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Maps, plates, charts, etc may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposMre are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre film6s A des taux de reduction diffirents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour 6tre reproduit en un seul clich6, il est film6 A partir de Tangle supArieur gauche, de gauche A droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images nicessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mAthode. 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 S 6 ^/. THE PRODIGAL SON: FOUR DISCOUESES n BY THE REV. W. MORLEY PUNSHON, M.A. SECOXD CANADIAN EDITION. TORONTO: PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL ROSE, 80 KING ST. EAST. 1868. To 3'he ^cngregatioyi Worshipping in Victoria Chapel, Clifton, are affectionately inscribed. PREFACE The following Sermons were preached in the ordinary course of my ministry. They make no claim to originality of treatment, but are the result of an attempt to realize^ as a life-history, the parable of the Prodigal Son. Thoy appeal not so much to reason as to consciousness ; and He who has all the hearts of the human in His keeping, has willed that some of them should be touched by these home- pictures and appeals. Many who have listened to them have requested their publication, and new circumstances have risen up around me which render resistance no longer graceful Hence, on the eve of departure over " many waters," which will yet fail to sever me from the Ibve of my country and of my friends, I leave this modest memo- rial, with the blessing of a full heart ; and with the prayer that the Divine Spirit, who honoured the preaching of these Sermons, may make the printing of them yet more powerful for good. London, April, 1868. W. M. P. THE PRODIGAL SON. 1. SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. **An«l ho said, a certain ma»i had two sons: and the younger of them sai«l to his father, Father, give me the portion «»f goods that falleth to me. And lie divi(k'd unto them his living. \nd not many days after, the younger son gatliered all to- gether, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land ; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into hi.s lielils to feed swine. And he would fain have lilled his belly with the husks that the swino did eat : and no man gave unto him." — Luke xv. 11-10. There is sometliiiig in this inimitable parable wbieli goof* straight to every human heart. It is almost impossible to refuse an entrance to it ; it storms the strongest fortress of the soul. By its appeal to that latent sensibility to impression — that dormtuit or sepulclired liumanness ■which underlies, in every man, his surface of i)assion or pride — it makes its way to the symi)athy of the rudest, and surprises the most callous into an emotion which finds its best relief 8 Tin: rnoDifJAL sox. in (ears. Tlio cliiUl lovrs to licnr its siiii|»lo niwl ixiTccii i\ff stojy ; aiirl iiuiiiy a fiiiiiiiial, vvlmiii ciiiiic lias thnw its w(.rst to liarle lieard Him gladly," and His tones of teiulerness had a charm for the most detested and depraved. "Then drew near unto Him all the jmblicans find sinners for to hear Him." But this fact, which one would have thought would ftt once liavc commended His tcachiug, was tortured into a,n accusation against Him l»y the nuilignity of the Phari- m Bee-mind. From the beginning the Scribes and J'harisees had honoured Him with their hatred, had plotted to en- snare Jlim into the utterance of sedition or of ]>lasi>hemy, and had watched eagerly for His fall. All theii* prejudices were shocked beyond forgiveness, both by the circumstances of His advent, and by the whole tenor of His life. They looked for a King who should sway a visible sce^itre, and dwell in a royal ])alace, or for a Teacher who should pay his co*irt to the doctors of the law, and, having won over the highest minds, who should select from among them those who should be authorised to disi)ense his truth ; or, if not these, for a rro})het who should be recluse and uncouitly, SIN AND ITS 0ONSEQUENCj:S. 9 and who, awful in sanctities which l". .. city wonld pol- lute, could therefore abide only in the wilderness. This was their ideal of the long-promised Messiah ; and when Jesus came — not a monarch, but a Nazarene — not a recluse, but a " friend of publicans and sinners" — not the retailer of esoteric doctrine to the privileged few, but the great preacher upon whose lips hung the multitude with amazement and delight, their prejudice deepened into an implacable hos- tility, which pursued its victim to the death. It is difficult to conceive of a course more calculated to provoke them than that which the Saviour consistently pursued. They looked down upon the masses of the people with a contempt which they cared not to conceal. " This people which knoweth not the law are cursed ;" and if there was one class which was held in greater abhorrence than another, it was the class which gathered the taxes of a hated foreign power, and, dressed in a little brief authority, made their office doubly odious by rapacity and extortion. And yet, passing by the anointed priest, the venerable elder, the astute scribe — not to mention Yenisei ves, the reputable and ascetic Pharisees — these were the very classes to whom the new Teacher addressed Himself, and in whose comrnnion- ship He was wont to mingle. Enmity could hardly fail to seize upon so fair an occasion, and she iln]»ro^ od it to the uttermost. "Surely," she would say, in her envenomed 10 THE PRODIGAL SON. addresses and conversations — "surely you will no more listen to ravings like these ! The man has no character ; he speaks blasphemy — does His works of healing on the Sabbath — does not fast — drags out a mendicant existence — eats with unwashen hands — consorts with the vilest, doubt- less from congeniality of feeling — ' receives sinnprs and eats with them.*" Now it is partly to vindicate Himself against this accusation that the Saviour unfolds to them His princi- ple of action, and appeals to the home experience of them all whether that principle was not one of the commonest of life. The principle is this, that the mind uniformly goes out in deepest interest, among all the objects of attachment, after that one which is in peril. The three parables illus- trate it well. You do not wonder that the woman should be listless about the nine pieces of silver, safe in the desk or in the drawer, but that she should be active and inter- ested about the one piece which she had lost. You feel at once that it is nature for the shepherd to leave the ninety and nine folded, thoup'h it were in the wilderness, and seek in pit and glen for the one#iiapless which had wandered astray. And when the illustration is carried higher, and the thifig in peril is not a coin, nop a sheep, but a child, you feel, in your heart of hearts — and it is commended to you by your own experience — by the clinging tenderness with which you yearned over the dying babe, by the wake- SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 11 ful anxiety with which you tremble for the absent son — that the child that had been alienated, and around whose history had darkened clouds of shame and sin, would on his return wake the highest raptures of deliverance, and be greeted with the heartiest welcome of the father's soul. It is impossible to compress all the lessons of this interesting parable into one discourse. The very riches of the subject hiU'e indeed hitherto deterred our approach to it ; f)ut now that, in Divine help, we are venturing among its hidden treasures, we will confine ourselves at first to a brief medi- tation upon I. TJie prodigaVs siuj and II. Its consequenceSf Leaving his change of mind, the bliss of his recovery, and the rather interesting problem of the conduct of the elder son, to furnish us with profit on some future occasion. And first, as to the prodigal's sin. It has struck me th ,t some amongst you may be congi'atulating yourselves in secret that here at least you are safe from denunciation and alarm, because the delineation must be of uncommon sin, and of a broad and strongly-marked type of depravity, from whose brand you feel yourselves free. Nay, it is rather one of the most ordinary phases of impiety. I could select thousands upon thousands in this great city who answer in every particular to the graphic description of the text. Do 13 THK PUOOKiAL HON. ycm HOC (lijit youn/:^ num, of lil^^li HpirilH and MHsinrd mirn — i'lill (»1* ^<>m»nmH iiiipiilsrH, <'{ini('«l iiwny l)y a MionglillrpH onlliusiMHiii lui- wlioiii aliiioKt t^vcrylKjily Iimh a gooil woni, alxjut wIkjiii tlit-iro can l»o iiuuiy UiU'h told of IiIh (|ui(k ami l^racc'ful cuurtcsy, and of tlio inc)n<'y Mial Uv liaH K«iiia!ios(? that he wan diHligUHMl hy malevolenc(M)r hy cruelty. He iH not accused (jf hc^trayal of huuian trust, iu)r of outrage upon human cliaritieH. Ilo in very far removcnl fi*om tin? sordid and the dastardly, lie i'4 Bimply, lilwo thousjinds now, a carelcsn, light-hearted child of the world, eag<»r for prcisent enjoyment, ami, in the twin- ing of his atloctions round Home realised good, forgetful of the great future^ for whicli he ought to live. There is nothing, therefore, in the case before uh that can justify your inattention, or that can encourage you to lioj>e tliat you will escape from th(^ pressure of the truth ; and in tlio anatomy of th(5 prodigal'a transgression you will find tlio Hcnl})el at work \\\Hm yourselves. lie binned, 1 , because of the alienation of his affection. NIN AND ITH (•0?f8l root of IiIh roljcllion. IIo luiil forgotten tlio oMi^'iitioiiH (»f liJH position, ind tlio kiii'l ontflowingH of tluit gciMTouH lic^art wiiicli, for IiIh imliil^oncr, liahiloHophie and religio'H truth, that there in both an attractive and a repelling principle! in human iifi- turo towards Ood. TIku-c; are iuHtinctH in the houI which riH(5 up reHpon.sivo wImui we arc; tohl that then; is a (*f>d, aiid which proiript uh to.H(;ek for Huceour or to render ho- mage. There aro times in evcsry man'H life when ho in irrc- Histibly drawn out aftcsr (iod in Kcntimfrntal or impl()ring adoration. WJicmever omotioris aro aroused, whether they bo of gratitude or of ten'or, the mind tramjdes in a moment upon its loudly-vjiunt(!d athfiisms. Wh(;n w(; tliriil deliglit- edly at some inspiring tidings, or befon; some su})erb sc(*no of trav(d whc^n wc are rescufid from Rome tfirribbr jHiril, or