trust were his. Those servants had no rights of actual ownership, nor
title of permanent proprietorship in the treasure committed to their
care; all they had, the time and opportunity to use their talents, and
they themselves, belonged to their lord. We cannot fail to perceive even
in the early incidents of the story that the Master of the servants was
the Lord Jesus; the servants, therefore, were the disciples and more
particularly the apostles, who, while of equal authority through
ordination in the Holy Priesthood, as specifically illustrated by the
earlier parable of the Pounds, were of varied ability, of diverse
personality, and unequal generally in nature and in such accomplishments
as would be called into service throughout their ministry. The Lord was
about to depart; He would return only "after a long time"; the
significance of this latter circumstance is in line with that expressed
through the parable of the Ten Virgins in the statement that the
Bridegroom tarried.

At the time of reckoning, the servants who had done well, the one with
his five talents, the other with his two, reported gladly, conscious as
they were of having at least striven to do their best. The unfaithful
servant prefaced his report with a grumbling excuse, which involved the
imputation of unrighteousness in the Master. The honest, diligent,
faithful servants saw and reverenced in their Lord the perfection of the
good qualities which they possessed in measured degree; the lazy and
unprofitable serf, afflicted by distorted vision, professed to see in
the Master his own base defects. The story in this particular, as in the
other features relating to human acts and tendencies, is psychologically
true; in a peculiar sense men are prone to conceive of the attributes of
God as comprizing in augmented degree the dominant traits of their own
nature.

Both the servant who had been entrusted with five talents and he who had
received but two were equally commended, and, as far as we are told,
were equally recompensed. The talents bestowed upon each were the gift
of his Lord, who knew well whether that servant was capable of using to
better advantage one, two, or five. Let no one conclude that good work
of relatively small scope is less necessary or acceptable than like
service of wider range. Many a man who has succeeded well in business
with small capital would have failed in the administration of vast sums;
so also in spiritual achievements "ther