Our Lord, as a fact, asserts not only that inequalities widen, but also that they are purposely so widened. As the explorer advances, he is brought into more open ground and is better recompensed for his toil. Spiritual progress was to be brought about after the plan upon which all other human progress proceeds. It was to originate in individuals, who should push forward, seize upon posts in the foreground and hold them till the rest came up: it is not the way of Humanity to advance in line along the whole front. All progress comes of individual excellence and the world is so ordered as to favour the growth of one beginning to out-top the rest. It is an aid in this direction, that in education advance becomes commonly easier, and always more pleasurable as we proceed. Education moreover sorts out men. A hundred boys, near of an age, thrown together in a school seem at first nearly on a par; but an aristocracy develops itself wonderfully soon, both in the school and out of doors, and every half year the distinctions between boy and boy grow wider and become more strongly marked. However conscientiously the teachers may distribute their pains, the abler boy gets more attention, because he asks more intelligent questions and, seeing his interest in his work, the teacher’s thoughts in spare moments revert to him. The same holds of spiritual life, for when a man attains a sense of communion with God he becomes conscious of an inward joy, which illuminates his life, and this helps him on. Nothing is more striking in the Acts than the “exceeding great joy” which with the Apostles was the habitual state. A very material point as to the bearing of this principle is brought out in the two parables in which it occurs. What is spoken of as that which a man _hath_, is not what has been given him or what he has inherited, but only what he has acquired for himself. It is not so much the possession of the pounds or the talents which is the ground of reward, as the assiduity, energy and intelligence, by which they have been earned. I will consider the pair of parables(228) just mentioned, before the discourse in which the saying first occurs, although they stand later in the history, because they shew most clearly what Christ’s meaning was. In both parables we remark the following points. (1) The rewards are proportioned, not to the amount of the original arbitrary gifts, which, I suppose, stand for natural advantages, but to what has been obtained by turning these gifts to account. (2) What the servants are recompensed for is administrative efficiency. This shews that our Lord had in view some active service in God’s cause and not internal self-improvement alone.