give the li(!art-grasp to some loved one just si^trod to us 14 THE PRODIGAL SON. from the g«ates of the grave ; or when, on the other hand, we are remorseful for some recent sin, in some awakening hour of conscience, beneath some great agony of spirit, when our burdened hearts can find no outlet but in prayer — when we bend over the fastly-waning life which we would give a world to reanimate, or when ourselves are racked in some struggle of inortal pain ; — these are the seasons when we betake ourselves to the thought of the Divine, and call upon the God whom we have been taught to worship, to inspire our faith, or to remove our fear. But even in these mo- ments, when we are attracted towards God, we are con- scious of an influence that repels. We are drawn back, as it were, by the power of some invisible hand. In prosperity we are prone, the while we revel in the gift, to be forgetful of the Giver : our hearts become at ease in their possessions, and are inflated with pride. In adversity we either turn our own trouble inwards, and brood about it till it maddens us, or try to lose it amid the whirl of the world's excite- p;^ents, or drown it in the cup of the drunkard ; and some, infatuated, seek to end the sting of the sorrow by the steel of the suicide. In our consciousness of sin, we either try to banish it from our thoughts entirely, or to believe that the chances of future time will favour us, or to pacify our consciences by a round of external observances ; or, in our own strength, to wrestle proudly with our corruptions, that t. SIN AND ITS CONSEiJUENCES. 15 we may overcome them. In all these conditions, ** God is not in all our thoughts," and we avail ourselves of any re- source or expedient rather than seek rest and healing in Him. Our hearts are alienated, there is no outgoing of affection towards the Creator within us. We coldly admit His existence, and that is all ; and when we think of Him it is either with supreme indifference or with al>ject terror. Brethren, I do charge home upon you this rebellion of the heart to-day, as the fruitful source of your every overt act of treason. Pressing through all the developments of ex- ternal character, and all the secrecies of conflicting motive, I seize hold of your innermost heart, and I say, Here is the traitor. This heart has thrown off its allegiance, and leagued itself with rebels. This heart " is not right in the sight of God." With the heart thus alienated, you can the more readily explain the prodigal's impatience of restraint^ hankering after present license of enjoyment, and departure from the house of his father. All these followed as the natural consequences of estranged affection. A yoke that is felt must always be galling ; an enforced servitude stirs up within the man all latent feelings of rebellion. Hence, when the principle of filial love was gone, the restraint of the home became irksome, the desire for independence gi-ew into a passion, and then followed the project of the journey into a far country, and of the uncontrolled rioting in the \ 16 THE PRODIGAL SOIf. portion of goods. And the like sad absence of reverent love to God has produced in all sinners the like impatience of His laws, and the like wanderings of heart and life. Feelings are the germs of actions ; and it is impossible for an ajffection to be cherished without an intensification of its energy which will give colour and direction to every ac- tivity of the man. We cannot take fire into our bosom, and then escape the penalty of the burning. We cannot without hazard play with the fang of the asp ; nor, until the m illen- nium shall arrive, may the child put his hand upon the cockatrice's den. You cannot look into yourselves, and study carefully your own spiritual state, without confession of your own guilt in this matter. You were indifferent or hostile to God's government. The very conscience which reminded you of His claims, obscured His loving-kindness from you, and urged you to hide from His displeasure. Then you fretted against His laws, and felt them an exact- ing tyranny rather than an honourable service. Then you wtre consumed with an avarice for present enjoyment ; and, with a churl's selfishness, you took the bounty from the Father at the time when you were panting to rebel against His authority, and into a far country — the farther the bet- ter for your purpose, because the more seemingly beyond control — you took your departure from the ancestral home. And with occasional variations, now of more notorious, now »IIC AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 17 of more deceitful inii>iety, this is tlic bi()grjv])1iy of you all. It is no strange tale of unexampled ill. It is no ft)i-eign history of evil, so atrocious and so alien that you shudder as at the news of a distant massacre, and thank Goil that you are not as other men. Yoii are the ingrates who have abused the Father's kindness ; ^oii the spendthrifts who have run to this excess of riot ; i/oii the prodigals who are thus exiled from the Father's heart and home. Brethren, take the humbling truth ; and deem me not your enemy for telling it. It is no joy to me thus to dwell u])on the pros- tration of the nature which I share. There is a natural pride within me, which would make me delight to vaunt with the loudest the dignity of human nature, if I dare. But it were folly to cicatrize a wound while the mischief festers in the flesh, or to hide a peril lest a shock should be given to the nervous system of the man in danger ; and I but ^n'ove the sincerity of my good wishes for your welfare wlion I follow you into the land of your wandering, and warn you to repent and to return. It is with like purpose that I now proceed to dwell u])on the results or consequences of your sin. The text intimates tint there was a season of revelry, during which no outward calamities overtook the prodigal ; when he revelled in his delirium of pleasure, and in his dream of freedom ; wlien passion drowned thought, and silenced conscience, and ban- 18 THE PRODIGAL SON. ished foar ; hticI whon, with ample means and boisterous associatoH, lie ''witlilield not his heart from any joy." It were to defeat our own purpose to affirm that there are no pleasures in sin. The world would never continue in its ways if it reaped no gratification. There is, doubtless, something congenial to the wayward heart in the objects of its fond pursuit, and there is often thrown a blinding charm about the man, beneath whose spell unholy he fancies every Hecate a Ganymede, and dallies with defcrmity wliich he mistakes for beauty ; but our point is this, that in every course of transgression, in eveiy departure of the human spirit from God, there is debasement in the process, and there is ruin in the inevitable end. I think this statement is borne out by the passage on whose truth we are now dilating. There are several ideas suggested by it, which present a fearful picture of the disastrous consequences of sin. There is, for example, what has been well expressed by the word homelessness.^ He was in a far country : there was the absence, even in his wildest revelry, of domes- tic joys, and orderly comforts, and all those nameless en- dearments which realise to a man the feeling of home. There are nations to which this idea of homelessness brings no sense of loss. You miglit talk vainly about home amid the bleak, gay, outside life of Paris. They have not the Robertson, SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 19 word in tlieir language — they have not tlie tiling in tlieir hearts ; but to you who know what it is — to whom such words as hearthstone, and roof-tree, and ingle-nook, and fireside, and fatherland, are symbols of blessed meaning, words less sacred only than those which speak of heaven and God — to you there will be a cold shadow, a sense of itterest and extremest desolation, when you think of home- lessness, which can hardly be put into language. Sad are the visions which the thought calls up before you. You seem to see the wreck of some fair human thing who has lost the jewel of her womanhood, whom wolhsh lust hau cast upon society, and who lives to waylay society in fur- therance of her terrible revenge. You see her — eyes sunken and cheeks hectic with intemperance — flitting along under the beetling eaves, gliding alternate from the dazzling dram-shop to the dark arches of congenial obscurity ; or perhaps you follow her fugitive steps, stealthy as a guilty thing's — as she speeds ** Where the lamps quiver So far in the river, With many a light, From garret to basement, From window and casement, And stands with amazement, Houseless by night." Oh, is it not a case for heart-break 1 especially when you 20 THE PRODIOAL SON. tliiiik tliat this lost one onco wore the comely snood of iiiaidt'uhood, jukI enrolled free and hai)i)y as the bird be- neath the dear n^compense of a mother's smile. Dut what is every sinner, what are you, if you are at this moment alien from Christ, but homeless in the world ? When the storm comes, whither can you flee for shelter? Beneath the world's cold arches'? You may drip, and drench, and shiver, but hardly shelter there. In the world's lighted halls of i)leasure ? Ay, wliile you have money and means, but when you have spent all they turn you into outer dark- ness, let the storm howl ever so wildly. Look into the future, youT future — the future which must come. How dark it is ? No prospect ! How endless it is ! No rest ! A homeless si)irit ! Oh, of all calamities that can afflict me, of all vials of wrath which can be poured out upon my head, surely there can be none of more concentrated and ap})alling bitterness than this thought of a soul without a home. There is, again, the thought of waste and degrada- tion. He *' wasted his substance." " He joined himself to a citizen of that country ; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine." How is the fine gold become dim, and the grTice of the fashion of it perished ! and how close and na- tural the sequence ! First the roystering prodigal, then the spendthrift swineherd ; first the real degradation, in the waste of the pi-operty and of the time, then the apparent ? 1 ood of Lrd be- t wlijit loment len the Jeneath ih, and lighted means, ji* dark- tito the How \q rest ! 