumed is not the value of the bodily power, or of the bare intelligence, but primarily of the spirit, which loves and chooses the highest, which rules all the other powers, and presents them to God. So when the Divine Word took our nature, His first movement in it was the giving of its whole value to God by the offering of His will—the faculty of loving and choosing the highest.

I. Christ gives to each of His members, by the Sacraments, the virtue of His Sacrifice, of His free self-giving to the Father in love. By the Eternal Spirit He offered Himself, and He gives us the same power and means of offering ourselves; and this is the reason for the tarrying of the Bridegroom; He is giving us time to learn the one business of life—discipline to train the human heart and will in the exercise of the grace of Christ, in the virtue of Sacrifice, in the self-giving to God. Naturally every fallen soul lives in itself, for itself. God saves it by giving to it a new nature. Christ Incarnate comes to be in it a new principle, a new life. But the will of each Christian has to assimilate that principle—to give itself up to that new life; and that requires time—time to learn to exercise its new movements, methods, mysteries, powers.

II. God sows in us the seed of the life of His dear Matthew 25:8

That is the cry of the awakened soul as it rises to understand at a time of great need that all the resources that God has given it are wasted and spent And the pathos of the cry is this, that many of these men in times of need call to their fellow-men, as the virgins in the parable did, thinking that out of the abundance of their lives their own wasted resources can be repaired.

I. The Cry.—In many ways that cry reaches our ears Today. The man looks up at his friend and he says, "You with your certainty of hope, you with your simplicity, you with your assurance, give me of that assurance, of that simplicity ". Or another says, "I think of my own life harassed with its anxieties, oppressed with all its perplexities, and I ask you to give me of your calmness, of your peace". Or we think again of some man who holds the faith of Jesus Christ in a narrow, in a hard, in an unloving spirit, and he comes to us and says, "Give me of that power, and of that zeal; my faith has no power, my ideal no driving force. For the oil of the Spirit is being spent."

II. The Refusal.—The pathos of it all is this, that this cry of our fellow-men must meet with a simple and blank refusal. For the cry is not from the men who do not believe, who have not been taught They look up to the enthusiasm of Christ's Church, and they say, "This we once had; can you not give it us back?" And our Lord says, and the experience of all life goes to show, that this cannot be done. "Go and buy for yourselves." The faith of Jesus Christ is not a thing which a man can believe on the word of a friend. The peace of Jesus Christ can never be gained by the mere infection of another's peace. Only as we buy these things for ourselves shall we find the peace of God "which passeth all understanding," the oil of the Spirit which never faileth.

III. What must the Church do?—And so in the face of this cry which reaches us from many quarters let us ask ourselves what the Church has got to do. We of the Church have got to make the light that God has given us glow with such clear and distinct force that men shall realize that what is possible for us is possible also for them. Our human nature is meant to be a lamp through which the light of the Spirit shall gleam upon the darkness of the earth—not the lurid light of passion or the chill disturbed flicker of selfishness, but the steady clear flame of the Holy Spirit What was it that stirred men as they watched the life of Jesus Christ on earth? It was a possibility which they had never suspected before—the possibility of a pure and untainted humanity through which, as from a lamp, streamed out the light of God. And I, too, must make my lamp so transcendently pure that the man whose faith is dying will say, "That which you have, tell me where I can get it, so that I may get it for myself".

References.—XXV:8.—A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. Matthew XVIII-XXVIII. p181. J. Henderson, Sermons, p311. A6. Mortimer, The Church's Lessons for the Christian Year, vol. iv. p214.

Matthew 25:9

All experienced wrestlers with fate and fortune know well that success has often, at the critical time, depended upon some very trifling advantage which the slightest diminution of power would have lost to them. No one knows the full immensity of the difference between having power enough to make a little headway against obstacles, and just falling short of the power which is necessary at the time. In every great intellectual career there are situations like that of a steamer with a storm-wind directly against her and an iron-bound coast behind. If the engines are strong enough to gain an inch an hour she is safe, but if they lose there is no hope.

—P. G. Hamerton, The Intellectual Life, p22.

