The Turning Point

A.nd he arose, and came to his father.” — Luke xv. 20.

THIS sentence expresses the true turning point in the prodigal’s life story. Many other matters led up to it, and before he came to it there was much in him that was very hopeful; but this was the point itself, and had he never reached it he would have remained a prodigal, but would never have been the prodigal restored, and his life would have been a warning rather than an instruction to us. “He arose, and came to his father.” Speaking, as I do, in extreme weakness, I have no words to spare; and while my voice holds out I shall speak straight to the point, and I pray the Lord to make every syllable practical and powerful by his Holy Spirit.

or I. We shall begin by noticing that HERE WAS ACTION — “He arose, and came to his father” He had already been in a state of thoughtfulness; he had come to himself, but now he was to go further, and come to his father. He had considered the past, and weighed it up, and seen the hollowness of all the world’s pleasures; he had seen his condition in reference to his father, and his prospects if he remained in the far-off country; he had thought upon what he ought to do, and what would be the probable result of such a course; but now he passed beyond the dreaminess of thought into matter-of-fact acting and doing. How long will it be, dear hearers, before you will do the same? We are glad to have you thoughtful; we hope that a great point is gained when you are led to consider your ways, to ponder your condition, and to look earnestly into the future, for thoughtlessness is the ruin of many a traveller to eternity, and by its means the unwary fall into the deep pit of carnal security and perish therein. But some of you have been among the “thoughtful” quite long enough; it is time you passed into a more practical stage. It is high time that you came to action; it would have been better if you had acted already; for, in the matter of reconciliation to God, first thoughts are best. When a man’s life J-.nngs on a thread, and hell is just before him, his path is clear, and a second thought is superfluous. The first impulse to escape from danger lay hold on Christ is that which you would be wise to follow. Some of you whom I now address have been thinking, and thinking, and think in till I fear that you will think yourselves into perdition. May you, by divine grace, be turned from thinking to believing, or else your thoughts will become the undying worm of your torment.

The prodigal had also passed beyond mere regret. He was deeply grieved that he had left his father’s house, he lamented his lavish expenditure upon wantonness and revelling, he mourned that the son of such a father should be degraded into a swineherd in a foreign land; but he now proceeded from regret to repentance, and bestirred himself to escape from the condition over which he mourned. What is the use of regret if we continue in sin? By all means pull up the sluices of your grief if the floods will turn the wheel of action, but you may as well reserve your tears, if they mean no more than idle sentimentalism. “What avails it for a man to say he repents of his misconduct if he still perseveres in it? We are glad when sinners regret their sin and mourn the condition into which sin has brought them, but if they go no further, their regrets will only prepare them for eternal remorse. Had the prodigal become inactive through despondency, or stolid through sullen grief, he must have perished, far away from his father’s home, as it is to be feared many will whose sorrow for sin leads them into a proud unbelief and wilful despair of God’s love; but he was wise, for he shook oif the drowsiness of his despondency, and, with resolute determination, “arose and came to his father.” Oh, when will you sad ones be wise enough to do the same? When will your thinking and your sorrowing give place to practical obedience to the gospel?

The prodigal also pressed beyond mere resolving. That is a sweet verse which says, “I will arise,” but that is far better which says, “And he arose.” Resolves are good, like blossoms, but actions are better, for they are the fruits. We are glad to hear from you the resolution, “I will turn to God,” but holy angels in heaven do not rejoice over .resolutions, they reserve their music for sinners who actually repent. Many of you like the son in the parable have said, “I go, sir,” but you have not gone. You are as ready at forgetting as you are at resolving. Every earnest sermon, every death in your family, every funeral knell for a neighbour, every pricking of conscience, every touch of sickness, sets you a resolving to amend, but your promissory notes are never honoured, your repentance ends in words. Your goodness is as the dew, which at early dawn hangs each blade of grass with gems, but leaves the fields all parched and dry when the sun’s burning heat is poured upon the pasture. You mock your friends, and trifle with your own souls. You have often in this house said, “Let me reach my chamber and I will fall upon my knees,” but on the way home you have forgotten what manner of men you were, and sin has confirmed its tottering throne. Have you not dallied long enough? Have you not lied unto God sufficiently? Should you not now give over resolving and proceed to the solemn business of your souls like men of common sense? You are in a sinking vessel, and the life-boat is near, but your mere resolve to enter it will not prevent your going down with the sinking craft; as sure as you are a living man, you will drown unless you take the actual leap for life.

