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LECTURE V.

LUKE XV. 18, 19, 20.

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.

SUCH was the wise determination, and such the instantaneous execution of the prodigal's purpose. It was the sugges tion of heaven. That he did, he did quickly. Delay in his case would not only have been dangerous, but fatal; misery and destruction were at the door. This was no time for hesitation; he must either be presently extricated from his critical situation or immediately perish.

He did not remain long in the posture of deliberation where we left him on the last occasion. The recollection of his father's kindness, the fond endearments of the parental roof, contrasted with his present abject poverty and degradation, recurred to his mind with a force it was impossible to resist. The school of adversity disciplines the soul for a glorious eternity; like the law, it brings us to Christ.

The mourning son knew well the character of his father; that he was not an austere or implacable tyrant, spurning the petitioner from his presence; that the avenues of his heart were not closed against every approach of misery and destitution. He had probably seen the tear of compassion in his father's eye, excited on many occasions by the recital of a stranger's woes; would he forbid it then to flow when his son solicited his sympathy? or turn a deaf ear to the cries of his own boy, supplicating only a morsel

of bread at his hands? It could not be ! His nature must indeed be strangely altered, if he could turn from his doors the child to whom he himself had given existence; and this too a supplicating, perishing, penitent child; his youngest child a child on his knees suing for admittance. Oh! he felt it was impossible; his father would then have forfeited all title to the very name of father. He would have been a monster in creation. We read indeed of the "ostrich, who layeth her eggs in the dust; who is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers, because God hath deprived her of wisdom;" but she is designated as cruel, and become proverbial for the desertion of her offspring. "Yea," says the prophet Jeremiah, "even the seamonsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones." Can it be, then, that man, the last and best of God's works, created after his own similitude, should betray so little of that character

istic emblem of Deity, love, as to force not only from his embrace, but from the very threshold of his house, the son whom he has begotten?

At all events, the prodigal was determined to put his father's kindly feelings to the test. Though he was now a great way off; far removed not only from the spot, but from the land of his nativity; he resolved instantly to execute his purpose, and retrace his steps. No preparation for the journey was necessary, for, alas! what could he make? Of goods and chattels he had little; of gold and silver he had less; the tattered garment which barely concealed his nakedness was probably all he possessed; for the sequel of the story shows that he was so destitute as to be barefooted.

In this humiliating state as a beggar, did he retrace the track he had so lately travelled, possibly with all the pomp and splendour-with the costly equipage and gilded retinue of a prince--an object of

admiration by all, but now of scorn and contempt. But if as to outward circumstances he had undergone so complete an alteration as scarcely to be recognized, the change which had taken place in his soul, in the inner man, was not less striking. He was, indeed, to use the familiar language of the day, quite another

man.

We pass over all the intermediate process of his journey, from the scene of his profligacy to the still endeared spot of his birth and innocency. Scripture is silent on the subject; let conjecture therefore be silent. He had no difficulty in discovering the way back again, for the Spirit of God was his guide. We may imagine him gaining the first glimpse of his father's house, from some distant hill. How did his heart throb with alternate emotions of joy and fear, doubt and desire? At every turn of the road he met with some object to remind him that he was near home; a name which until lately had vi