Matthew 25:10

Compare Tennyson's well-known Matthew 25:14-15

Here is a parable of our blessed Lord's which has practically added a word to human language, and furnished a living protest against human self-sufficiency. A talented man is not so much the man who is largely equipped for self-display, as one to whom much is given, and of whom much will be required.

I. Notice that this parable, although tending to the same end, is different to the parable of the Virgins, wherewith it is closely associated. There, we are allowed to see certain difficulties which beset those who wait for their Lord; here, we have to consider the responsibilities of those who work for Him.

What a real lesson we should have learned if we could realize that life is a vocation, not a scramble for prizes, that we are called to God, not merely to work, that so much health, so much time, so much resource, so much Matthew 25:14-30

Taking a man's talents to represent the sum of his abilities, opportunities, and privileges, let us see what we can learn from a consideration of the character and work of the man who had two talents. The servants who had one and five talents bestowed upon them could doubtless teach us much; each is a typical and representative character. But it will suffice now if we limit our meditation to the servant who was entrusted with two talents. He is the man who stands between the highest and the lowest. He was not so liberally dealt with as the man above him with five talents; but on the other hand, he has twice as much granted to him as the man below him with only one talent. This servant with the two talents stands as the representative of the mediocre Matthew 25:18

When Sir Philip Sidney was frittering away his powers in vain dreams and court life, his noble old friend, Languet, strove to recall him to the responsibilities of statesmanship for which he was so singularly fitted. "Think not that God endowed you with parts so excellent to the end that you should let them rot in leisure. Rather hold firmly that He requires more from you than from those to whom He has been less liberal of talents.... Nature has adorned you with the richest gifts of mind and body; fortune with noble blood and wealth and splendid family connexions; and you from your first boyhood have cultivated your intellect by those studies which are most helpful to men in their struggle after virtue. Will you then refuse your energies to your country, when it demands them? Will you bury that distinguished talent God has given you?"

Matthew 25:19

The more we advance in knowledge, the more we shall come to judge men in the spirit of the parable of the talents; that is by the net result of their lives, by their essential unselfishness, by the degree in which they employ and the objects to which they direct their capacities and opportunities.

—W. E. H. Lecky.

With all sublunary entities, this is the question of questions. What talent is born to you? How do you employ that?

—Carlyle.

References.—XXV:19.—C. Gore, Church Times, vol. xlii1899 , p693; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. lviii1900 , p371.

Matthew 25:20

Compare the fifth chapter of Law's Serious Call.

The Fact of Faithfulness

Matthew 25:21

According to the measurements of Jesus, we are face to face here with a test of character. It is in faithfulness that men are great; it is in unfaithfulness that they are weak.

One of the latest critics of Shakespeare, Professor Bradley, insists upon the faithfulness of Shakespeare. It is the fidelity of Shakespeare, in a mind of extraordinary power, he says, that has really made Shakespeare what he is.

I. Our Lord Recognizes that Faithfulness Calls for Courage.—It is significant that the man who hid his talent said to his lord, "I was afraid". In trading there was a certain risk, as in all commerce, I suppose there is a certain risk, and the man with the one talent was unfaithful because he had not the courage for that venture.

II. Our Lord Makes Faithfulness the Road to Power.—"Because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee a ruler over many things." God's rewards grow out of the struggle that we wage, as the fruit of the autumn grows from the flower of spring. "Because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things." It is because one is the outflow of the other, as is the burn of the spring among the heather. It is because, as flower from the bud, influence blossoms from fidelity.

III. Christ Associates Faithfulness With Joy.— To the faithful servant came this benediction: "Enter thou into the joy of Thy Lord". It is not success and joy, it is not fame and joy; it is not these that are joined in our Lord's teaching, but faithfulness and joy. These are the bride and bridegroom and the marriage mystical of our Lord.

Then look at the doom of the unfaithful servant; it is outer darkness and wailing and gnashing of teeth. A man who is unfaithful is always moving night-wards. He has been false to the light God gave him for his journey; and the man who has been unfaithful, when the day is done, what can he look for but remorse and tears?

—G. H. Morrison, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiv. p373.