1 afflict pon my ted and ithout a legrada- mself to fields to and the and na- al, then 11, in the ipparent SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 21 degradation, an occupation not mean in itself, hut degrad- ing for the rich man's heir. Every thonghtful mind must be saddened at the contemplation of the waste and degrada- tion which are inseparable from the condition of the sinner. The two, indeed, are twins, and cannot be sundered. It ia not necessary that there should be manifest humiliation, some great change of circumstance, some ostentatious fall from a height originally possessed, in order to degrade an individual. That is degraded which is below the intention of its being. There is no degradation in the peasant wield- ing the flail or whistling at the plough — there is degrada- tion in a monarch, if he be a roue and a gambler. There has been true royalty in a cottage — there has been sottish vilenesa on a throne. There is always sadness in the con- templation of ruin. Amid the broken columns of Baalbec or Palmyra, shapeless heaps, where once proud cities stood ; in some desolate fane, with the moonlight shining ghostly into crypt and cloister, the mind dwells regretfiu^y upon the former time, when the hum of men broke lively oii the listening ear, or through the long aioloa tLeru swept the ca- dence of some saintly psalm. We gaze mournfully upon a deserted mansion, with the sky looking clear upon its crumbling masonry or naked rafters — the tall, dank grass in the court-yard, which once echoed to the hoof of the baron's charger — the garden, erst kept so trimly, now a 22 TIIE PBODIGAL SON. bloomy wilderness of weeds and flowers, and trailing languidly over the blackening walls the ivy, that only parasite which clings faithfully to ruin. Sadder still is it to look upon the overthrown temple of the human mind, when morbid fancies prey, like so many vultures, on the distempered brain ; and when the eye which ought to be kingly in its glances, is dulled in the suUenness of the idiot, or glares in the frenzy of the madman. But to those who are enlightened to understand the true relation of things, and what ought to be their connexion with the heavenly, there are sadder sights than these — sights that wake more solemn and passionate mourning — in the moral wastes of the world, and in the debasement of the nature which once bore the image of God. I see wealth, the gift of a good God, and intended to be used for His glory, hoarded by avarice, or lavished in extravagance and sin. I see genius, that regal dower of Heaven to man, grovelling, a pander, among the stews of sensuality, or blaspheming, an atheist, in all the ribaldries of scepticism. I see formalism and in- difference, like Ilcrod and Pilate, making truce together that they may slay the Holy and the Just One. I see men —Earnest, thoughtful, amiable men — engrossed as eagerly about present advantage as if there were no death to pre- pare for, and no future to inherit — living for themselves as selfishly as if they had blotted out from the universe its SIN AND ITS CONSLIJUEVCES. 23 ailing only itill is mind, Dii the to be e idiot, 36 wlio things, avenly, :e more astes of ch once * a good cded by genius, pander, atheist, and in- together see men eagerly h to pre- selves as verse its God. I see energy misdirected, passion frantic and tri- umphing, truth prostrate, error in higli and even in holy places, manhood run to waste, the inheritance of immor- tality bartered for a golden bauble, conscience discrowned and a slave, the Law broken, the Gospel rejected, the blood of Jesus trampled on by those for whom it was shed, and accounted an unholy thing. Oh, brethren ! is there not enough in the ruin to bring sorrow even upon an angel's gladness? and should not you, who are yourselves thus de- graded — and there are some of you here — arouse yourselves, and throw your whole souls into the search for a refuge against the day of vengeance] for God will surely be avenged upon a nation and upon a people like this. And then there is, thirdly, the thought of ahandonment and famine. He "would fain have filled hia belly with the husks that the swine did eat : and no man gave unto him." How utter and terrible the destitution ! What ! friendless ! "Where are the companions of his debauchery, the flatterers who laughed at his jokes, and drank his wine, and spunged, vile human funguses, upon hla reckless liber- ality? Are they all gone from him — all? Is there not one to replenish the bare table, of whose sweepings he would have been formerly glad 1 And are these thy friend- ships, thou hollow, painted harlot of a world 1 " No man gave unto him." And then came the famine, with its sick- ■i^-iiv.'liiLiii^ili;}.: •:*:-i,-*!.v. 24 THE PRODIGAL SON. ening hunger, and its tortnros of remoi*HO, tliat wonndod Hi)irifc wliirh was a still sharper thorn. " And ho began to be in want." He, upon whom in childhood's years no breath liad blown too rudely ; he, whoso every want had been anticipated l>y a wishful tenderness that hardly brooked to slumber ; he, whoso youth was gay with the holiday promise of a sky without a cloud, — ho began to be in want. So the famine came. But that dread famine of the soul is drearier, which sated worldlings sooner or later feel. That famine, when the spiiit loathes its former food of ashes, and knows not where is aliment more con- genial j when it shudders at the boisterous greeting of its associates in sin, and would give worlds if it could efface from itself those sinful memories which have burnt into the soul like iiro. Oh, thoro arc ocasons of wretchedness when this gaunt famine comes — this dreary sense of inner Iningcr — which makss existence an intolerable burden. Hear the statesman on the pinnacle of power, when some one wished him a happy new year : *' It had need be haj^pier than the last, for I do not reuiombnr « singlo happy dny in that." Hear the practised and wary lawyer, who had held the highest prizes of his i^rofession so long, that he became the envy of the aspirants who coveted the seals : ^' A few weeks will send me to dear Encombe, as a short resting place be- tween vexation and the grave." Hear the accomplished I SIN AND ITS CON8EQUENCB6. 25 and valiant soldior, brilliant aliko at tlio dinner-table and in the field : *^ Many a time when my society was the most coiirled, I would liave given millions, if I luul hiwl them, to have had nothing more res2)onsible alx)ut me than tlio eoul of that dog." Such are tlie world's autol)iogra})hics, when they aro candidly given, of courtiers who have iK'.en behind the scones, and found their tinsel and their hoIlowne.«i8 ; of infidel wits, who have been disgusted with axlulation ; of poets, consumed with soul-thirst, which jiassion's Geyser si)rings hud maddened, but coukl not slake ; of emirerora who have left tlic monarchy for tlic monastery, and have worn the cowl as more fitting than tin; crown, or who broke their great false hearts in some rocky islet's solitude, racked with the twin maladies of the body and of the soul. Breth- ren, those of you who are yet in sin, luis tlix; famino ot>me upon you? or havcj you not (jiute spent all? If its toeth are not now in your fl(\sli, you need Imt go on in your way- wardness, and you will feel tJiem soon. Homelessness, wante, fannno — and do ycm really choose these things when God oOors you tlw3 banipK^t, th« fortune, the heaven ? Why, oh why, will you sjx'nd your money *' for that which is not bread ? aud your lalx)ur for that which Siitistieth not ? hearken e Inhl consume you, if only, like the r-Hgal, you ,n,ght be driven back to tho Fathor'a house. t I II. A MIND'S TRANSITION. "And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired ser- vants of my father's have brea\ill» oil rr|'»'Mlr«l rnrsos pronnniMMMl mion liis jmI- \ors«' «l«>s lirciiso \\l»irli Minl\illy U|>nn iho rold mikI lisloniii^ sI)oi(\ "AVrll, it is hovu niany dark proplict i(>s of <'ns.s, sufh aH 1 nsod to hav(\ stuMnod all too dnll and slow / JIoav con- tonti^d thos»^ s\vii\o 1\hhI ! 'I'Im^v limit thoir d(\siivs, and iiro happy in tluMv linnlation. I'luy \v(M<' n(»V(>r oIIht (Iiaii th(\v ar<^ ; hut 1— onrs(»M on tho l\nav<\^ tluit faunul upon n\o I inirsos on my own foily*that W'A its(>lf upon (h(>ir ^lo- zini>- lii^!^ ! is ihoiv not one of thrm that cain^s for mo I- not ono that tlirows a thought afim* the n»an he ludped to ruin? l>e still. tho\i asking ln^art I- — hind tlu^ ginlh' tighter, that Avill ke(^p \\w h\ingor down ! Ah ! my tahlo is soon spnuul ! llu^ks! husks I husks I — In inn* the eourses in ! How daintv for the pampiMrd servants that onci* stood Ixhind mv chair! (>w niys{>ll", a pitiful Well, ril hrave it all. What, yield to 1 ( mcndiciint, wlioro lieurts lia\o leaped to weKoiiiv' the moat A MINDS THANHFrfON. ?,:. lifmniirrMl i^iicmI llu'V lm' in-vrr ' Alt' if iny fntlirr roiiM l>iit Hi'i'' iiu' now! No' I rniinol jro ))i\iV ♦<» \>*- tli*- IjuM; nj' l)n> Ki'iviiiitH' Kconi, Mild to VNiitln! tnidt r lln> roii- ionipliiotiM jn'ly «»r my slcrk mikI jcmIoiim l»ro(li«'f, nnd fn iiUMil Mm« jii.stly o<]'((«ii(|«'f| ^IniM'J'M of iriy l*;itliirl,nn^ ov('»'wrf)U^ht tliai tlir- KluidowH av() laiint, who 36 TTTK PKODIOAL SOX. Btrives with men to bring them to the knowledge of tlie truth, was douhtlesH all the while at work upon the prodi- gal's heart ; and when He works, out of the brooding storm come the calm and the zephyr of the summer-tide — o\it of the death of enjoyment the rare blessedness which is the highest good — out of the death-working sorrow of the world the repentance which is unto life eternal. We know not precisely how the change was effected from the hardness of heart, and contempt of God's word and com- mandment, to the softening of thought and contrition. Perhaps the Divine Spirit, wrought by the power of memory, thawed the ice away from the frosted spirit by sunny pictures of the past — by the vision of the ancestral home — of the guileless childhood — of the father's ceaseless strength of tenderness — of the spell of a living mother's love, or of the holier spell of a dead one. God doe» often work by these a aociations of subtle and powerful energy, and none may limit the Holy One of Israel ; but the dis- tinction between the prodigal in his riot and the prodigal in his repentance was so marked and definite, as to leave no doubt of the reality of his change. Disposition, pur- pose, tendency, all were transformed. He had come under another influence, which had changed the whole bent of his desire, and which had given a new direction to e^ery foot- step of his being. «»T-v' A MINDS TRANSITIOX. 