atever
one has from its unfaithful use. Wealth is a fund of five talents of
which one is the trusted agent; and to some five-talent men who have
been faithful in their grave responsibilities, the word of Jesus would
be given to-day as gladly as to any poor man: "Well done, faithful
servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord."

{131}

LIII

THE AVERAGE MAN[1]

_Matthew_ xxv. 22.

In the parable of the talents the man that gets least general attention
is the man that stands in the middle. The five-talent man gets
distinction, and the one-talent man gets rebuke, but the two-talent
man, the man with ordinary gifts and ordinary returns from them, seems
to be an unexciting character. And yet this is the man of the
majority, the average man, the man most like ourselves,--not very bad,
and not very remarkable. As has been said: "God must have a special
fondness for average people, for He has made so many of them." Now,
the average man stands in special need of encouragement. One of the
most serious moments of life is when a man discovers that he is this
sort of man. It comes over most of us some day that we are not going
{132} to do anything extraordinary; that we are never likely to shine;
that we are simply people of the crowd. Nothing seems to take the
ambition and enthusiasm out of one more than this recognition of
oneself as an average man. Then comes Jesus with his word of courage.
"Your work," he says, "is just as significant, and rewarded with
precisely the same commendation as the work of the five-talent man."
The same "Well done" is spoken to both, and it may be that the more
heroic qualities are in the man with fewer gifts. To make great gifts
effective may be easy, but to take common gifts and make them yield
their best returns--that is what helps us all. There is not a more
inspiring sight in life than to see a man start with ordinary capacity
and to see his power grow out of his consecration. Looking back on
life from middle age, that would be the story one would tell of many a
success. One sees five-talent men fail and two-talent men take their
place; average gifts persistently used yielding rich returns, and the
promise of usefulness lying, not in abundant endowments of nature, but
in the using to the utmost what moderate capacities one has soberly
accepted as trusts from God.

[1] Read also, on this and the following subject, the kindling sermons
of Phillips Brooks: "The Man with Tw