The law of rewards.
Trust comes to the trustworthy. Opportunities are taken away from those who fail to use them. "Men, here on earth, give to him that hath, and faithful work is rewarded by openings of a higher kind." "Non-user tends to invalidate legal right. A muscle that is not exercised tends to degenerate and lose its power." Dods calls this verse, "the law of spiritual capital." "However little grace we seem to have to begin with, it is this we must invest, and so nurse it into size and strength. Each time we use the grace we have, by responding to the demands made upon it, it returns to us increased. Our capital grows by an inevitable law." "The unused talent passes from the servant who would not use it to the man who will. A landlord has two farms lying together: the one is admirably managed, the other is left almost to itself, with the least possible management, and becomes the talk of the whole country for poor crops and untidiness. No one asks what the landlord will do when the leases are out. It is a matter of course that he dismisses the careless tenant, and puts his farm into the hands of the skilful and diligent farmer." "Give it unto him that hath ten talents."
I. THE REWARD OF FAITHFULNESS IS INCREASED TRUST. We need to correct our common idea that reward is something to possess; the truest and best reward is something to use. He who is faithful in least things does not want a present; his reward is the trust of higher things. Life is full of this idea. The faithful are always in selection for the higher service, and are finding in that higher service their satisfying reward. But there is something deeper than that. He who is faithful gets his real reward in that development of power which fits him for higher trusts. A man's reward is what he becomes, not merely what he gets. What, then, is our final reward in heaven? Not possessions, but higher service. Think deeper, and we see that it is not even higher service, it is the cultured condition which fits us for undertaking the higher service. Heaven is our ennobled selves, and the work God finds for the ennobled to do.
II. THE REWARD OF FAITHLESSNESS IS REMOVED TRUST. And that this is distinctly Divine judgment will be felt by all who estimate the honour of being trusted and used. God's severest judgment on the unfaithful is his taking their trusts away. He will not honour them by permitting them to bear responsibilities. There can be no heaven for such as fail to put their earth pounds to noble uses. For God to say to a man, "I will not trust you," is far worse woe than to apportion him the "outer darkness, the weeping, and the gnashing of teeth."—R.T.