“He arose and came to his father.” Now, observe that this action of the prodigal was immediate, and without further parley. He did not go back to the citizen of that country and say, “Will you raise my wages? If not, I must leave.” Had he parleyed he had been lost; but he gave his old master no notice, he cancelled his indentures by running away. I would that sinners here would break their league with death, and violate their covenant with hell, by escaping for their lives to Jesus, who receives all such runaways. We want neither leave nor licence for quitting the service of sin and Satan, neither is it a subject which demands a month’s consideration: in this matter instantaneous action is the surest wisdom. Lot did not stop to consult the king of Sodom as to whether he might quit his dominions, neither did he consult the parish officers as to the propriety of speedily deserting his home; but with the angel’s hand pressing them, he and his fled from the city. Nay, one fled not; she looked and lingered, and that lingering cost her her life! That pillar of salt is the eloquent monitor to us to avoid delays when we are bidden to flee for T)ur lives. Sinner, dost thou wish to be a pillar of salt? Wilt thou halt between two opinions, until God’s anger shall doom thee to final impenitence? Wilt thou trifle with mercy till justice smite thee? Up, man, and while thy day of grace continues, fly thou into the arms of love.

The text implies that the prodigal aroused himself, and put forth all his energies. It is said, “he arose;” the word suggests that he had till then been asleep upon the bed of sloth, or the couch of presumption. Like Samson in Delilah’s lap, he had been supine, inactive, and unstrung; but now, startled from his lethargy, he lifts up his eyes, he girds up his loins, he shakes off the spell which had enthralled him, he puts forth every power, he arouses his whole nature, and he spares no exertion until he returns to his father.

Men are not saved between sleeping and waking. “The kingdom or heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” Grace does not stupefy us, it but arouses us. Surely, sirs, it is worth while making an awful effort to escape from eternal wrath. It is worth while summoning up every faculty and power and emotion and passion of your being, and saying to yourself, “I cannot be lost; I will not be lost: I am resolved that I will find mercy through Jesus Christ.” The worst of it is, 0 sinners, ye are so sluggish, so indifferent, so ready to let things happen as they may. Sin has bewitched and benumbed you. You sleep as on beds of down and forget that you are in danger of hell fire. You cry, “A little more rest, and a little more slumber, and a little more folding of the arms to sleep,” and so you sleep on, though your damnation slumbereth not. Would to God you could be awakened. It is not in the power of my voice to arouse you; but may the Lord Himself alarm you, for never were men more in danger. Let but your breath fail, or your blood pause, and you are lost forever. Frailer than a cobweb is that life on which your eternal destiny depends. If you were wise you would not give sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids, till you had found your God and been forgiven. Oh, when will you come to a real action? How long will it be er*

pu believe in Jesus? How long will you sport between the jaws of ell? How long dare you provoke the living God?

II. Secondly, HERE WAS A SOUL COMING INTO ACTUAL CONTACT WITH GOD, — “He arose and came to his father” It would have been of no avail for him to have arisen if he had not come to his father. This is what the sinner has to do, and what the Spirit enables him to do: namely, to come straight away to his God. But, alas! .very commonly, when men begin to be anxious, they go round about and hasten to a friend to tell him about it, or they even resort to a deceitful priest, and seek help from him. They fly to a saint or a virgin, and ask these to be mediators for them, instead of accepting the only Mediator Jesus Christ, and going to God at once by him. They fly to outward forms and ceremonies, or they turn to their Bibles, their prayers, their repentances, or their sermon-hearings; in fact, to any thing rather than their God. But the prodigal knew better; he went to his father, and it will be a grand day for you, 0 sinner, when you do the same. Go straight away to your God in Christ Jesus. “Come here,” says the priest. Pass that fellow by. Get away to your Father. Reject an angel from heaven if he would detain you from the Lord. Go personally, directly, and at once to God in Christ Jesus. But surely I must perform some ceremony first? Not so did the prodigal, he arose and went at once to his father. Sinner, you must come to God, and Jesus is the way; go to him then, tell him you have done wrong, confess your sins to him, and yield yourself to him. Cry, “Father, I have sinned: forgive me, for Jesus’ sake.”