The Gift of Rule

Matthew 25:31

This is the word of Christ to the good and faithful servants who at last behold His face in righteousness. He does not say, "I will give thee many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord". The promise Matthew 25:21

We know what His sorrow was. "How often would I have gathered thy children... and ye would not." What was His joy? When in the end He welcomes those who have been faithful to their trust, He says, "Well done... enter thou into the joy of thy Lord". His praise has been generously bestowed through the failures of this life, and even in the humblest judgment the redeemed soul ever passed on itself, it has not been without a trembling consciousness of His broader love. Nor have His people—even when they saw Him not—been left without joy, joy unspeakable and full of glory. But He speaks of a joy after death to which they had hitherto been strangers, a joy into which they would enter as into a home, and which would fold itself around them. It was to be His own joy. Anything He did not share would be nothing to them. How poor the promise would be, "He that overcometh shall inherit all things," if it ended there. The possession of many things leaves the heart empty; how should the possession of all things enrich it? But when it goes on, "And I will be his God, and he shall be My Matthew 25:21

"My idea of heaven," said Tennyson, "is the perpetual ministry of one soul to another." In his Christmas paper for1711 (Spectator, No257), Addison closes a discussion on praise and fame with the reminder that God alone can fitly reward our virtues. Then he adds: "Let the ambitious man therefore turn all his desire of fame this way; and, that he may prepare to himself a fame worthy of his ambition, let him consider that if he employs his abilities to the best advantage, the time will come when the Supreme Governor of the world, the great Judge of mankind, who sees every degree of perfection in others, and possesses all possible perfection in Himself, shall proclaim his work before men and angels, and pronounce to him in the presence of the whole creation that best and most significant of applauses: Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into thy Master's joy."

Macaulay describes a conversation he once had with Lady Holland, in which the word talents was mentioned. "I said that it had first appeared in theological writing, that it was a metaphor taken from the parable in the New Testament, that it had gradually passed from the vocabulary of Divinity into common use. I challenged her to find it in any classical writer on general subjects before the Restoration, or even before the year1700. I believe that I might safely have gone down later. She seemed surprised by this theory, never having, so far as I could Matthew 25:23

I. In every period or crisis of life the imperative claims of God, of righteousness, of truth, are forced upon us. God calls us in a way that can only be answered in self-dedication and earnest work. Obedience is shown as the salvation of life. In self-surrender we find God and live.

If our souls are awake, faithful, and loving, "all that we experience is a communication" of God's will, which is His love for us, ever reaching out to draw us to Himself, to guide, to control us.

Life under the cheering control of this love of God is full of powers for work, for sacrifice, for learning; it is full of a deeply contenting encouragement at every turn, in every development of life; for God's approval becomes at once the reason and the reward of what we try to do, a fact that sustains courage, a felt benediction that will keep us calm and steadfast in days of conflict.

"Apart from Me ye can do nothing." All that we do is a part of the mighty working of the Incarnate life of Jesus.

II. The call of God, obedience in self-dedication and in work, the sacrifice of self—we cannot understand these or be ready for them, they will seem but a mistake, an illusion, a folly, unless the reality of the Divine acceptance be, as it were, their interpretation, their sanction, their inspiration. In other words, the love of God must satisfy the soul that it claims, must inspire the obedience that it commands, it must prepare and accept the sacrifice that it requires, it must fill the life that is emptied for its sake. And it does all this. For love is constituted the beginning and the end, the law and the interpretation, the principle and the fulfilment of life in relation to God.

III. The great reality of love, to be felt and understood in all thought and work, through every act of faith and will, is the life of Jesus in us.

If thus you live, realizing manifoldly the life of the Christ in you, all you do will bear healthfully on the lives of others; from you they will learn their needed lessons of truth; through your influence will be ministered grace which they have scarcely learned to desire or to ask. Therefore act towards them in the consciousness of the love of God, reflect the light in which you live, by letting the peace and the love of God rule in your hearts always. Without this consciousness of relation to Him life must be a failure. With it, life is glad, fruitful and blessed.

—G. Brett, Fellowship With God, p44.

