The aphorism “that to him who had, more was given” was, as applied to material wealth, in some form or other probably familiar to the shrewd men of the time, just as the saying, that “nothing succeeds like success” is among ourselves now. But what was startling was, that this principle should be adopted by Christ and laid down as one of those upon which God’s government is carried on. For this inequality in human conditions, and the tendency to rise faster the higher one gets and to sink faster the lower one falls, was a thing that was commonly regarded as a defect in the world’s arrangement, due to some inherent perversity in matter or in man. People’s minds, in those days, were possessed by the notion that God must have intended to make things fair and equal for all, but that inequality had slipt into the world in the making, when God’s eye was off it for a moment: soon, however, the Messiah would come and set this right among other things. Hence it startled our Lord’s hearers to find this defect, as they deemed it, in the order of the world brought forward by Him, and not only not explained away as they would have expected, but set forth as among the Laws according to which the Spiritual Order of the world was carried on. From the prominence given to this statement in the narrative of the three earlier gospels we see what a deep impression it made. Our Lord applies this aphorism, solely, to the advantages and opportunities which men should have for learning the ways of God. But the analogy between this principle and some observed principles of economic and organic science is very striking and interesting, to say no more; while in education the working of this rule is abundantly obvious in every school. That the world is ordered on a basis not of equality but of inequality, is a patent fact; and lately it has been shewn that it is of inequality that all progress comes. One little superiority, due to what seems an accidental variation, gives an advantage for gaining a greater superiority and so on. Uniformity, indeed, implies stagnation. If all men had just the same powers and minds and characters, would not such a world stagnate from its insupportable dulness and the want of stimulus for the faculties of men? If, at every step, it grew harder to get farther on, then no one could go very far. A bullet fired into a tree, which hardens from the bark to the core, is brought to a standstill very soon. Such a state of things would preclude exalted eminence; mediocrity would reign supreme and the onward march of mankind would be checked.