Alas! there are many anxious souls who do not go to others, but they look to themselves. They sit down and cry, “I want to repent; I want to feel my need; I want to be humble.” 0 man, get up! What are you at? Leave yourself and go to your Father. “Oh, but I have so little hope; my faith is very weak, and I am full of fears.” What matters your hopes or your fears while you are away from your Father? Your salvation does not lie within yourself, but in the Lord’s good will to you. You will never be at peace till, leaving all your doubts and your hopes, you come to your God and rest in his bosom. “Oh, but I want to conquer my propensities to sin, I want to master my strong temptations.” I know what it is you want. You want the best robe without your Father’s giving it you, and shoes on your feet of your own procuring; you do not like going in a beggar’s suit and receiving all from the Lord’s loving hand; but this pride of yours must be given up, and you must get away to God, or perish for ever. You must forget yourself, or only remember yourself so as to feel that you are bad throughout, and no more worthy to be called God’s son. Give yourself up as a sinking vessel that is not worth pumping, but must be left to go down, and get you into the life-boat of free grace. Think of God your Father — of him, I say, and of his dear Son, the one Mediator and Redeemer of the sons of men. There is your hope — to fly away from self and to reach your Father.

Do I hear you say, “Well, I shall continue in the means of grace, and I hope there to find my God.” I tell you, if you do that, and refuse to go to God, the means of grace will be the means of damnation to you. “I must wait at the pool,” says one. Then I solemnly warn you that you will lie there and die; for Jesus does not command you to lie there, his bidding is, “Take up thy bed, and walk.” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” You have to go unto your Father, and not to the pool of Bethesda, or any other pool of ordinances or means of grace. “But I mean to pray,” says one. AVhat would you pray for? Can you expect the Lord to hear you while you will not hear him? You will pray best with your head in your Father’s fcosoin, but the prayers of an unyielding, disobedient, unbelieving heart are mockeries. Prayers themselves will rain you if they are made a substitute for going at once to God. Suppose the prodigal had sat down at tiic swine trough and said, “I will pray here,” what would it have availed him? or suppose he had wept there, what good would have i;ome of it? Praying and weeping were good enough when he had come to his father, but they could not have been substituted for it. Sinner, your business is with God. Hasten to him at once. You have nothing to do with yourself, or your own doings, or what others can do for you, the turning point of salvation is, “he arose and came to his father.” There must be a real, living, earnest, contact of your poor guilty soul with God, a recognition that there is a God, and that God can be spoken to, and an actual speech of your soul to him, through Jesus Christ, for it is only God in Christ Jesus that is accessible at all. Going thus to God, we tell him that we are all wrong, and want to be set right; we tell him we wish to be reconciled to him, and are ashamed that we should have sinned against him; we then put our trust in his Son, and we are saved. 0 soul, go to God: it matters not though the prayer you come with may be a very broken prayer, or even if it has mistakes in it, as the prodigal’s prayer had when he said, “Make me as one of thy hired servants;” the language of the prayer will not signify so long as you really approach to God. “Him that cometh to me*” says Jesus, “I will in no wise cast out;” and Jesus ever liveth to make intercessions for them that come to God through him.

Here, then, is the great Protestant doctrine. The Romish doctrine says you must go round by the back door, and half-a-dozen of the Lord’s servants must knock for you, and even then you may never be heard; but the grand old Protestant doctrine is, come to God yourself; come with no other mediator than Jesus Christ; come just as you are without merits and good works; trust in Jesus and your sins will be forgiven you.

There is my second point: there was Action, and that action was coutact with God.

III. Now, thirdly, IN THAT ACTION THERE WAS AN ENTIRE YIELDING UP OF HIMSELF. In the prodigal’s case, his proud independence and self-will were gone. In other days he demanded his portion, and resolved to spend it as he pleased, but now he is willing to be as much under rule as a hired servant, he has had enough of being his own master, and is weary of the distance from God which self-will always creates. He longs to get into a child’s true place, namely, that of dependence and loving submission. The great mischief of all was his distance from his father, and he now feels it to be so. His great thought is to remove that distance by humbly returning, for then he feels that all other ills will come to an end. He yields up hii cherished freedom, his boasted independence, his liberty to think and do and say whatever he chose, and he longs to conie under loving rule and wise guidance. Sinner, are you ready for this? If so, come and welcome; your father longs to press you to his bosom!

