Chapter XIII: Talents

Say, fellows, one morning in spring a boy came to me and said: "Dad, let's go fishing; I saw the bass jumping in the lake just now, and that means they are ready to bite."

"All right," I replied, "you get the bait and the lines ready and we will go at four this afternoon." He did so.

Then we went around to the point on the lake where he had seen the fish jumping. I made a dandy throw, first try, and as the bait began bobbing in and out among the flags I could just see myself hanging a beauty. I was watching the line so hard that I forgot the boy for two or three minutes; then, turning, I saw him standing there looking very sad.

"What's the matter," I said, "why don't you unwrap your line and fish?"

He whimpered: "I want to fish for bass, with a big line, like yours."

"Why," I said, "you couldn't handle a big rod and line like this; and if you could, you would get it tangled up in those flags out there; now you just unwrap your little line, put a little worm on your little hook and drop it over there by that stump, and you will catch a little perch."

Well, he didn't want to do it, but because I ordered him to do it he cast in his hook. In the meantime, I was watching my minnow again; it was playing beautifully, but getting no strike. I was still watching it intently, when all of a sudden I heard a great splashing beside me, and looking around--there was a sight! That boy's little pole was nearly bent double, and at the end of his line threshing and churning the water at a terrific rate was a big fish! The boy was having the time of his life; oh, he played him, he tightened him and slacked him, but all the time bringing him nearer to the bank.

In about a half minute (it seemed much longer) there was _a pound-and-a-half bass_ flapping out there on the grass. In the meantime, the big hook continued to do nothing--and it never did, that afternoon. We went home with the one bass, and that night the family sat around the supper table and greatly enjoyed the fish _caught on the little hook_.

God will honour the fellow that does the best he can _with what he has in his hand_. And perhaps it will be a far greater honour than you ever dreamed of.

When our Lord told the parable He did not mean to make small of the fellow who has only small ability. He condemned the fellow who refused to use what ability he had because it was small and because he did not have as much as somebody else to work with. Let's suppose the last part of that parable had read this way:

"Then he which had received the One Talent came and said, Lord, you only gave me one talent, and when I saw you giving that other fellow five and still another two, I was all cut up about it. I did not see why you should give them more to work with than you gave me. I boiled inside. I said to myself, Well, if that is the way he treats me, I will simply take his talent and bury it until he comes back; then I will dig it up and hand it back to him just as he handed it to me.

"But then I thought again, and I remembered that it was your property you were distributing, and you had a perfect right to do it as you chose. I remembered that you are both a wise and a kind master; you have never given me a reason to question your love for me and your interest in me; and you know me and my capacity for handling your property far better than I know myself. So I decided to take that One Talent and work with it and do the very best I could with it. And, Lord, I did; and here, see--I have gained another one to go with it; here are _two talents_."

Bless your life, fellows, do you know what his lord would have said to that man? He would have said to him exactly what he said to the other two men.

A poor boy in New York got himself a job at a little lunch stand. He found he had a little talent for making the lunches attractive and people would buy them. He stuck at it, saved his earnings, and after a while bought out the lunch stand. He enlarged the variety of his lunches and added some other goods. And, to make a long story short, he is now acknowledged to be the greatest hotel man in the world.

The fellow who uses the talent he has, be it one, two, or five, and takes Jesus for his partner, is bound to be a success.

_Read Matthew 25:14-30._