37 Tliis thorough change in hcai-t and fooling must come U}i()n every i)enitent sinnor ; and the consciousnesiH of it must iieceSfSiirily attend us in every God-ward movement of the soul. " That home, which once glowed for me with many-lighted windows of welcome, how sadly and de- servedly forfeited ! That father, who has daily loaded me with benefit, and whose unutterable love has sj)ared for me neither effort nor sacrifice, how sorely have I gi'ieved him ! That life, with all its treasure of majestic and mani- fold endowment, how utterly have I wasted it ] Those sins, which estranged me from my youth's affections, and drove me to this heritage of foreign shame, how I abhor them now ! That pride and unbelief, which have imbittered my transgressions and hindered my return, how gladly would I trample them beneath my feet, wending homeward, and drown their memory, as I fall on my father's neck, in floods of contrite tears !" Something of this must every penitent feel — a loathing of his former self, a self-accusing fidelity which will not dissemble its impieties — a hatred, not only of the smart of sin, but of its substance — the yearning of a deeply-wounded spirit, which longs for recon- ciliation to the God and Father from whom it has become so wilfully estranged. Brethren, are these feelings yours ] Are you conscious that an influence has swept over you, working this bloodless revolution? Do you wonder, in i-.tfrv,',-:..; !•;:■; 38 THE PRODIGAL SON. Hi awe, as you reflect upon yoiu- former peril— in gratitude, as you reflect upon your marvellous deliverance ? Oli, if you l)ave yieliled to the Spirit's power, and felt the godly grief, at once heart-breaking and healing, you will not give stint to your devotion, nor be languid and measured in your service of the Lord. Yours will be a sense of obliga- tion so deep and overwhelming, that it will constrain from you both tlie pr.iise of tlie lij) which knows not how to hush its doxologies, and the life's more constant and worthy liosanna. If we look at the prodigal after he has yielded to the influence which lias come down u];on him from above, we see an order of being essentially different from the one on which we a while ago gazed. The external circumstances are much the same : the landscape is still sterile j the swine still feed ; the man still stands, solitary and imfriended, and hungering ; but he is not the same. He waa defiant then ; he is disconsolate now. The stern in his nature has been succeeded by the softened and tlie sad. Then he glared insan(;ly round him, an utter rebel against the right, and shook his puny fist against the omnipotence which ovcrciYme him ; now he smites, not the innocent air, but his own guilty breast, in whose sin he has learned to discover the secret of the sorrow and the shame. He is a thousand- fold a truer maji now, ragged and hungry as he is, than A mind's transition. 39 when he sotted in the ])oisterOTis wnssail or tlie long carouse. T'len he was the wealthy and the heedless, whose hahits had become iniV)riited as the swine's ; now hv is the swine- herd, already kindling with the hopes and strnggling into the aspirarions of the man. There are just three points suggested in the narrative which we may notice for a moment. It was a transition from niachiess to reason, froin sullen j^ride to snh7nissio7i and acknoivledtjment, from despondency to determined and imme- diate endeavor. It is no word of man, hut the word of in- spiration, which has declared the insaraty of a sinner, and that he " comes to himself" when he thinks upon his ways, and is wise. And all the hahits in which the sinner is wont to indulge, answer to the hahits and delusions of those who have been bereft of reason, or in whom it has been de- posed from its rightful government of the man. Madness is rash and inconsiderate action — action without thought of consequences. The madman's hand is sudden in its vio- lence ; the madman's tongue shoots out its barljed arrows ; he is reckless of the slain reputation, or of the murdered life ; and is not like rashness a characteristic of the sinner? Little recks he of his own dishonour, or of tlu; lii'e that he has wasted in excess of riot. He goes heedk'ssly on, though his every step were up the crater's steep, and mid the crack- ling ashes. JMadncss is mistake of the gi-eat purposes of 40 THE PRODIGAL SOX. life ; the employment of the faculties iipor. objects that are contemptible and unworthy. Hence you see the lunatic intently gJizing into vacancy, or spending hours in tlie eager chase of insects on the wing, or scribbling, in strange med- ley of the ribald and the sacred, scraps of verse upon the torn-out pages of a Bible. And are there not greater degra- dations in the pursuits which engross such multitudes of the unconverted 1 Are there not thousands who waste their lives in habits which spring from no thought, and lead to no re&ult — habits compa,red with which, as has been well said, " there is activity in the life of a zoophyte, and earnest- ness in the eccentricities of a swallow?" Madness is the fostering of morbid delusions which mount upon the brain unbidden ; the undue predominance of distemjiered fancy, which can invert all laws, and bring the impossible to be the actual in a moment at its regal bidding. You can see the lunatic — an imaginary king — with a wondrous sense of realness, and with a courtly bearing, happily unconscious, finding that '' stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." And such is " blindness of hearc which has happened " unto a world of sinners, that they deem them- selves kinglv, when, alas ! they are sadly dishonoured, and exult in the distemper of a delirious freedom, when they are *'led captive by the devil at his will." In all cii-cumstances of human transgression, varied only by the several modifica- A mind's transition. 41 tions of the disease, there is truth in the declaration of the Scripture, *' Mjidness is in their heart while they live, and after that tliey go to the dead." From this state of madness the contrite prodigal has emerged ; formerly rash and thoughtless, he has begun to consider, and consideration is the swoni eneniy of levity, and the fruitful parent of high purposes in the soul ; for- merly warped by a mistaken view of life, and led by erro- neous judgment into corrupt and vicious practice, he has been awakened to juster perceptions of duty, and to a right valiant endeavour to discharge it ; formerly inflated with notions of a fictitious dignity, and eaten up with the pride of position or of possessions, he has now humbler, and there- fore truer, views of himself, and sees himself the fouler be- cause of his exalted lineage, just as a prince of the blood royal is most of all men traitorous to his rank and destiny when he companies with harlots and with thieves. When a sinner comes to himself he blushes for his former frenzy ; he feels himself a child of the Divine ; he feels himself an heir of the eternal ; and, looking with a strange disdain upon the things which formerly trammelled him, he lifts heavenward his flashing eye, and says, " There is my portion and my home."' Now, with the Bculahland before him, he wonders that the mirage of life should have so long dcludtnl him, and in the serenity of present peace can hardly l)elieve r... 42 THE PRODIGAL SON. 1 1 that he shouki ever have found a charm in the turhulence of passion, or in tlie ghire of pleasure. Heaven and earth are now seen by him in their true rehitions — heaven the throne, eartJi the footstool — lieaven the recompense, earth the probation. He has learnt not to despise this world, nor to underv^alue its joys, when they are properly estimated. A savage recluse, or an envious and disappointed worldling, may do that, lie would have done it in tliat savage mood of defiance which has just swept over him like a storm ; but he has been taught, at the feet of Jesus, a kindlier and more human lore. He pities the world, not slanders it ; he could weep for the sin whicli has defiled its beauty, and for the cruel scars which tell of outrage and of wrong ; and en- joying with a rapturous gratitude its gladness, and endur- ing with faith's deep submission its portion of trial, he stands in his lot until the end of the days, never forgetful of the brighter world beyond — ripening by the privileges of the present into a mellow preparation for the future, and then, like good old Simeon, his dying breath a blessing, he departs in peace to heaven. There is a transition, again^ from ^wide to suhnission and acknowledgment. In his former mood of mind he only in- tensifiecf his own rebellion, and was ready, doubtless, to blame circumstances, or companions, or destiny, or anything rather than his own wickedness and folly. "All things A MINDS TRANSITION. 43 have conspired against mc ; never, surely, had any one so hard a lot as I. I might not have been exactly prudent now and then, but I have done nothing to merit such })un- ishment as this. I will never confess that I have done wrong ; if I were to return to my father I would not abate a hair's-breadth of my privileges ; I would insist — and it is right, for am I not his son ? — upon being treated precisely as I was before." So might have thought the prodigal in his pride. But in his penitence no humiliation is too low for him — no concealment nor extenuation is for a moment entertained ; with the expectation, not of sonship, but of servitude, and with the frank and sorrowful acknowledg- ment of sin, he purposes to travel, and to cast himself at +he feet of his father. The penitential sorrow has trampled out the pride, and, instead of being prepared to dictate terms, he would submit cheerfully to the Tneanest lot, and to the most protracted trial, and to the coldest welcome, if only he may be permitted to reside in the old house at home. This humility is characteristic of all true contrition. As pride was one of the deadly sins by which our first parents fell, the whole provision of God's mercy, and every rescript and every promise of our religion, are framed, as with one oom^non purpose, to hide jiride from man. The Scriptures declare, with an earnestness of repetition which the occasion justifies, that salvation cannot be achieved by 44 THE PRODIGAL SOX. the holiest liumau-living ; nor does meritoriousness attach to the most scrupulous observance of tlie law. As all — from the smiling babe upon the proud mother's knee, and the youth secluded, in the rural home, from the contagion of the city's leprosy, up to the savage nurtured in cruelty, and the bronzed perpetrator of a thousand crimes — have been born in sin and shapen in iniquity, so all are equally helpless to secure tlieir own acceptance, or to maintain themselves for one brief moment in the consistency of spiritual living. There is no room for pride in any solitary human bosom. Once he was a sinner reckless in his sins, and with a high hand vaunting himself in his wickedness ; now he is but a sinner saved by grace ; he never grows into a sanctity which is independent of Divine assistance ; and if it were to happen for him to continue until there shone from him ^he glory of old age faithfully relying upon God, and then in some moment of garrulous vanity to loosen his hold of the sustaining arm, in that moment he would stum- ble and fall. Oh, bid your pride avaunt ! harbour it not for an instant in your bosom, for it and the carnal security which it engenders are the flatterer's most successful snares. The safest path to the City of Habitations is not by the mountain bridle-path, overhung by the loosened cliff, and overhanging the deep ravine, nor yet along the icy track of the glacier's glittering peril ; it winds along the green pas- A MINDS TRANSITION. 