faithfulness

• basis of Supreme Judge’s eternal verdict

25:1.6The Ha­vona Servi­tals and the Grad­u­ate Guides man­i­fest a tran­scen­dent de­vo­tion to their work and a touch­ing af­fec­tion for one an­other, an af­fec­tion which, while spir­i­tual, you could only un­der­stand by com­par­i­son with the phe­nom­e­non of hu­man love. There is di­vine pathos in the sep­a­ra­tion of the servi­tals from the guides, as so of­ten oc­curs when the servi­tals are dis­patched on mis­sions be­yond the lim­its of the cen­tral uni­verse; but they go with joy and not with sor­row. The sat­is­fy­ing joy of high duty is the eclips­ing emo­tion of spir­i­tual be­ings. Sor­row can­not ex­ist in the face of the con­scious­ness of di­vine duty faith­fully per­formed. And when man’s as­cend­ing soul stands be­fore the Su­preme Judge, the de­ci­sion of eter­nal im­port will not be de­ter­mined by ma­te­rial suc­cesses or quan­ti­ta­tive achieve­ments; the ver­dict re­ver­ber­at­ing through the high courts de­clares: “Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant; you have been faith­ful over a few es­sen­tials; you shall be made ruler over uni­verse re­al­i­ties.”

• in little and in much

169:2.6“I af­firm that he who is faith­ful in lit­tle will also be faith­ful in much, while he who is un­righ­teous in lit­tle will also be un­righ­teous in much. If you have not shown fore­sight and in­tegrity in the af­fairs of this world, how can you hope to be faith­ful and pru­dent when you are trusted with the stew­ard­ship of the true riches of the heav­enly king­dom? If you are not good stew­ards and faith­ful bankers, if you have not been faith­ful in that which is an­other’s, who will be fool­ish enough to give you great trea­sure in your own name?

• in little and in much

171:8.112. Faith­ful­ness is the unerring mea­sure of hu­man trust­wor­thi­ness. He who is faith­ful in lit­tle things is also likely to ex­hibit faith­ful­ness in ev­ery­thing con­sis­tent with his en­dow­ments.

171:8.123. The Mas­ter grants the lesser re­ward for lesser faith­ful­ness when there is like op­por­tu­nity.

171:8.134. He grants a like re­ward for like faith­ful­ness when there is lesser op­por­tu­nity.

• in little and in much

176:3.4“As in­di­vid­u­als, and as a gen­er­a­tion of be­liev­ers, hear me while I speak a para­ble: There was a cer­tain great man who, be­fore start­ing out on a long jour­ney to an­other coun­try, called all his trusted ser­vants be­fore him and de­liv­ered into their hands all his goods. To one he gave five tal­ents, to an­other two, and to an­other one. And so on down through the en­tire group of hon­ored stew­ards, to each he in­trusted his goods ac­cord­ing to their sev­eral abil­i­ties; and then he set out on his jour­ney. When their lord had de­parted, his ser­vants set them­selves at work to gain prof­its from the wealth in­trusted to them. Im­me­di­ately he who had re­ceived five tal­ents be­gan to trade with them and very soon had made a profit of an­other five tal­ents. In like man­ner he who had re­ceived two tal­ents soon had gained two more. And so did all of these ser­vants make gains for their mas­ter ex­cept him who re­ceived but one tal­ent. He went away by him­self and dug a hole in the earth where he hid his lord’s money. Pres­ently the lord of those ser­vants un­ex­pect­edly re­turned and called upon his stew­ards for a reck­on­ing. And when they had all been called be­fore their mas­ter, he who had re­ceived the five tal­ents came for­ward with the money which had been in­trusted to him and brought five ad­di­tional tal­ents, say­ing, ‘Lord, you gave me five tal­ents to in­vest, and I am glad to pre­sent five other tal­ents as my gain.’ And then his lord said to him: ‘Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant, you have been faith­ful over a few things; I will now set you as stew­ard over many; en­ter forth­with into the joy of your lord.’ And then he who had re­ceived the two tal­ents came for­ward, say­ing: ‘Lord, you de­liv­ered into my hands two tal­ents; be­hold, I have gained these other two tal­ents.’ And his lord then said to him: ‘Well done, good and faith­ful stew­ard; you also have been faith­ful over a few things, and I will now set you over many; en­ter you into the joy of your lord.’ And then there came to the ac­count­ing he who had re­ceived the one tal­ent. This ser­vant came for­ward, say­ing, ‘Lord, I knew you and re­al­ized that you were a shrewd man in that you ex­pected gains where you had not per­son­ally la­bored; there­fore was I afraid to risk aught of that which was in­trusted to me. I safely hid your tal­ent in the earth; here it is; you now have what be­longs to you.’ But his lord an­swered: ‘You are an in­do­lent and sloth­ful stew­ard. By your own words you con­fess that you knew I would re­quire of you an ac­count­ing with rea­son­able profit, such as your dili­gent fel­low ser­vants have this day ren­dered. Know­ing this, you ought, there­fore, to have at least put my money into the hands of the bankers that on my re­turn I might have re­ceived my own with in­ter­est.’ And then to the chief stew­ard this lord said: ‘Take away this one tal­ent from this un­prof­itable ser­vant and give it to him who has the ten tal­ents.’