Matthew 25:23

The noblest thing a man can do is first humbly to receive, and then to go amongst others and give. I"ve not been able to give much. It's because I have received so little. And if there is anything in which I would be inclined to contradict Him, it would be if I heard Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant".

—Dr. John Duncan.

"Youth," says Mr. Stevenson in his essay on Old Mortality, "cannot bear to have come for so little, and to go again so wholly. He cannot bear, above all, in that brief scene, to be still idle, and by way of cure, neglects the little that he has to do. The parable of the talents is the brief epitome of youth. To believe in immortality is one thing, but it is first needful to believe in life."

References.—XXV:23.—H. E. Ryle, On Holy Scripture and Criticism, p139. Eugene Bersier, Sermons, p285.

Why the Talent Was Buried

Matthew 25:24-25

I. Consider the slander here and the truth that contradicts it.

"I knew Thee that Thou art an hard Matthew 25:25

You see I am dying, but I am not despondent; the Lord will set down that to my credit. I have bothered Him, the Most Gracious One, with jests only, never with moans and complaints!... Know this, not he is holy who hides himself from sin and lies calm. With cowardice you cannot defend yourself against sin; thus also says the parable of the Talents.

—Maxim Gorky, The Man who was Afraid, chap. xiii.

Better to try all things and find all empty, than to try nothing and leave your life a blank. To do this is to commit the sin of him who buried his talent in a napkin—despicable sluggard.

—Charlotte BrontË, Shirley, chap. xxiii.

One of Dr. Johnson's own prayers in early life, as he began the second volume of his Dictionary, was "O God, who hast hitherto supported me, enable me to proceed in this labour, and in the whole task of my present state; that when I shall render up at the last day an account of the talent committed to me, I may receive pardon, for the sake of Jesus Christ."

Unless the unsophisticated instincts of mankind are very far astray, our deepest gratitude is due not to the pure and sinless, but to the greatly daring and the strongly-doing—not to the monk in his convent or the ascetic on his pillar, but to the warrior in a good cause, to the adventurer in a grand enterprise, to the labourer in a noble work. "I cannot" (says Milton) "praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue that never sallies out and sees its adversary, but slinks out of the race where the immortal garland is to be run for—not without dust and heat." A greater than Milton has comforted us by the assurance that much is forgiven to those who love much; that the active service of men (which is charity) covers a multitude of sins, and is more and loftier than creeds; and that the talent laid up in a white napkin and so scrupulously kept out of harm's way, reaps no praise and bears no fruit; while the talent that is made to fructify in commerce, in administration, or otherwise, earns wealth first and recompense and honour afterwards.

—W. Rathbone Greg.

References.—XXV:25.—J. H. Jowett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv1894 , p120. "Plain Sermons" by contributors to the Tracts for the Times, vol. ii. p181.

Matthew 25:26

The meaning of the parable, heard with ears unbesotted, is this: "You, among hard and unjust men, yet suffer their claim to the return of what they never gave; you suffer them to reap, where they have not strawed. But to me the Just Lord of your life—whose is the breath in your nostrils, whose the fire in your blood, who gave you light and thought, and the fruit of earth and the dew of heaven—to me, of all this gift, will you return no fruit but only the dust of your bodies, and the wreck of your souls?"

—Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, LIII.

In R. L. Stevenson's address to the Samoan chiefs, on the occasion of the opening of the road they had made, out of gratitude to him, he referred to this parable of the Talents, asking them what they had done with their island, and reminding them that "God has both sown and strawed for you here in Samoa; He has given you a rich soil, a splendid sun, copious rain; all is ready to your hand, half done, and I repeat to you that thing which is sure; if you do not occupy and use your country, others will. It will not continue to be yours and your children's if you occupy it for nothing. You and your children will in that case be cast out into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth; for that is the law of God, which passeth not away. I who speak to you have seen these things. I have seen them with my eyes, these judgments of God." After referring to Ireland and Hawaii, the speaker went on to urge the use of their opportunities. "Now is the time for the true champions of Samoa to stand forth. And who is the true champion of Samoa? It is not the man who blackens his face, and cuts down trees, and kills pigs and wounded men. It is the man who makes roads, who plants good trees, who gathers harvests, and is a profitable servant before the Lord, using and improving that great talent that has been given him in trust."