45 tures where still waters flow, and to the very slopes of the hill on which the city stands, "through the low vale of humble love." And then, just in a word, there is the transition from, despondency to active and hopefid endeavour : " I will arise, and go to my father, and will say unto him. Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son : make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father." There is not only the mental jwocess, but the corresponding action — the rousing of the soul from its indolent and tormenting despair. This is one main difierence between the godly sor- row and that consuming sadness which preys upon the heart of the worldling : the one disinclines, the other prompts to action \ the one broods over its own haplessness until it wastes and die's, the other cries pitcously for help, and then exults in deliverance and blessing. There was something more than fable in the old mythology which told of Pandora's box — a very receptacle of ills made tolerable only because there was hope at the bottom. In every true contrition there is hope. What ! despair 1 Nay, though you were never such an arrant prodigal ; nay, though you are wrinkled in iniquity, and your hoary head, so far from being a crown of righteousness, is a very brand of shame; nay, though you stood upon the loosening earth by the pit's 46 THE PKODIGAL SON. mouth, and heard the yell of demon voices and the dance of demon feet. Despair is no word for this world's lan- guages ; despair has no right to a foot of land on this ran- somea planet's territory ; its kingdom is not of this world, but of the world beneath and to come. We may leave the prodigal without shuddering ; he will be no worse when we come to him again. The evils of his pride and defiance were those he had most to dread ; he has parted with these, and we see him, subdued and earnest, travelling homeward with a royal hope within his soul. dance .'s Ian- is ran- world, ive the hen we lefiance b these, meward III. THE JOY OF RETURN^. "But when ho was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants. Bring forth the best robe and put it on him ; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet : and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it ; and let us eat and be merry : for this my son was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." — Luke xv. 20-24. There are two kinds of minds of whose opinions we have been informed, touching the relative importiince of this world to other worlds, all being provinces in the same moral empire — the one is the mind of the infidel, the other is the mind of the angel. As a matter of course, they represent the extremes of sentiment, and are as widely apart from each other as might be the descriptions of the same landscape given by two men, the one of whom had dimly seen it for a moment, as he woke up from a slumber in a fast train; the other of whom, from some heatherly slope or upland, had drunk in its beauty with ample leisure 48 THE PRODIGAL SON. and with a broad sweep of vision. When the infidel thinks of this world, even if he is so much of a believer as to ad- mit its fall, he looks at it with narrow sympathies ; wrapt in his own selfishness, he cannot conceive of the nobility which would yearn with pity over some revolted province, and which would visit a scene of insurrection, not to de- stroy the rebels, but to pardon them ; nay, he cannot even conceive of a vigilant tenderness, so comprehensive that it can govern a universe of worlds with as perfect a recogni- tion of the minute as of the magnificent in each, and so un- failing that it is moved by no rebellion from its benevolent design. Hence the great facts of man's sin and ransom ; of God's providence, caring for this world, the sickly, and the erring j and of God's grace stooping to replace it in its orbit ; finding as they do no precedent in his own emotions, and evoking no response from the depths of his own con- sciousness, are treated by the sceptic as a delusion of fanati- cism rather than as a reality of faith. He cannot believe that that man, as insignificant in comparison with the planet whose surface he scai'cely specks as the one crystal to the avalanche, or the one bubble, with its mimic rain- bow, to the torrent waters of Niagara, can be even looked at in the administration of the great economy, much less that all his concerns and all his interests are noted as care- fully as if there wei*e no other on the earth beside him. 'vV:'*'-i^ THE JOY OF RETURN. 49 hinks bo ad- Nvrapt )bility vince, to de- i even that it jcogni- so un- jvolent om; of Lnd the in its lotions, n con- faiiati- believe til the crystal c rain- looked ch less as care- ie him. Ho cannot bolievc that of all worlds wliicli sun tliomstilvca in their Creator's smile, this reckling world wliich haa strayed should be tlie object of especial gi-acio\isncs«, and that for its deliverance there should have been struck out of the heart of goodness a scheme of compassion unparal- leled in the universe before. This is a knowledge alto- gether too wonderful and a belief altogether too high to have a home iu an infidel's bosom. And yet these very facts are to the angels matters both of interest and of joy. These glorious beings, "full of eyes" to gather and observe all knowledge, and with large hearts of charity, vibrate, although of alien nature, to each chord of human struggle and conquest ; to them it is but matter of higher praise that throughout the universe, and even into its very ravines and cells of being, there penetrate the glances of that eye whose brightness they must veil themselves to see ; to them tho grace which leaves the loyal worlds to condescend to the succour of the shrouded one is the rarest grace of all ; and to angelic eyes, in the wondrous scheme of earth's redemp- tion by the offering of the Divine Substitute, there is a per- petual mystery, into which they stUl desire to look, and where to their enraptured study the whole Deity is known. Not merely on the God-ward side do those facts excite their adoration, but on the man-ward side their sympathy. 50 THE PRODIGAL SON. They have "watched, you rememher, over this our workl froni the beginning ; tliey sang together at its birth ; they revel- led in the beauty of the young Eden, and strayed at dewy eve by the patlis where its blest inhabitants wandered ; they shuddered bencatli sin's cold shadow, and grieved over the blight and the departure of the innocence they had loved so well. Ilenco they have known our world in all its fortunes; and just fus an elder brother, of a benevolent heart, might heap caresses upon the infant born when he was old enough "to move about the house with joy, and with the certain step of man," finding endearment in its very helplessness ; so those holy angels, bright in the ra- dlence of their first estate, have quick sensibilities for all human welfare still ; and whenever the sinner is arrested in his course, or the penitent cry is heard, or the prodigal, in his fai' country, turns a homeward glance of soul ; there comes a hush upon their harping, only to be succeeded by a burst of more rapturous music, for " there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." Your feeling, brethren, as yon come with me to dwell upon' the prodigal's return, will be, if you feel rightly, such as neither the sceptic nor the angel can compass ; for you will have the proper sympathy which neither of them possesses — the sceptic, because he has divorced himself from THE JOY OF RETURN. 51 from revel- dewy ered ; I ovei' y had in all volent tien he )y, and , in its the ra- for all tirrested rodigal, there eded by joy in ler that o dwell Jy, such for you of them self from the wedlock between humanity and Faitli ; tlie angel, be- cause he " Never felt above Redeeming grace nor dying love." To you, it will but re-enact, in one phase or other of our meditation on it, a chapter in your own history. You will be saddened by the chill thought of present alienation, or thrilled by the memory of your own home-travel after years of estrangement and of sin. We left the prodigal in the far country, but penitent, changed, resolute in the purpose to return to the house of his father. As we follow him on his journey, we can trace and sympathise with the mingling of feelings in his soul. There is not remorse — for remorse is the consciousness of guilt without the hope and prayer for mercy ; and all those dark emotions have gone from him, swept out of his soul when the fountains of* its great deep broke up, by the in- tensity of their passionate flood — but there is deep sorrow for the past ; there is unfeigned sense of humiliation ; there is that compunctious sensitiveness of conscience which never can itself forgive. Then memory is busy, and upon his pained fancy she pictures the home-scenes of the happy past — the first sad hour of lawlessness when he sped into the far country, flushed with the new sense at once of wealth and freedom — and the utter worthlcssnoss of those wild 52 THE PRODIGAL SON. joys compared with the earlier and screner ones, seen dimly in the vanishing perspective. Then anxiety is busy, and she })rojects her wonder into the nearing future, and specu- lates upon the probabilities of his reception. " Shall I bo spurned from the door, or clasped to the heart ? Will there bo added to all my sufferings the