“TIED UP IN NAPKIN”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 811, 4 November 1929, Page 14

“TIED UP IN NAPKIN”

CHRIST, WORLD’S GREATEST STORY-TELLER TALENT OF LANGUAGE The Rev. D. Gardner Miller, of Christchurch, speaking last night at the Beresford Street Congregational Church, took as his subject the story of the man who tied up his talent in a napkin (Luke xix. 20). “Christ is the world’s greatest storyteller,” said Mr. Miller. “His stories have become part and parcel of human language. He is quoted more than any other speaker or writer in the realm of literature.” * In a recent publication in America of the world’s greatest short stories, the story of the Prodigal Son was included. “That particular story is unmatched as a piece of poetic prose, apart from its revolutionary conception of God," said Mr. Miller. “Next to it comes the story of the ‘talents, which for sheer insight into human motives, salutary justice and the challenging reminder of personal responsibility, is one of the supreme stories of this or any age.” Dealing with the story in detail, Mr. Miller went on to say that “a talent not used is a talent abused.” Whatever a man’s talpnt may be, if he does not use it, the time frill come when the demands of life will leave him high and dry. To have the faculty for leadership, for instance, and not to use it, ends in the withering of -the gift. The reward that God and life give to those who use their talents is just greater responsibility and more work. The story is not a fanciful picture of Heaven and Hell but a vivid and forceful presentation of the law of life that promotion, or reward, does not mean ease but greater strain. Reward simply means partnership. The man who tied up his talent in a napkin was punished by being dismissed from his master’s service. The vivid picture of the “outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth,” was not meant by Christ to resemble Hell. “The man did not cheat his master, he disappointed him. To cast such a man into Hell would not be justice but vindictiveness. The picture means that the man was dismissed and took his place among the unfortunates. When God cannot trust a man. He simply passes him by when He needs someone to lead a forlorn hope or stand for an unpopular cause. “The tragedy with so many men today is that they are neutrals. Like those whom Dante saw in ‘Ante-Hell’ they are moral shirkers. What a difference there would be in political and moral life if men who know the right but are indifferent to the challenge of the situation, would cease to shirk the issue and step out boldly and declare the side they are on! “Men who deliberately refuse to make use of the talent that Is their’s, are robbers of God. God needs men and when men withhold their talents they rob God of something needed to bring the world to His feet. ‘He could not make Antonio Stradivarius violins without Antonio.’ No organised evil would live long iu New Zealand if men would tear the napkin into shreds and boldly place their talent at the disposal of God. To deny the world that one thing you can do is to leave a blank in the universe. God needs you. Are you afraid to show on whose side you are on? Place your talent at the disposal of God and then go out among your fellows and ‘play the game.’ ” I : !