References.—XXV:27.—M. R. Vincent, Christian World Pulpit, vol. li1897 , p236. XXV:28 , 29.—H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol11896 , p184.

The Law of the Life of Grace

Matthew 25:29

"Unto him that hath, to him shall be given," faith to the faithful, strength to the strong.

I. When the parable of the Sower had been spoken, it seemed that the listening multitude had not quite understood it. Their spiritual faculties were not developed as they might have been, had they been duly exercised on the revelation that had already been given. And Matthew 25:29

I. The first half of the verse asserts that unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance, or in other words that in the case of every man who has, his property shall not remain stationary, but certainly grow. As this is not a result that follows as a matter of course from the mere fact of possession, it is evident the solution of the saying depends on the sort of possession described by the word "hath". Everything is held by a tenure corresponding to itself.

It is evident we cannot be said to have made a truth our own till we have made it part of ourselves Otherwise it remains separate from us, and our connexion with it is uncertain and precarious. A man whose sincerity is assumed or put on, and not an integral portion of himself, may very probably put it off, and act deceitfully under the pressure of some passing temptation.

In order to bring about such an assimilation or fusion of one thing with another, there must be at least a potential likeness or congeniality of character between them. Religion is invested with a new character, because it is pervaded by a new purpose—its purpose being to bring us into sympathy with Christ, and to make that sympathy so powerful and complete that it shall bring our whole lives into unison with His.

The second characteristic of spiritual possession is that whatsoever a man has in this way he uses. This is plainly set forth in the parable to which my text is appended. The man who has the truth is the man who has made it one with himself, and gives evidence of this by acting it out or using it in his daily life. Anyone else has only the semblance of possession.

II. Consider the consequences that follow from this "having" and "not having" respectively.

It is a law of nature as well as of grace that whoever makes a thing work—that Matthew 25:32

"I"ve got a religion of my own," says an American Methodist woman in Mr. Harold Frederic's Illumination, "and it's got just one plank in it, and that Matthew 25:33

Johnson: A man may have such a degree of hope as to keep him quiet. You see I am not quiet, from the vehemence with which I talk; but I do not despair. Mrs. Adams: You seem, Matthew 25:34

Every word full of life and joy. "Come":—this is the holding forth of the golden sceptre to warrant our approach unto this glory. Come, now, as near as you will. This is not such a "come" as we were wont to hear, "Come, take up your cross, and follow Me". Though that was sweet, yet this much more.

—Richard Baxter.

References.—XXV:34.—J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlviii1895 , p81. F. E. Paget, The Living and the Dead, p325. XXV:35.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx. No1757. XXV:37.—John Watson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxiv1903 , p273.

Matthew 25:37; Matthew 25:44

The elect will be ignorant of their virtues, and the reprobate of the greatness of their crimes.

—Pascal.

It is noticeable how Christian morals differ from the morals of Christ, that we continually hear, as if of a specially meritorious thing, of "seeing Christ" in the poor. But Christ Himself represents the blessed as being extremely surprised when He identifies Himself with the poor. Clearly these "blessed of the Father" had helped the poor for the poor's sake, not for any others" sake.

—F. P. Cobbe.

In Miriam's Schooling, Mr. Hale White describes how the heroine's brother fell ill in London lodgings, and required incessant nursing. "To her surprise, her landlady instantly offered to share the duty with her. A rude, stout, hard person she was, who stood in the shop all day long, winter and summer, amidst the potatoes and firewood, with a woollen shawl round her neck and over her shoulders. A rude, stout, hard person, we say, was Mrs. Joll, fond of her beer, rather grimy, given to quarrel a little with her husband, could use strong language at times, had the defects which might be supposed to arise from constant traffic with the inhabitants of the Borough, and was utterly unintelligent so far as book learning went. Nevertheless, she was well read in departments more important perhaps than books in the conduct of human life, and in her there was the one thing needful—the one thing which, if ever there is to be a Judgment Day, will put her on the right hand; when all sorts of scientific people, religious people, students of poetry, people with exquisite emotions, will go on the left and be damned everlastingly."