humiliation of rejected penitence ? Will the father, whose life-long kindness I have 80 ungratefully repaid, refuse to listen to my distress, and leave me to reap in bitter harvest the consequences of my folly ] I am weary and sunken now ; this hunger is a strange enfeebler — my limbs are supported only by a trem- bling hope of welcome. Shall I be shut out at last — ship- wrecked at the harljour's mouth — left to die on the threshold of the home ?" These are no comfortable feelings, but they are the servitude of the mind, to which sin compels its vic- tims. Even when they have turned their backs upon its service, the iron has entered into their soul, and they feel the fretting of th*^ chain which they drag behind them on their way to Christ. We have spoken of the prodigal's possession of a hope, and you can easily imagine how, during the whole of this storiivtc^ssed journey, hope would be the anchor of the soul. It is indeed the essential element of his repentance — the conservative principle which keeps the spirit alive — which restrains the frantic tears, or makes them scald no longer as THE JOY OP UETURK, 53 ttiey flow — wliich animates tho dosiro th.at would cIho lan- gni.sli, and stimulates tlie flagging steps which weary doubt so often mak(!S to halt and stumble. "We are saved by hope,'* says the Apostle ; and there is a sense in which it is true of us all — we are saved by hope before we are saved by faith. The hope of mercy is in itseM* a thing in which the good Lord " taketh pleasure." Tlie hope of Christ is a staff in the hand of the weary, before the arm of Christ is stretched out on which he niay be privileged to lean. Hope is a marvellous inspiration, which every hiart confesses in some season of extremest peril. It can put nerve into the languid, and fleetiiess into the feet of exhaustion. Let the slim and feathery palm-grove be dindy descried, though ever so remotely, and the caravan will on — sjnte of the fatigue of the traveller, and the simoom's blinding — to where, V)y the fringy rootlets, the desert-waters flow. Let there glimmer one star through the murky waste of night, and though the spars be shattered and the sails be rivcjn, and the hurricane howls for its prey, the brave sailor will be lashed to the helm, and see already, through the tem- pest's breaking, calm waters and a spotless sky. Let there be but the faintest intimation that all is not utt(;rly hope- less, "when the grave and skillivl }>hysi(*ian by the In^m- bling pati(;nt stands," and anxious love will rcnlouble its watching, and feel as if new feet had been giv(m to the 54 THE PRODIGAL SON. leaden hours ; and the blood, which had begun to curdle, as if in sympathy with the dying, will flutter itself loose again into thankful and regular flow. Oh, who is there, however hapless his lot or forlorn his surroundings, who is beyond the influence of this choicest of earth's comforters — this faithful friend, which sur/ives the flight of riches, and the wreck of reputation, and the break of health, and even the loss of dear and cherished friends? My brethren, I would fain rouse you all to the exercise of this your un- doubted 2)ri\'il6ge in those higher matters which are be- tween yourselves and God. Ax'e you disquieted because of sin? — then you may hope. Are you guilty of transgres- sions which you feel to be both heinous and aggravated ? — then you may hope. Are you conscious that yours have been sins of no common type of turpitude, towering above the guilt of ordinary sinners as the mountain above the lake which mirrors it? — still you may hope. Have you been a champion for evil, and trampled upon grace, and been both an adept and a teacher of ungodliness, and gone so recklessly on your hell-ward travel, that you feel as if brain and heart were already scorched by its consuming fire ? — still there is hope — nay, hope ! there is certainty — that if in rig'it) earnest you will begin at this moment, and, in penitence for past sin, and in purpose of future holinet , set about the seeking for salvation, no power on earth can THE JOY OF RnTUllX. 55 you and lihulor — the wliolc army of demons cannot liinder — and tlio gracious God who calls you would, if it were necessary, un- clasp the arms of Satan, which were already closing round you, and make the fires of torment lambent, lest one hair of your head should be singed by the devouring ilame. Now let us leave the prodigal a while ; or rather, let us precede him on his journey : you htive been too long de- tained, perhaps, on the melancholy sight of ruin. The same license of thought which showed us the anatomy of the ruined man's heart will privilege us e(|ual]y, and make us free of the house of his father. As we gaze uj)on the ample board, and fruitful acres, the |)urple vine climbing up the trellis, the lowing herd folded in the stalls, golden sheaves in the barn, sunny faces round the hearth ; thrift hoarding for generosity, order ministering to comfort, a common interest and a mutual lov^e, we do not wonder at those glorious tints which the sharpened fancy of the prodigal drew. It is a sweet spot, surely. " If there be an elysium on earth it is this," with its days of ha})p3'^ toil and its nights of earned repose. There are many such homes on earth, brethren, where there seems so little of the palpable curse, and so much of the lingering blessing, that we are fain sometimes to cling to them too closely, and our hearts would build their tabernacles on these Tabors or Jlermons of their love. But who may say that any of them is hai)py? 50 THE PRODIGAL SOK. that tliore is any house without an apparition on its hind- ing 1 tliat there are not secret griefs which gnaw the heart of wealth, and blanch the cheek of beauty ; anxieties kept barred in each spirit, where the world may not intrude, and where even friends adventure not, but which are sapping the comfort and shortening the days ? Take the case beftire us. Surely there can be no interruption to the happiness here. Competence, consideration, faithful servants, a well- regulated household, a dutiful son, all that the eye can covet or the heart can wish — is there a skeleton in this house too? Is there here some restless memory, interred in the gi-avc of the long ago, but which will walk the earth notwithstanding ? Ah ! why those anxious glances when the wind makes the cedars groan, and against the lattice beats the frightened rain ? why that sudden shade, fitful, pensive, almost moody, which gathers so often upon the lord of the mansion's brow 1 why that gaze across the stretching fields when the brief twilight sombres up the sky? Oh, there is a name banished from the lips, but not blotted from the heai-ts, of that household ; they are all thrilled full often as by one sad impulse, and each can tell the thought that is present in the mind of the other ; it is of that absent son and brother, who has forfeited his place in the circle, who has disgraced the family name, and "broken the crown of their pride," but for ,diom in the ear of Heaven countless THE JOY OF RETURN. 57 can filing Oh, lotted full [uglit )sent irclc, t'own tless prayers are breathed, and over whom in the watching niglit the big tears thickly fall. Day after day, in that father's kindly heart, the memory of wrong dies out, and the mem- ory of the early promise and " the winsome look of grace" alone remains. Day after day the tide of love Hows stronger and faster toward the ei-ring one, and the dream of his re- turn is cherished, until it becomes a habit to strain the eyes for his coming ; and because the hush of the eventide is not broken by his remembered footstep, the father's heart is pained, and he gathers himself to his slumbers with a sigh. Tf that prodigal, whom we left behind us, did but know all this ; if the yearnings of parental affection, and the v illing- ness of parental pardon, were but as clear to him as tliey are to us, what a change would come upon the aspect of his thought and feeling ! — how it would put w^ii\gs into his feet, and light up the haggard countenance, so downcast now and sad ! My hearers, it is for you these pictures are drawn, not that you may simply gaze as in a gallery, but that you may be profoundly impressed with the lessons which they are painted to teach. God, the eternal Jeliovnli, is the Fatln'r who thus yearns over the salvation nf you, lll< nin- nin'i o.iildniii. fn Himself, of course, He is ('H>'cniii,], v ;in(i eternally hjipj)y, and, ;is an inJixi.iiblo ^^.plril, ]!• ', ],•(.■ '. vy parts, nor ]").fssIon.s ; in so far, t]ii'.;v;fori>, (.in- nn-JI'l .'• •! but in condescension to your inlk-mity He has represented c2 58 THE PRODIGAL SON. Himself as clothed with all the sensibilities of the human fixther, lial)le to be grieved by your apostasy, to be angered by your ob.stinate unbelief, and to long after your recovery with intense desire. So sacked is that immortal image of Himself within you, that grand power of choice which con- stitutes your moral freedom, that with that He will not interfere ; bitt, short of any compulsion which involves a necessity of obedience, so infinite is His willingness to save you, that He will ply you with many arguments, persuade you by powerful motives, surround you with a hedge of circumstance, woo your heart in whispers to His service ; arouse your fears by startling providences, excite your hopes by loads of daily mercies, and endeavour, by all possible means of appeal which possess with you either tenderness or power, to allure you home. *' But when he was yet a greftt way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.*' He did not wait until the prodigal had knocked at the door, and been subjected to the servant's wonder ; he did not wait for the low prostration, and for the abject and servile sorrow ; there was no standing upon a sort of ^itiquette of morals, no drawing of the cloak of dig- nity round until every punctilious requirement of orthodox j)cnit<» ; •(', liad been fulfilled, and then relaxing to grant the self-abased request, and to speak cold words of pardon. All I THE JOY OF RETURN. 