o Talents," vol. iv. p. 192; "The
Man with One Talent," vol. i. p. 138.

{133}

LIV

THE OVERCOMING OF INSIGNIFICANCE

_Matthew_ xxv. 24.

The parable of the talents was specially given to teach Christians not
to be discouraged because Christ's kingdom was delayed. The one-talent
man is its real object, and the lessons of larger endowment are only by
the way. The one-talent man is not the bad man, for to him also God
gives a trust, but this man is given so little to do that he thinks it
not worth while to do anything. He is not the many-gifted five-talent
man, or even the average two-talent man, but he is simply the man of no
account. The risk of the five-talent man is his conceit; the risk of
the two-talent man is his envy; the risk of the one-talent man is his
hopelessness. Why should this insignificant bubble on the great stream
of life inflate itself with self-importance? Why should it not just
drift along with the current and be lost in the first rapids of the
stream? Now Christ's first appeal to this sense of insignificance is
{134} this,--that in the sight of God there is no such thing as an
insignificant life. Taken by itself, looked at in its own independent
personality, many a life is insignificant enough. But when we look at
life religiously and recognize that it is a trusted agent of God, then
the doctrine of the trust redeems it from insignificance. You have not
much, but what you have is essential to the whole. The
lighthouse-keeper on his rock sits in his solitude and watches his
little flame. Why does he not let it die away as other lights in the
distance die when the night comes on? Because it is not his light. He
is its keeper, not its owner. The great Power that watches that stormy
coast has set him there, and he must be true. The insignificant
service becomes full of dignity and importance when it is accepted as a
post of honor and trust. So the unimportant life gets its significance
not by its own dimensions, but by its place in God's great order, and
the most wretched moment of one's life must be when he discovers that
he has been trusted by God to do even a little part and has thrown his
chance away. The one-talent man thought his trust not worth investing,
and behold, the account of it was called for with the rest. He {135}
had in his hands a trust from God and had wasted it, and there was
nothing left for him but the weeping of regret and the gnashing of
teeth of