What do these still discover? What but
“Corn-fields ripening to the harvest, and the wide seas smooth with sleep.”
Let Summer days then teach us, as, one after one, they greet us and depart, their wise, but unobtruded lesson. The Summer time being the time of grave steady work, and there being also such a time in our lives, a time of dust, and heat, and toil, when our spirits sometimes seem to flag, and the very sameness of labour brings over us a depression, and a lingering longing after the time of blossom, and of clear new verdure; there being this resemblance between us, let us examine the year’s work, if perhaps we may gather some hints for ours. How does the year work? and how should we work, when that first zest that made work easy has gone, and the time of rest is on the other side of our labour.
The year works thoroughly, more implicitly obedient than man to this teaching of its Maker,
“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”
God seems to have made, in all the wonderful animal and vegetable growth which surrounds us, some to honour, and some to dishonour. Even as with nations, there were the chosen people, and there were those left yet degraded—and as with individuals, there are those whose work is to evangelise a world, and there are those whose work is to follow the plough, or to order the household—so it is with plants, and flowers, and trees.
And from this point of view we shall find that they have much to teach us in our work. How thoroughly it is all done, and with the might; the noble as well as the homely work! There are some plants busy maturing groundsel-seed and beech-mast, some maturing strawberries, and peaches, and pines. But each does its utmost, and the work of the inferior degree is equal in quality with that of the higher. The shepherd’s-purse and the thistledown are as perfectly and exquisitely finished, as are the apricot and the grape.
And this strikes me as leading up to a cheering and beautiful thought—to a thought which has often occurred to me in reading the parable of the Talents. There is, let me remark, this difference between this parable and that of the Pounds: that in the one case the work was equal in quality, bearing exactly the same proportion to the advantages, which were dissimilar; in the other case the advantages and opportunities were the same for each, but the work was unequal and greatly differing in quality. Thus each has its separate teaching.
And in this parable of the Talents, the same heartening thought came to me as that wafted from fields, and trees, and gardens, on the breath of Summer days. It was cheering, and a matter of much thankfulness, to recollect that it was possible, in a low condition, and with less advantages, to serve God in the same proportion with the greatest of God’s saints: to fight as well and as nobly in the ranks as any officer could do who waved his soldiers to the charge. It was, I say, very comforting to read, after
“Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more”;