Compare also Dr. Guthrie's account of how "John Pounds, a cobbler in Portsmouth, taking pity on the multitude of poor ragged children left by ministers and magistrates, and ladies and gentlemen, to go to ruin on the streets—how, like a good shepherd, he gathered in these wretched outcasts—how he had trained them to God and to the world; and how, while earning his daily bread by the sweat of his brow, he had rescued from misery and saved to society not less than five hundred of these children.... When the day comes when honour will be done to whom honour is due, I can fancy the crowd of those whose fame poets have sung, and to whose memory monuments have been raised, dividing like the wave, and, passing the great and the noble and the mighty of the land, this poor, obscure old man stepping forward and receiving the especial notice of Him who said, "Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these, ye did it also to Me"."

The Solidarity of Man and God

Matthew 25:40

It is frequently pointed out that the sense of sin is decreasing, and for this charge there is considerable evidence. Confession to God has not the former accent of self-abasement and of personal guilt. Side by side, however, with this decay in the consciousness of personal offence against God, there is a sense of obligation towards our neighbour which is distinctly in advance of anything known to our fathers.

I. Are we not apt to isolate these two moral facts—the decay of the sense of sin against God, and the increase of the sense of sin against man? At least, we forget to correlate them; we assume that there is no unity in the religious life. Ought we not to believe that God is within this creation so that one cannot separate any part of it from Him in whom every part lives and moves and has its being. Is not the hem of His garment within reach of us all? Can we injure a little child and not injure Him? Can we help a man in the straits of life and not help Him?

Ought we to hesitate which idea of God to accept as our working principle in life? Is not the distant God a mechanical conception, and an obsolete deism? Is not the indwelling God a convincing idea and the religion of Jesus? Within the sphere of Christian thought there is only one life, one love, one faith, one sin. We speak of the solidarity of man: since the Incarnation we should speak of the solidarity of man and God.

All service, as well as all injury, ends in God, and is done to God.

II. This truth should bring liberty to two opposite people, and the first is a believer, with a scrupulous conscience. There are Christians who are afraid of letting their heart go, and pouring forth their affection upon those they love, lest they should be giving to the creature what ought to be reserved for God. God is no watchful rival, demanding the lion's share of our heart. He is content if we love, for all the love we give to those whom we see we are giving to God whom we cannot see. And every stream of love finds its way at last into the eternal ocean of His heart from which first it rose.

This truth should also be liberty to the unbeliever with an honest mind. There are many persons in the land Today, and within the Church, who hesitate to call themselves Christians because, as they confess, they have not what they judge to be a right mind towards God. And yet this non-religious Matthew 25:40

Christ never despised little folks, little things, little occasions, little duties; Jesus never turned away from the small and the lame, the halt and the blind. Why was this? It was because He was Jesus. No man a mere man could have afforded to attend to us little creatures, persons of no consequence; it required God to stoop low enough to come down to us. The Deity is in the stoop, not in the grammar. He who holds a grammatical God has no God to hold. The Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ is in His pity, care, tears, mercy, His coming out after us in the dark times, in the stormy nights, sure that if we are to be found at all we must be found in the wilderness. That is His Deity; not some variable preposition or difficult word to construe with some other verbal difficulty.

I. When the Lord looks upon the services which people render, He often stops beside a cup of cold water, lifts it up, and smiles it into wine that makes glad the heart of God and man. That was all that the giver could give; being all that the giver could give, it became valuable, precious, priceless. Jesus Christ will not have it that any man can give Him anything except from the Cross, His own Cross, and the man's cross cut out of it; that is giving; the last bronze from the till—that is giving.

This alters our whole conception of Jesus Christ's thought, as we have misunderstood it. We thought He would be very careful about legions of stars, and He seems to be more careful of the poor man's one tallow candle that is set in the window on wintry nights to show the prodigal the way home. He will not allow that candle to sway in the storm; He guards it and keeps it steadily towards the window if mayhap the strayed girl or the prodigal boy may want to come home some night cold, and that candle is there, an evangel, a gospel, a luminous welcome.

