consider each particular point, the more hidden meaning we shall discover, and the more good we may do to our own minds; and the case is, perhaps, stronger in no one parable than in this. And now for your explanation, Mary.

Mary.-I think, Mamma, that the nobleman means God; that we are His servants, and that when He returns, that is, at the last day, He will call us to account for the good or the evil we have done, and reward or punish us accordingly.

Mrs. B-Well, my love, you are quite right in your general view; but we may, I think, go a little further into details than you have done, before we quit the parable. How, for instance, do you interpret the sum of money intrusted to us? Mary. Is it not the means we have of doing good?

Mrs. B. To others do you mean, or to ourselves also?

Mary. I meant to others, Mamma; but I suppose it may mean both.

Mrs. B.-And if it does, which indeed it may be said to do, what a boundless field does it open to us! What indeed is there, which may not, if improved, be made the means of good to ourselves or others? Not our worldly advantages only, not only our good dispositions, not only our pious and virtuous feelings, but our joys, our sorrows, our trials, even our evil inclinations, (which are trials,) all our whole state of being, and every circumstance of our lives, may be made "the means of good to ourselves or others." All these are, in fact, part of the talents, the stock in trade, which our heavenly Master has put into our hands, for the employment of which He will call us to account when He comes to make His reckoning.

Mary.-Oh! but Mamma, what a terrible idea! how could we ever give such an account?

Mrs. B.-The idea is not a terrible one to a Christian, my love, who considers that he serves a merciful, though a just Master; one who knows the infirmities of

His creatures, and has accepted, as an atonement for our sins and imperfections, the perfect sacrifice of His own Son Jesus Christ; but it is an awful idea, even to the best of Christians; and one which may well lead us to consider seriously the responsibility under which we stand, for our use of things seemingly indifferent. But though the comparison would equally hold good throughout, even were it pushed to its farthest limit, we will not go so far: we will consider the "talents" committed to us, to mean our good dispositions, and the advantages of our respective stations in life; in other words, our capacities for serving God and men. And now, my loves, observe, in the first place, the unequal distribution of these advantages. "Unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one; to every man according to his several ability." And our Master has adopted the same line of proceeding in His government of the world: not all are rich, not all prosperous, not all endowed with

distinguished abilities: some are born to poverty and suffering, some to sickness and infirmity of body, some to weakness of intellect. Even you may have seen different children with different dispositions, more or less good-tempered, liberal, industrious; one learning quickly, and soon perhaps forgetting; another slow, but retaining in the memory what he has learnt. "But all these," as the Apostle St. Paul says, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, worketh that one and the selfsame spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will:' or, in the words of the parable, "to every man according to his several ability;" according, that is in our case as He sees best for us, and for His own eternal purposes. He places us each in our respective stations, allots to us our respective duties, and gives us our respective powers, and capacities of body and of mind.

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Henry.-How wonderful, Mamma! One gets quite puzzled in thinking how

1 Cor. xii. 11.

God can know and arrange for all the world.

Mrs. B.-Wonderful indeed, my dear Henry, is He in all His ways, and far above our comprehension is that all-mighty and all-knowing mind which provides for the wants of every single creature, not only in this world, but perhaps in hundreds and thousands of other worlds beyond our knowledge. But let us return to the subject which we are more immediately considering just now. For what purpose did the nobleman give his servants these different sums of money? did he give them, or lend them, or entrust them to their keeping?

ary. He entrusted them, Mamma, and said that they must employ them to the best advantage, till he came back.

Mrs. B. Very well remembered, Mary; and now what do you understand by this?

Mary. I understand, Mamma, that God has entrusted to us good dispositions, and that we are to make the most of them, and to keep them always exercised.

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