59 saw and had ant's i for upon dig- odox t the All this would have been just, infloxihly just ; and the prodigal who had been tlius treated ^voukl hnvo liad no cause of eomplaint, but rather inucli ground of th;inkniln(>ss. We must take care that we are not spoiled by God's mercy, and tempted by his unparalleled compasision to think llglitly and superficially of sin. Sin is a foul evil, and " when it is finished it bringeth forth deatli." Just as there issues spon- taneous combustion from the decomposition of certain vege- table substances, so the very foulness of sin bursteth, as by natural sequence, into fire. But the \Qvy sense Wo have of the enormous impiety of sin will only eidiance our estimate of the boundlessness of grac( in its forgiveness. As in all other illustrations by M'liich thiugs divine are intended to be made known to us, the anaJogy lialts for want of com- pass and powei\ To understand aright the early moving of God towards the sinner, we must remember His omniscience, an attribute which of course is wanting in the Innnan father. The Divine eye can track the prodigal tli rough every brake and scaur of the far couiitiy into which he has wandered ; no debauchery of his excess of riot is hidden ; his defiance and his depression, the steeling and the soften- ing of his soul, are alike open to the glances from which nothing is concealed. He knows, sinner, that secret deed of darkness, covered up so carefully from human sight, that habit of im2)urity or fraud, that stern and haughty resis- 60 THE PRODKJAL HON. tancc to h'lH will, which tliy soul has indulged through ?iO many rclx)llious years. He knows, O penitent, thy soul's first yearniiigs after Him, thy struggles against the cor- ruption which yet mastered thee, thy "brave upspi-inging with a new piu-pose of right even after mortifying failure, thy secret loathing of thy sin, the uneasy clanking of the chaia which thou hadst yet no key to open and no strength to snap in sundei. The Father sees thee, though thou ai-t yet a long way off. His compassion goes out to meet thee from the first moment when thy homeward march begins ; thy prayers and thine alms come up before Him, like those of Cornelius, '• for a memorial," though not for a merit ; in token of thy sincerity, though not in j)urchase of thy par- don. Oh, what unspeakable comfort couches in this thought for every contrite heart ! Thy pilgrimage need not be with bleeding feet and long endurance to a far-pff shrine, a shrine at which the idol abides senselessly, with nor heart to feel nor strength to succour. The word of grace is nigh thee, even in thy heart and in thy mouth. Swift as the hart upon the mountains runs the Father's love to meet and welcome thee. Thou hast' been long expected ; the home has hardly seemed complete without the erring but unfor- gotten child. Bruised and hungering as thou art, start thee on the journey ; thou shalt not travel all the way alone ; the first part of thy travel may be with sorrowfid heart and •, THE JOY OF RETURN. 61 illgll FiO soul's le cor- 'iiigiiig failure, of tlie brength lou ai-t et thee begins ; e those irit; in hy par- lioiight >e with shrine to feel [i thee, le hart it and home 1 unfor- ;t thee lalone ; Irt and burdened back, but liie thee to the cross of Jesus. So 8\ive as God's word is true, He will meet thee there, and thy burden shall fall from thy shoulders, and the sadness from tliy lieart, and thou shalt bound alor.g thy joyous pilgrimage a light-hearted, because forgiven, sinner. Your impression of God's loving kindness will be deep- ened — and Ihat is surely the intention of this pearl of pai am- bles — ^if you pass from the haste with which the prodigal was met to consider the welcome with which the prodigal was greeted. "We last saw liim wending his way to his father, agitated with a thousand apprehensions, but brave in the doing of what he had recently discoveretl to be right. He had not only thought upon return, but he had let pur_ pose ripen into deed. There are multitudes who tliink upon repentance and faith as duties to be some time per- formed, but who dream about the'er name, *'That I— a child of wrath and hell— 2 should be called a child of God." Oh, if you have not, God waits to confer it ; in Christ it is ready for your faith. The atonement has purchased not only deliveriince but adoption for the world, and you, the vilest and the farthest prodigal, may lift your eyes, red with the contrite tears, and call God Father by the Holy Ghost. The love of God to man is never displayed more illustriously than in his reception of the returning sinner. Take the tenderest-hearted father that you know, one of those who are deemed weakly indulgent to a degree incompatible with the proper maintenance of authority, and ask youi'selves what his reception would be of a child who had outraged his tenderness, wasted his property, and brought disgrace and scandal upon a name which a long ancestry of integrity had honoured. Alas ! such are the strange contradictions 64 THE PRODlflAL SON. of tlio nature we inherit, that the most blindly indulgent would become the most bitterly implacable, and even in the case of the most forgiving there would be a stniggle with pride, and a distant waiting for the full tale of confession, and a reserve, an\o eye evil because I am good ; is it not lawful for me to do as I will with mine own?" He might have readily exposed the lurking hy- pocrisy and alienation which the very terms of the remon- strance displayed. But he did neither of these. The justi- fication of his conduc' which he condescends to make, rests not upon eternal ewev jiityt but upon eternal fitness — • not ** 1 have wille^ .-> lo this thing," but " It was meet that wo should make merry and be glad : for this thy brother was dead, and is auve again ; and was lost, and is found." This is but the repeated statement of that which it is the province of the whole chapter to enforce — that there is something in the moral recovery of a sinner over which God himself rejoices, and which is matter of legitimate gladness to every creature that His hands have made. The chapter says there is joy in heaven over one sinner that re- penteth, "f?iore than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance." Christ says there is a propriety in this, and we respond to it by the whole of our proceeding in the conduct of our natural affections, or in the regulation of our daily lives. We do not get into ecstasies every morning as we greet the friends from wliom we parted overnight, 70 THE PRODIGAL SOX. and with whom we have exchanged the same customary sal- utations for years. Our deep love is not the less because the expressions of it are the less demonstrative. The gay peasants of beautiful Italy are so accustomed to bright sun and blue sky that tliey are not prostrate in thankfulness, nor wild with delight, when they see the morning daAvn ; but in some arctic island, or at the close of some protracted rainy season in the tropical Savannah, the first glimpse of sunshine will be an inspiration of gladness, or a call to prayer. The stream flows leisurely in its wonted bed until t]io tempest howls or the obstruction comes, and then it overflows. Let the peril threaten our beloved ones, let the fangs of illness fasten, or the cold world's scorn assail, or OvlI verse influences lour, and the deep tenderness will well forth upon them, with a full tide, unexpected even to our- selves, a very Nile of soothing and healing waters. If it had been the hap of the elder son to sicken, or to have been crushed beneath the bitterness of some terrible sorrow, all the spirit's joy-bells would have been rung for his recovery, and all tlie wealth's resources lavished with a free hand to restore to him the comfort of his soul. It was not that the fathe^ preferred the profligate to the faithful, or sanc- tioned disobedience and was indifierent to loyalty ; in the one case, assuming that the elder's account of his own fidelity was true, tlierohad boon years of uninterrupted c;jmplacency THE DISSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOY 77 and favour ; in the other case there was but an hour — a wild and rapturous hour of joy. Not only is the justification rested u[)on the rightfulness of rejoicing over the recoveiy of the erring, but the elder son is reminded that his privilege is the greatest after all — " Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." You can expand this sentiment that you may bring out all its fullness of meaning. ''My son, why this unreasonable anger 1 of what hast thou to complain ? hast thou not par- taken of my bounty, shared my counsels, and been com- passed with my love continually ] I had thought that thou lovedst me, and that my presence was dearer to thee than a kid slaughtered from the fold for a separate revel with ' thy friends.' Thou art ever with me. For thee there has been a constant feast, a never-ceasing smile of welcome. Why grudge to thy brother an hour of the gladness which thou hast realized for these many years? Thou complainest that thou hast never had a feast. No, nor the famine, nor the ra^^s, nor the desertion of thy friends, nor the company of the swine. If thou hast never been wild with delight, thou hast never been frantic with agony ; if thou hast never felt the ecstasy, thou hast never felt the hunger. Thy brother has smiled to-day in the light of his father's countenance — • that light has shone upon thee, familiarly and without a ^ 78 THE PRODIOAL SON. cloud ; thy brother has had shoes, a ring, a robe, a banquet — thou THE INHERITANCE, for * all that I have is thine.' " Brethren, surely our questionings have been answered, and our unbelief rebuked, while the father has thus been talking to the elder son. In the long run, depend upon it, there is a reward for the righteous, and the triumphing of the wicked is short. All our misgiving arises only from our short-sightedness, and we should bow in acquiescence and in gi-atitude if, like God, we could see the end from the beginning. The ancient Nemesis was fabled sometimes to tarry, in order that the man she tracked to ruin might be the more decisively destroyed; and God's providence, though in the noon of man's passion it may seem to slumber, is but accumulating the electricity which, in the dead of night*, shall hurl its lightnings on his head. " Fret not thyself," therefore, " because of evil-doers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity : for they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good : so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord ; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord ; trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass." (Ps. xxxvii. 