II. All through the Bible there is a wonderful care of little things; God noticing them, God caring for them, and God bringing them to perfectness of meaning. Said Jesus Christ on one occasion the most remarkable thing out of the beatitudes, and it is the beatitude that crowns the rest, "The very hairs of your head are all numbered". That is greatness. "He putteth my tears in His bottle;" that is condescension. "None of his steps shall slide," as if He numbered step by step all the going of His people. These are God's condescensions: sweeping the house diligently until He find the piece that was lost; leaving the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and going out after that which had strayed, and not returning until He had found it. This Shepherd undertakes no vain errands; He brings back the wanderer and completes the flock.

III. We must not make any mistake about this littleness. If we do little when we could do much, then the little goes for nothing. That is where your sixpence went! It was absolutely lost in ungrateful oblivion. Perhaps it was not wholly your blame, because you had the two coins in the same pocket, the half-sovereign and the half-shilling, and it was just by an accident that you took out the white one.

It may be so—may it, may it be so? If the little is all I can do, my Lord takes a few grass-blades as if I had brought Him a whole paradise. But if I could have brought Him rich flowers, and only plucked a weed out of the hedgerow, He will not take my gift. He who can stoop low will not stoop to be insulted when I offer Him a hedgerow weed when I might have given Him a garden of orchids.

—Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. II. p22.

Matthew 25:40

No works shall find acceptance in that day

When all disguises shall be rent away

That square not truly with the Scripture plan,

Nor spring from love to God or love to man.

—Cowper.

"If one looks at the way of the world," said William Law, "one would hardly think that Christians had ever read this part of Scripture (i.e. Matthew 25:31-46).

References.—XXV:40.—A. F. Winnington Ingram, The Men Who Crucify Christ, p11. G. E. Ford, Religion in Common Life, p72. J. Service, Sermons, p216. E. Aldom French, God's Message Through Modern Doubt, p75. J. Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. ii. p22. J. Oswald Dykes, Christian, World Pulpit, vol. xli1892 , p388. H. R. Heywood, Sermons and Addresses, p214.

Matthew 25:41

Pere Pacheu writes on the words, "Discedite a me, maledicti": "Can this be the same Jesus who passed through the villages of Palestine, inviting the multitudes, by His miracles, by His doctrines, by His welcome which charmed men by its gentleness and touched them by its delicacy? Is this He who said, "Come unto Me and I will refresh you"? Is it He who said in presence of the hungry crowd, "I have pity on this multitude"? Yes, it is He. The hour of mercy is past; the earth and the heavens are silent, angels adore Him, millions of human beings are bent before His word, trembling with love or terror, like the tall ears of wheat which tremble in the wind of the plain, awaiting the reaper's scythe. "Depart," He says. How often did I invite you, how often did My word call you; in public, in the secret place of the heart, by the voice of My angels, by the voice of My priests, by the counsels, the exhortations, the examples, of your family, of your friends. I called you to the observance of the commandments, to the practice of prayer, to the festival of My sacraments—and you would not. You said no to conscience, you said no to your Christian friends, you said no to the Church.... Now, depart, discedite, go away?... At the court of Philip II nobles who were favoured with the attention of the prince had to suffer through it One of them, who was driven from the king's presence because he held loosely to the Church, died the same evening. But here. Maledicti! They are cursed by Justice and repelled by her, for they have broken her laws. Maledicti! They are cursed by Mercy, for they have despised her calls and her grace."

—Psychologie des Mystiques Chrétiens, pp77-79 (1909).

References.—XXV:41.—R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions, p155. XXV:44.—H. Harris, Short Sermons, p225. XXV:46.—G. F. Holden, Church Times, vol. lvi1906 , p815. R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions, p164. R. J. Campbell, Sermons Addressed to Individuals, p129. W. Leighton Grane, Hard Sayings of Jesus Christ, p179. XXVI:1-16.—J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, p161. XXVI:2.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xliii. No2522.