NO, it does not seem fair at all to give to him that has something, and to refuse it to one that hasn’t anything scarcely, and even to take away what little that one has! Just think of giving a rich Pansy five hundred dollars more, and then snatching away the last penny from a poor Pansy!

Surely you don’t suppose the loving, gentle, merciful Lord Jesus meant any such thing? Of course he didn’t.

“What did He mean?” Why, simply this, my dear; that one who makes good use of his gifts will have more gifts. He will grow wiser and better, and go up higher all the time, just like a tree that uses well the good ground and good air and good dew around it. And the tree, that for some reason won’t send its roots down and this way and that and set every one of its leaves to breathing, such a lazy tree will lose all its life and die, the first wide-awake tree sucking up that very life.

It may be just so with two Pansies. One is good, true, active, the other one isn’t; how one will go up and the other down; how one will increase and the other decrease until one seems to have all the good, even the little the other started out with.

You borrow from a bank one hundred dollars and pay it back with interest when your note is due, and quite likely the bank will loan you two hundred dollars then, if you want it, and so on, increasing it just as you are faithful. But if you don’t pay as you promised, because you were lazy, your one hundred dollars will be taken from you and loaned to one who may have ten thousand dollars, because he makes good use of it. We are all on trial. How happy we should be to be trusted by the Lord! It’s a fearful thing when he will not loan us any more.

L.