1-5.) Do you wonder that that newly converted man, he who has been changed suddenly by Divine grace from profligacy to penitence, THE DISSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOY. 79 should have so much of the peace that passeth understand- ing, and of the joy of the Holy Ghost ? Ah ! cease your wonder — you have no need to envy him. He has been an orphan all his life ; he may be allowed to exult a little in the new sens^ition of a father's clasping arms. He has hun- gered so long that his constitution has lost its tone, and he must have cordials and stimulants to supply his lack of vigour. He has been a serf and vassal, and he only leajis and shouos, perhaps, in this the first delirium of his freedom You need not envy him. Ah ! if you could but see how he envies yoit — ^you, the elder sons — who, during his long years of outlaw-life, have dwelt quietly and happily at home. He needs more joy than you do. If he has not an exuberance of Divine comfort, he will fail and be disheartened in tlie work which he has arisen to do. Long habits of ungodli- ness are tyrannous over him, from which your lives ar wed seat, and share the general joy. Brethren, there are such ungenial professors of religion now — men ^' whose lot," in the quaint words of another, " is always cast in the land of Cabul." They are always " in the field " when the prodigal comes home ; they are never ready to give the first shake of the hand to the wanderer ; they fret at the bustle of his recep- tion, partly because it disturbs their ease, and .partly be- cause it reveals their littleness. Their religion is a task- work, not a service of love — a burdenecl pilgrimage, not a sunny travel home. Meet them where you will, the atmos- phere becomes suddenly polar; their trials are grievous, their discontents are many. To them thert. is no life in the Church, no summer in the world. Their principal activity is to suggest a deficiency or to expose a fault ; for in pro- portion to their discomfort is their censoriouSness, f<^r, as it is a literary canon that the critical tendency lodges in tlio shallowest brain, oven so the slanderous tendency coils 82 THE PRODIGAL SON. about the weakosfc lieart. If thoy are in the vineyard at ivll they are stunted sliruUs, or trees of eccentric growth — they do not flourisli in the bwiuty of the palm, nor endui*e in the vigor of the cedar. They know not of the delight of con- version, they iTijoice not iu. God their Saviour. How utterly unhappy such a state of heart must be ! The elder sons of this type are their own worst enemies ever. ** He would not go in." Well, and who suffered but liiniself ? The lights were not put out, the music did not cease, the fes- tivity of the gatliered household flowed evenly and merrily on. Even the father, though he came out to expostulate, and was grieved at the sullen U08S and sin, went in again to those who would appreciate his kindness, and whom his sriile made happy. Father, servants, friends, prodigal, all were rejoicing together , he alone in tke outer darkness nursed his selfish pride, and voluntarily excluded himself from the light and gladness of the home. Oh, if there are any here who tlius banish themselves from the Church's common joy, I pray you think upon your folly ! That Cabul is an unsightly jdace of sojourn, and thex*e is no pas- sage from it into heaven. If, however, you narrowly look into the spirit of the elder son, it is to be feared that w^e -can scarcely accord to him even the qualilled praise of being a sincere but eccentric striver after the right. Cloacly examined, there are many [♦as- THE DISSENTIENT TO THE COMMON JOT. 83 points of identity between him and his brother, iis his brother was when wo first made his accpiaintance, while tliere are features about the ekler wliich make his impiety not only lamentable but repulsive. There was the sjime alienation of heart. It betrays itself in his very words. *' Lo ! these many years do I serve thee." A son would liave said love thee ; but the si)irit of the slave and of the hireling degraded the affection into a servitude undertaken for the hope of a reward. Hence he complains, as a servant might whose wages had been unrighteously withheld, ''Thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends." There was the same sinful longing for freedom from restraint iuid for indulgence in independent merriment. He, too, must have had comrades that were unfitted for tlio presence of his fathei , With equal love of pleasure to his brother, but with a greater selfishness, he panted for the license which yet liis worldly prudence forbade him to re- quest. How much better were his " friends " than the '* harlots " of his erring brother ? Did not the one answer to the other? In these, the essential points of the pro- digal's rebellion, the elder was, on the testimony of his own lips — wrung from him in that unguarded moment when the mask slipped off from the countenance, because anger had convulsed it — as guilty as the brother he despised. Tiien he had other vices, which he could not forbear to display, fcj^ j||iPiiiwiijfeir49iii5f^Pf:/',i iii^««4.akaj,-&«Ai-i i-t^ 84 THE PRODIGAL SON. and from which his more reckless brother was free. The faults of tlie prodigal were far removed from the dastardly and mean ; but many of those vile passions for wliich in the days of His flesh Christ reserved his severest reproba- tions, found a lodgment in the elder brother's soul. There ii; an implied isolation in the fact of his being left " in the field" until the ordinary hour of his return. The father knew his selfishness and feared his ire, or the fleetness of foot would have been despatched to s immon him to the fes- tival of love. Then he displays the anger' of ofl'ended pride, and erivT/, too gross and foul a fi^nd to be harboured in a good man's bosom. Then the iun'':;aant remonstrance, which was the cruel answer to the laiher's entreaty, dis- covered not only his servile spirit xnd his sordid hoj^e of advantage, but the oomplacet^ ; and Lauglity self-righteous- ness which uke Peter's Galilean speech, "bewrayeth" the Pharisee all the woi 1 over: " Lo, these many years do I serve thee ; neitner transgressed I at any time thy com- mandment." How utterly does sin blind the conscience of its perpetrator ! I have seen a drunkard stutter out an indignant protest against a charge of intemperance. I have known a^ swearer deny, with an oath, that he was ever guilty of a habit so profane ; and here is a poor deluded sinner, in the very act of sin — sin against the love due to his bi other and the honour due to lii^. father together — lay- THI? DIS3ENriENT TO TIIK COMMON JOY. 85 ing to his soul the unction of a perfect righteousness, as if the suiiiuier fleece were imp ire in his presence, and the snow-flake stained beside him. Wliat concentrated evil- heartedness, moreover, is there in the whole of liis reference to the prodigil. "Thi.s thy son" — as though he had no affinity of blood, as though he would take care to shake free from the leprosy of such polluted relationship — '* was come" — not was come hack ; that tliought was a thought too high, his was too callous a nature to be thrilled with the great idea of ret am — " '^^as come"- — because necessity impelled him, and hunger drave him hither, an unfrifjnded and miserable beggar — "^ which hath devoured thy living with harlots." How knew he that? Did his own bacf; heart teioh him? Was 'Hhe wish the father to the thought?" *' Thj living" — every v>'ord is loaded wiUi the utmost possi- ble iiarshness, for, as his portion of goods-, tie living was in a sense his own. *' B ib as soon \\< iais thy son was couk^, which hath dovoureJ thy llv^lng 'vitli liarlols, thou hast killed for him the f.i 3d calf." Brethren, I ask y ui now, which is tlio guiltier — tlie gene- rous, thoughtless, iiotous prodigal, or the seemly, slamler- ous, hypocritical )r brother? And there are many sucli in our churches and congregations now. Do you ask wlio they are ? All who hold the, form, but wIio deny the power of jr>Hine5^ -all wlio ''draw noir to God with their mouth 86 THE PRODIGAL SON. while their heart is far from him" — all who have never bowed the knee in broken-hearted sorrow, and are yet cry- ing, Peace, peace ! to their imperilled and unhappy souls — all who repine at another's elevation, or are envious of another's good, while they deem their own virtues »o unmis- takable, and their own excellence so manifest, as to silence all gainsayers — they are the elder brothers. Perhaps — let us come closer — there is very much of his image in our- selves. It is said that when a company of German divines were discussing this parable, and various conjectures were hazarded as to the identity of this elder son, a devout but eccentric brother, on being applied to for his opinion, said — *' I know, for I lear^xcd it yesterday. It is myself f for I fretted and mui mured because such an one had an exti*aor- dinary baptifc.m of the Holy Spirit from on high." Oh for the spirit of searching, to discover and to exorcise the demon ! But there is mercy even for the elder son. The Father entreats still ; and his censoriousness and hypocrisy, as well as his impatience and estrangement, may be freely and gra- ciously forgiven. The grand jubilate with which the chap- ter ck»ses forbids us to despair of any. It is meet that God should save them, and that the whole ransomed universe should exult over the pardoned sinner. Mercy ! joy because of m3rey ! These are the latest notes of the spirit-psalm 4 THE DISSEXTIEXT TO THE COMMON JOY. 87 never it cry- oiils — ous of unmis- silenoe ps — let in our- di vines }s were )ut but said — '/ for I Bxtraor- Oh for cise the Father as well md gra- he chap- hat God universe because it-psalm i which linger on our ears and in our hearts as this sweet chapter closes. Mercy ! God's best and de-arcrst attribute ! Mercy ! ettrth's last and fondest liope ! ^lercy ! Heaven's crowning and eternal triumph ! It is stammered out from mortal lips tliat fain would lisp its music — it s^'cjIIs in gi'andest diapason in the song of the redeemed. Last and longest of the impressions which this subject may have made ujx)n our minds, this thought of mercy clings. And now that we are closing this seiies of life-pictures, drawn with a trembling hand, and with a deep consciousiiess of latent beauty and power in the subject which are beyond the artist's skill, one vision seems to fill the foreground : it is that of the Father clasping the pixxligitl to his embnioe in the sight of eaiih and heaven, and saying, in tones to which the choirs of angels were disconl, and which each seraph hashes his song that he may hear, " I am He that speak in righteousness," and " Mighty to save." .X'^X