The Stewardship of Life, or Studies on the Parable of the Talents (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. SPIRITUAL FORCES IN ACTION. THE master's chariot has hardly vanished when two servants gird themselves for service. They require no orders; the injunction lies in the instinct of the new life. " Straightway he went abroad;" and straightway they move to action. They start to trace the initial line of a spirit hymn, for their hearts are hot with the breath of a holy muse. The life of God soon asserts itself. Ideas become acts at Pentecost. The point at which a man receives the heavenly gift sees him no more. Has a man been baptized with spirit? Look not for him at the scene of his baptism; he is either in the wilderness creating a paradise, or in the field of the flesh digging a grave for the spirit. The two servants are now first causes for good; they originate a new train of circumstances and broaden the basis of being. What was not theirs becomes theirs; fresh talents of a like kind are added to the original endowment; their life pushes forward the boundaries of its empire, creates for itself broader ranges, and while it multiplies its talents, throws around them wider circles of capacity. The ability to use grows with the trust: when the man of ten talents is next endowed, it must not be on a fivefold but on a tenfold scale. Here we see the spirit widening its dominion in the mind, and the mind its dominion over the flesh. The spirit of man at least is not a fixed quantity; five may become ten and two four. Indeed nothing in the divine kingdom has attained its growth; if there seems limitation, it is the limitation of the seed-shell; if there seems completeness, it is not the completeness of result. We are in an order of causes, hints, movement, and nothing has more blighted human progress than a belief in the contrary. Creed and dogma proceed on the assumption that...