maintain His honour, to spread
the truth of His Gospel, to comfort His people. We must devote our
voice to speaking good words, and never defile it with vile language in
the devil's service, because it is a debt which we owe to God. So with
our health, our strength, our time, for all these God reckons with His
servants. If we are misusing these things, wasting our time, devoting
our strength to mere selfish, worldly pursuits, neglecting our
opportunities, terrible will be the final day of reckoning when God
will say for the last time, "Pay Me that thou owest."

We read in the parable of to-day's Gospel that one of the king's
servants owed him ten thousand talents. This was so vast a sum that no
man could possibly pay it. In that servant we see ourselves. We owe a
debt to God which we cannot pay. The wages of sin is death, and as
sinners we are like the servant, we owe a vast debt, and we have not
wherewithal to pay. Nothing that we can do will put away our sin, or
excuse us from the penalty. That servant in the parable prayed his
lord to have patience, saying that he would pay all. We may think
foolishly that we can pay the debt of old sins by leading good lives
now. But it may not be. If a man owes money he is not excused the
debt because now he pays his way. Our sins are the great debt of ten
thousand talents. God's law is written in the ten commandments, and we
have broken them a thousand times. We cannot pay. The king in his
mercy forgave the servant. So God forgives us through the merits and
mediation of Jesus Christ. He paid the debt which we cannot pay, He
bore our sins, the sin of Adam born with us, and the actual sins of our
lives, on the Cross of Calvary. His Blood was the price which paid the
debt. When we are baptised we are baptised into His Death, and the sin
of Adam is forgiven. When we repent truly of a sin of our own
committing, we are made partakers in the benefits of His Passion. When
we come devoutly to Holy Communion our sinful bodies are made clean by
Christ's Body, and our souls washed in His most Precious Blood, and our
sins are forgiven us. But the parable not only teaches us our need of
pardon, and the fulness of God's mercy, but the necessity of forgiving
each other. The servant who owed the vast debt was pardoned. Yet he
would not forgive his fellow servant who owed him a trifling sum. The
story of the unmerciful servant is being repeated everywhere around us.
We see