I A. C. Benson, D. O. ltosseU% 62.
ST. LUKE XVI. lo 311
complete confidence — is that characteristic of unshaken truth and firm reality which can be relied upon, which assures us that what we admire has strength in it, and will last — which we call faithfulness.^
11.
God's Estimate of Little Things.
1. The least things are important in God's sight. We know how observant He is of small things. He upholds the sparrow's wing, clothes the lily with His own beautifying hand, and numbers the hairs of His children. He holds the balancings of the clouds. He makes the small drops of rain. It astonishes all thought to observe the minuteness of God's government, and of the natural and common processes which He carries on from day to day. His dominions are spread out, system beyond system, system above system, filling all height and latitude, but He is never lost in the vast or magnificent. He descends to an infinite detail, and builds a little universe in the smallest things. He carries on a process of growth in every tree, and flower, and living thing; accomplishes in each an internal organization, and works the functions of an internal laboratory, too delicate all for eye or instrument to trace. He articulates the members and impels the instincts of every living mote that shines in the sunbeam. The insect which is invisible to the naked eye, when placed under the microscope is discovered to be as complete in every detail as the greatest sun. Its jointed limbs, its brilliant eye, its wing of gauze, its coat of polished mail, are all of perfect finish. If, having searched through the majestic fields embraced by the eye of the astronomer, we contract our gaze to the veriest atom of which science can take cognizance, we find the same pervading watchfulness and the same care taken in the balancing of an ephemeral on its wing as in the poising of a world. With God there is this minutest attention to details, and the least work is as faithfully executed as the greatest.
^ One of the kings of Persia, when hunting, was desirous of eating of the venison in the field. Some of his attendants went to a neighbouring village, and took away a quantity of salt to
1 W. J. Knox Little.
312 FAITHFULNESS IN LITTLE THINGS
season it ; but the king, suspecting how they had acted, ordered them immediately to go and pay for it. Then, turning to his attendants, he said : " This is a small matter in itself, but a great one as regards me ; for a king ought ever to be just, because he is an example to his subjects; and if he swerve in trifles, they will become dissolute. If I cannot make all my ])eople just in small things, I can at least show them that it is possible to be so."
All sights and sounds of day and year. All groups and forms, each leaf and gem,
Are thine, O God, nor will I fear To talk to Thee of them.
Too great Thy heart is to despise,
Whose day girds centuries about; From things which we name small, Thine eyes
See great things looking out.^
2 Christ stooped to the smallest things. He could have preached a Sermon on the Mount every morning. Each night He could have stilled the sea before His astonished disciples, and shown the conscious waves lulling into peace under His feet. He could have transfigured Himself before Pilate and the astonished multitudes of the Temple. He could have made visible ascensions in the noon of every day, and revealed His form standing in the sun, like the angel of the Apocalypse. But this was not His mind. The incidents of which His work is principally made up are, humanly speaking, very humble and unpretending. The most faithful pastor in the world was never able, in any degree, to approach the Saviour in the lowliness of His manner and His attention to humble things. His teachings were in retired places, and His illustrations were drawn from ordinary affairs. If the finger of faith touched Him in the crowd, He knew the touch and distinguished also the faith. He reproved the ambitious house- wifery of a humble woman. After He had healed a poor being, blind from his birth — a work transcending all but Divine power — He returned and sought him out, as the most humble Sabbath- school teacher might have done ; and, when He had found him, cast out and persecuted by men, He taught him privately the highest secrets of His Messiahship. When the world around
^ George MacDonald, Poetical Works, i. 283.
ST. LUKE XVI. lo 313
hung darkened in sympathy with His cross, and the earth was shaking with inward amazement, He Himself was remembering His mother, and discharging the filial cares of a good son. And when He burst the bars of death, its first and final conqueror, He folded the linen cloths and the napkin, and laid them in order apart, showing that, as in the greatest things. He had a set purpose also concerning the smallest. And thus, when perfectly scanned, the work of Christ's redemption, like the created universe, is seen to be a vast orb of glory, wrought up out of finished particles. Now a life of great and prodigious exploits would have been com- paratively an easy thing for Him, but to cover Himself with beauty and glory in small things, to so fill and adorn every little human occasion as to make it Divine — this was a work of skill which no mind or hand was equal to but that which shaped the atoms of the world. Such everywhere is God. He nowhere overlooks or despises small things.