His father, therefore, coming out, began to entreat him. He answer ing, said to his father: Behold, for so many years do I serve thee, and I have never transgressed thy commandment, and yet thou hast never given me a kid to make merry with my friends; but as soon as this thy son is come, who hath devoured his substance with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. Son, the father said to him, thou art always with me, and all I have is thine (16). But it was fit that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother was dead, and is come to life again; he was lost, and is found (17)."

To a portrait so affecting we shall further add this reflection, viz., that he who could think that the goodness of God is represented here to its full extent, would mistake a faint glimmering for the sun at its meridian, and a dew-drop for the immensity of the waters of the ocean. No created image could approach to it; and Jesus Christ only avails himself of such, in order that what is known to us may enable us to form some idea of what we can neither know nor imagine. However incredible that mercy which is represented under these figures may appear to us, there is none which the Saviour might not have terminated with this expression: The mercy of God is such as I have just described, and infinitely greater. In point of fact, this surprising goodness of the prodigal's father, which affects us, and sometimes softens us even unto tears, only exhibits a part of the goodness of God, and that part the smallest. It is the mercy which receives, but not the grace which prevents: it exhibits God when forgiving the penitent sinner, but not when he seeks the ungrateful sinner. It would be necessary, in order to make this a complete image, and to represent God entirely therein-it would be necessary, I say, that the father should follow his son in his wild career-that he should go and seek him, even in the distant climes whither his dis

(16) That is to say, every thing here is at your disposal; and you have no reason to reproach me for not having given to you what I have left you at liberty to take. This grievance, supposing it to be one, could not be imputed by the son to his father. But, when an individual is in ill humor, he always finds out cause for complaint.

(17) The prodigal was dead in the sense of his being lost; and he is resuscitated in the sense of his being found. With reference to the penitent sinner, these two words bear their literal signification. Grace or habitual justice is formally the life of the soul, and its loss is the death thereof.

orderly propensities had caused him to wander-that he should present himself before him in the midst of his debaucheries, or of his miseries, not so much to reproach him as to invite him to return, to offer him his house, his table, and all his goods; to urge him, to conjure him that he would accept them. For such, properly speaking, is the grace which is termed preventive: behold it represented in every feature. But this would be an overdrawn picture of any earthly father; and if the parable were carried to that extent, it would have been inconsistent with probability, and, perhaps, even with propriety. Such goodness belongs alone to the Heavenly Fa ther, and it is worthy of it to signalize itself by such features as are far beyond all the tenderness of nature and of blood.

We must be pardoned for dwelling on a subject so interesting. I shall, therefore, again say, that, verily, we have the image of preventive grace in the two preceding parables of the strayed sheep and the lost groat. We think that we see it drawn to the very life in the painful and earnest search of the woman and of the shepherd. Let us, however, be careful to notice that there is always an essential difference between these faint copies and their divine original. It consists in this: the lost groat and the lost sheep are a real loss to their owners, who, when they seek for them, seek not so much the thing lost as themselves and their own advantage, since the joy of having found it belongs to themselves alone. But in losing us, God has lost nothing. Neither his existence nor his happiness depends upon us. Even his exterior glory, viz., that which results from the manifestation of his divine attributes (that glory which can add nothing to his felicity, and which he well knew how to dispense with during an entire eternity), would have been no less satisfied, had he signalized his justice by the punishment of the guilty, than his clemency, by the pardon which he deigns to offer them. But that he should come the first in advance to meet us-that he should call us with never-ending entreaties-that he should seek us with incred ible care and anxiety-that he should stretch forth his hand to us, and throw open to us his paternal bosom-that he should invite us -nay, even that he should conjure us to return thither, and to receive in his arms the pardon of all our crimes, as if we were necessa ry to him, and that he could not do without us; as if his happiness

depended upon ours, or that our salvation was his own: behold the miracle, or rather the mystery of the goodness of God, which no figure could represent-which no created mind can comprehend-the depth of which, like that of the most impenetrable mysteries, challenges our adoration. We can only believe it by faith; it is above all hope, and it should inflame us with love at the sight of goodness too great to be ever comprehended by our reason, and for which we could never have dared to hope.

CHAPTER XLV.

PARABLE OF THE

STEWARD.-TO MAKE FRIENDS FOR OURSELVES BY WEALTH UNJUSTLY ACQUIRED. THE RICH BAD MAN AND THE POOR GOOD MAN.-FIRST COMING OF THE MESSIAH DEVOID OF LUstre.

