rest the mighty machinery of nature, with a view either to punish your
guilt or reward your obedience. Here at least we can meet them on their
own ground, and accept their rule. Let any member of the body, or any
faculty of the mind lie dormant for a time, and by the very fact, its
power is diminished or destroyed. It is a law of life that a talent
becomes feeble in proportion as it has been left in idleness. It is not
only true in point of fact that when we do not diligently lay out our
gifts, the Giver recalls them; it is further true, that he recalls them
in our sight by the silent operation of an inexorable law.

To waste life in the hope of getting all made right by an energetic
repentance at the close, is a very foolish and mischievous species of
superstition; it is the exercise of a very strong faith, without any
promise from God on which it may lean. You seem to expect that God will
arrest the operation of his own laws in order to afford you every
facility for living in sin. In the Scriptures we read of an interference
with the natural laws--the sun standing still--in order that the enemies
of the Lord and his people might be destroyed; but you expect a greater
miracle;--you expect the Omnipotent to arrest the operation of his own
laws, in order that his enemies may prosper now and escape at last. You
expect that Jesus will work a miracle not to cast out the unclean
spirit, but to maintain him in possession of a human heart. The disuse
of the talent takes the talent away; this is the law of the kingdom; and
it will not be changed in order to encourage the sinner in his sin.

"For unto every one that hath shall be given," &c. Obviously from the
whole circumstances of the case, "to have" in this connection, means to
possess and use aright. He who received only one talent was
distinguished from him who received five, not by not having, but by not
using. The law announced here is that they who employ well what they
have, shall retain it all and receive more in addition; whereas they who
do not rightly employ what they have, will be deprived of that which
they possess but do not use.

Fearing lest I should darken counsel by words without knowledge, I leave
the positive penal infliction, which takes effect beyond the precincts
of this life, without one word of comment, in the short and solemn words
of the Scripture, "Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness:
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."