There is a principle in this award which regulates God's dealings with us in either world. And it is this the ground and secret of all increase is faithfulness. And we may all rejoice that this is the rule of God's moral gifts, for had anything else except faithfulness been made the condition, many would have been unable or, at least, would have thought themselves unable to advance at all. But faithfulness is in everybody's power; it is a simple, practical, everyday thing.
I. But what is faithfulness? A serious sense of responsibility leading to exactness in the discharge of duty; or the recognition of our accountability to our own conscience; or a feeling of having been entrusted with anything by God producing a desire to use it as He intended, that He may be glorified. (1) Faithfulness to convictions. So long as a man has not silenced them by sin, the heart is full of still, small voices, speaking to him everywhere. So long as a man has not by rough treatment severed them, the heart is full of little secret cords which are always drawing him. Those are convictions. Be faithful to them; for if you are unfaithful, they will get weaker and weaker, fewer and fewer, till they go out. (2) Faithfulness in little things to men. (a) It is of the utmost importance that you be scrupulously accurate and just in all your most trivial transactions of honour and business with your fellow-creatures. Do not imagine there is no religion in these things; no man's soul will prosper who is not a rigidly honest man honest in the minutiæ; (b) The acquisition and use of influence are great matters of faithfulness.
II. Faithfulness determines increase. To employ well the present is to command the future. The growth of your soul hangs upon its own fidelity; and more love, more joy, more peace, more presence, more Christ are given to those who, day by day, are true to the love, the joy, the peace, the presence, the Christ, which they already have. And that for two reasons: (1) The natural law, which pervades all nature, that growth is the offspring of exercise; (2) the sovereign will of a just God to increase the gifts of those who use them.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1868, p. 149.
References: Luke 19:17. A. P. Peabody, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 127; D. G. Watt, Ibid.,vol. xxviii., p. 77; J. Vaughan, Sermons,8th series, p. 228