THE following parable, or rather narrative, is no longer addressed to the Pharisees, but to the disciples. The first, who were within reach of hearing him, and who heard him in point of fact, were those for whom it was most necessary, and who yet profited the least from it. Perhaps this was the reason which influenced the Saviour to direct no further discourse to them, in order that he might not appear to have subjected the divine word to the derision with which they treated it, and, contrary to his own maxim, to have cast pearls before swine. Whatever weight there may be in this reason, which we only give by way of conjecture, (a) "Jesus [continuing to speak] said also to his disciples: There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and the same was accused unto him, that he had wasted his goods." However, the master, a just and humane man, was unwilling to condemn him, until he should have had proof of his unfaithfulness. He called him, and said to him: How is it that I hear this of thee? give me an account of thy stewardship; for [if what they have told me be true] now thou canst be steward no longer. And the steward [who was not able to give a good account] said with

(a) St. Luke, xvi. 1–31.

in himself: What shall I do because my lord taketh away from me the stewardship? To dig I am not able; to beg I am ashamed. I know what I will do, that, when I shall be removed from the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. Therefore, calling together every one of his lord's debtors, he said to the first: How much dost thou owe my lord? A hundred barrels of oil, he said. The steward said to him: Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then he said to another: And how much dost thou owe? who said: A hundred quarters of wheat. Take thy bill, he said to him, and write eighty: and the lord commended the unjust steward, forasmuch as he had done wisely. For the children of this world are wiser in their generation (1) than the children of light (2). And I say to you [concludes the Saviour, for that was precisely what he had in view], make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity (3),

(1) We cannot conclude that men are constituted in a particular way, because we may have supposed that a certain man may have held a particular line of conduct. The conclusion may be drawn, if it be true that he has held the line of conduct attributed to him. In a word, a fact is only deducible from a fact. Wherefore this is no fiction, but a true narrative.

(2) Prudence consists in the judicious choice of the means whereby we seek to attain a reasonable end. The children of the world excel the children of light in the choice of the means which they employ; the children of light excel with reference to the end which they propose to themselves. Nothing can equal the industry and the activity of the first; but whither do they tend? They are pointed towards acquisitions which death shall take away from them on the morrow, leaving them naked, and abandoned to rottenness and worms. What toil and industry lost! The second labor for infinite and eternal acquisitions; but, less eagerly bent than the first on the object of their labors, they do not equally excel in the choice and the application of the means. We may compare the first to an architect who concentrated all the ingenuity of his art in building castles with cards, which a breath of air would level in an instant; and the second to him who, with moderate talents, occupied himself in constructing, with solid materials, good, habitable dwellings. The latter, though not a great man, would yet be a sensible man: the other, with all his cleverness, would be a fool. In the arts the union of both constitutes the great man, and in morality it constitutes the great saint. (3) If we possess them unjustly, and that we know those to whom they belong, we are not permitted to give them in alms: we must restore them. If it be impossible to know those to whom restitution should be made, then it is an obligation of justice to restore to the poor; and in this sense, the order here issued by the Saviour is literally executed. But mammon is here termed "of iniquity," in a more extensive signification. 1st. Because it frequently occurs, even without our knowledge, that we possess riches unjustly according to this expression of Saint Jerome: Every rich man. is unjust, or the inheritor of an unjust person. 2d. Inasmuch as they are to their possessors the cause and the instrument of a thousand iniquities. 3d. And this sense

that when they shall fail,they may receive you into everlasting dwellings (4)."

Thus, what at first sight might appear to be the apology of fraud and of injustice, becomes, by this conclusion, an excellent lesson of charity, which the divine Master further corroborated by the following maxims: "He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is greater (5); and he that is unjust in that which is little, is unjust also in that which is greater. If, then, you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon (6), who will trust you in

comes nearer to that of the parable, because we are but too prone to deem ourselves the masters and proprietors of them-a qualification which belongs essentially to God alone, who has merely appointed us to be the disburser of them, who has reckoned them out to us, and shall demand a reckoning from us. This latter exposition is taken from Saint Augustine.

(4) The rich are in this world the benefactors of the poor: the poor are in the other world the benefactors of the rich. The first confer bread-the second confer heaven. Ye rich! you shall never obtain it, if they do not confer it upon you. Is it, therefore, enough to say to you: Do good to them? Would it not be more advisable to say: Pay court to them?

(5) This is said in pursuance of the common opinion. A man will not confide a treasure to him whom he has found unfaithful in trifles; he would rather confide it to him who is faithful even in the smallest things. The party so acting may be deceived, nevertheless he acts prudently; and he acts imprudently, supposing even it should turn out that he was not deceived, should he have preferred the first to the second. (6) Other interpreters construe deceitful in opposition to true. They understood by the latter the riches of eternity, the only riches which truly deserve this name. The Saviour further says of the first, that they belong to another, in the sense of our merely having a loan of them, and that we are merely the disbursers of them; whereas those of the other life shall be given to us with full property therein, and in perpetuity. They never shall be taken from us, and we shall never be called upon to account for them. This is the explanation given by the interpreters. It has been recently fancied that this was here an exhortation to the disciples alone, to sell their property and distribute the produce of the sale among the poor, and for two reasons. One is, that if it were noticed that they retained that property which has attached to it, like all worldly goods, the general suspicion of injustice, the faithful would not willingly confide to them the alms which they might intend to give out of their legitimate property this is what they understand by the iniquum and the verum mammona. The other reason is, that if the disciples keep this property, which may be suspected of belonging to another, inasmuch as the property may lie under the suspicion of having been badly acquired, the faithful would feel repugnance in paying them their legitimate dues for their ministerial functions-that is to say (apparently), tithe and the honorary gifts. And this is the sense in which the later expositors have construed the alienum and the vestrum. This has appeared very fine, because it is novel. However, nothing is more