08.05 A discipline of fidelity
V. A DISCIPLINE OF FIDELITY
They furnish a discipline of fidelity. “He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and he that is unrighteous in a very little, is unrighteous also in much.
If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” (verses 10-12). To persons of a certain temperament, it is comparatively easy to serve God in fine feelings, in devout meditations, in eager attendance at religious services, in conspicuous acts of charity. But it is a far severer test to serve God in “serving tables,” in doing daily business thoroughly and cheerfully {as Stevenson says, “letting cheerfulness abound with industry”), in keeping a watchful eye on the relations of expenditure and income, in paying small debts promptly, in discharging with eager care the little, often irksome, duties of home and family life. But these are just the lesser duties by which our fitness for the greater duties is disciplined and tested. No man, who has accepted or continues in a post of business can plead as an excuse for neglecting it that he is engaged in religious duties. His primary religious duty is to do his business as well as he can. No woman, who is charged with the task of keeping her house, can plead as an excuse for leaving it untidy or uncomfortable, or restless, that she is busy with “church work.” Her primary church work is to be the centre of a happy home. The testimony to the real thoroughness of our religion, which is at once the hardest to earn and the most rigorously exacted by the observant world, is the testimony borne to it by our workaday character. Let me give a very simple illustration. Suppose the question is “Has this young man in business the real signs of a vocation to the ministry?”
Testimonials are at hand as to his devotion to church services, his eloquent addresses to children and the like. But we remain uncertain. Then a letter comes from his employers: “We gladly bear testimony to the integrity and efficiency with which Mr. A. has done his work. We entrusted him lately with a special task requiring great application and persistence; and we were entirely satisfied with the result.” That letter is of decisive value. It gives to the others just the assurance which otherwise would have been wanting. For “He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.”
Nay, we may go further. There will always be something desultory, shifting, inconsistent, untrustworthy in the religious emotions or thoughts or labours which have not this solid foundation in the honest and faithful doing of a day’s work. You may, for example, almost assume that a man who shows want of method in his business affairs will somehow and somewhere show want of in his religion want of honest, singleeyed consistency. A sure, steadfast, progressive spiritual life cannot be combined with slack and careless business habits. “If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?”
Once again we may summon an English poet to enforce the lesson of this parable.
You may remember the noble words in which Tennyson’s King Arthur rebukes his knights because they forsook their vows to wander in quest of the vision of the Holy Grail and vindicates his own steadfastness at the post of duty.
“And some among you hold that if the King Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow, Not easily, seeing that the King must guard That which he rules, and is but as the hind To whom space of land is given to plough, Who may not wander from the allotted field Before his work is done; but being done, Let visions of the night or of the day Come as they will: and many a time they come.
Until this earth he walks on seems not earth, This light that strikes his eyeball is not light, This air that smites his forehead is not air But vision yea, his very hand and foot In moments when he feels he cannot die, And knows himself no vision to himself, Nor the high God a vision, nor that One Who rose again.” His faithfulness to his immediate duty won for him the “true riches.”
TAGS: [Parables]