But now Jesus is beginning to speak.  Let us listen to what he says.  The lessons that he taught on the Mount of Olives run all through the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of St. Matthew.  In the first of these chapters, Jesus gave them a sign, by which those who learn to understand what he here says, might know when his second coming is to take place.  These are some of the lessons from Olivet.  I should like, very much, to stop and talk about them.  But this cannot be now.  We pass over to the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew.  In this chapter we have three of our Saviour’s parables.  These are very solemn and instructive.  They all refer to the judgment that must take place when Jesus shall come into our world again.  The second of these parables is the one we are now to consider.  It is called—­“The Parable of the Talents.”  We find it in St. Matt, xxv:  14-30.  And the lessons from Olivet, which we are now to try and learn, are all drawn from the words of our Saviour, contained in the verses just mentioned.

This, then, is our present subject—­The Lessons from Olivet.  And there four lessons, in this part of our Saviour’s discourse, of which we are now to speak. The first is—­the lesson about the Master.  The second—­the lesson about the servants.  The third is—­the lesson about the talents; and the fourth, the lesson about the rewards.

The lesson about—­THE MASTER—­is the first thing of which we are to speak.

In the 14th verse of this 25th chapter of St. Matthew, Jesus speaks of himself as—­“a man travelling into a far country,”—­and of his people as—­“his own servants.”  In the 19th verse he speaks of himself as “the lord of those servants, coming back, after a long time, to reckon with them.”

In St. Luke xix:  11-27 we have another of our Saviour’s parables, very similar to the one now before us.  There, he speaks of himself as “a nobleman who went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.”  This language was borrowed from a custom that prevailed in those days.  The headquarters of the government of the world then was in the city of Rome.  The kings and rulers of different countries received their appointments to the offices they held from the Roman Emperor.  Archelaus, the son of Herod, succeeded his father as king of Judea.  But, it was necessary for him to go to Rome and get permission from the emperor to hold and exercise that office.  He had done this, not very long before our Saviour applied to himself the words we are now considering.  This was a fact well known.  And this is the illustration which Jesus here uses in reference to himself.  He is the Head—­the Prince—­the Lord—­the Master of all things in his church.  He spoke of himself to his disciples as their “Lord and Master,” St. John xiii:  14.  He tells us that he has gone to heaven, as Archelaus went to Rome, “to receive for himself a kingdom