He gave up all idea of self-justification, for he said, “I have sinned.” Before he would have said, “I have a right to do as I like with my own; who is to dictate how I shall spend my own money. If I do sow a few wild oats, every young man does the same. I have been very generous, if nothing else; nobody can call me greedy. I am no hypocrite. Look at your canting Methodists, how they deceive people f There’s nothing of that in me, I’ll warrant you; I am an outspoken man of the world; and after all, a good deal better in disposition than my elder brother, fine fellow though he pretends to be.” But now the prodigal boasts no longer. Not a syllable of self-praise falls from his lips; he mournfully confesses, “I have sinned against heaven and before thee.”. Sinner, if you would be saved you also must come down from your high places, and acknowledge your iniquity. Confess that you have done wrong, and do not try to extenuate your offence; do not offer apologies and make your case better than it is, but humbly plead guilty and leave your soul in Jesu’s hands. Of two things, to sin or to deny the sin, probably to deny the sin is the worse of the two, and shows a blacker neart. Acknowledge your fault, man, and tell your heavenly Father that if it were not for bis mercy you would have been in hell, and that as it is you richly deserve to be there even now. Make your case rather blacker than it is if you can; this I say because I know you cannot do any such thing. When a man is in the hospital it cannot be of any service to him to pretend to be better than he is; he will not receive any more medical attention on that account, but rather the other way, for the worse his case the more likely is the physician top give him special notice. Oh, sinner, lay bare before God thy sores, thy putrifying sores of sin, the horrid ulcers of thy deep depravity, and cry, “0 Lord, have mercy upon me?” This is the way of wis dom. Have done with pride and self-righteousness, and make thy appeal to the undeserved pity of the Lord, and thou will speed.

Observe that the prodigal yielded up himself so thoroughly that he. owned his father’s love to him to be an aggravation of his guilt: so I take it he means when he says, “Father, I have sinned.” It adds an emphasis to the “I have sinned” when it follows after the word “fattier.” “Thou good God, I have broken thy good laws; thou loving, tender, merciful God, I have done wrong wantonly and wickedly against thee. Thou hast been a very loving Father to me, and I have been a most ungenerous and shameless traitor to thee, rebelling without cause. I confess this frankly and humbly, and with many tears. Ah! hadst thou been a tyrant I might have gathered some apology from thy severity, but thou hast been a Father, and this makes it worse that I should sin against thee.” It is sweet to hear such a confession as this poured out into the Father’s bosom.

The penitent also yielded up ah his supposed rights and claims upon his father, saying, “I am not worthy to be called thy son.” He might have said, “I have sinned, but still 1 am thy child,” and most of us would have thought it a very justifiable argument;’ but he does not

Bay so, he is too humble for that, he owns, “I am no more worthy to be called thy son.” A sinner is really broken down when he acknowledges that if God would have no mercy on him, but cast him away for for ever, it would be no more than justice.

“Should sufklcn vengeance seize my breath,
I must pronounce thee just in death;
And, if my soul were sent to hell.
Thy righteous law approves it well.’1

That soul is not far from peace which has ceased arguing and submits to the sentence. Oh, sinner, I urge thee, if thou wouldst find speedy rest, go and throw thyself at the foot of the cross where God meets such as thou art, and say, “Lord, here I am; do what thou wilt with me. Never a word of excuse will I offer, nor one single plea by way of extenuation. I am a mass of guilt and misery, but pity me, oh, pity me! No rights or claims have I; I have forfeited the rights of creatureship by becoming a rebel against thee. I am lost and utterly undone before the bar of thy justice. From that justice I flee and hide myself in the wounds of thy Son. According to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions!”

Once again, here was such a yielding up of himself to his father that no terms or conditions are mentioned or implied. He begs to be received, but a servant’s place is good enough for him; amongst the scullions of the kitchen he is content to take his place, so long as he may be forgiven. He does not ask for a little liberty to sin, or stipulate for a little self-righteousness wherein he may boast; he gives all up. He is willing to be anything or nothing, just as his father pleases, so that he may but be numbered with his household. No weapons of rebellion are in his hands now. No secret opposition to his father’s rule lingers in his soul, he is completely subdued, and lies at his father’s feet. Our Lord never crushed a soul yet that lay prostrate at his feet, and he never will. He will stoop down and say, “Rise, my child; rise, for I have forgiven thee. Go and sin no more. I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” Come and let us return unto the Lord, for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. He will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax.

IV. Notice further, and fourthly, that IN THIS ACT THERE WAS A MEASURE OF FAITH IN HIS FATHER — a measure, I say, meaning thereby not much faith, but some. A little faith saves the soul. There was faith in his father’s power. He said, “In my father’s house there is bread enough and to spare.” Sinner, dost thou not believe that God is able to save thee; that through Jesus Christ he is able to supply thy soul’s needs. Canst thou not get as far as this, “Lord, if thou wilt thou canst make me clean.” The prodigal had also some faith in his father’s readiness to pardon; for if he had not so hoped, he would never have returned to his father at all: if he had been sure that his father would never smile upon him he would never have returned to him. Sinner, do believe that God is merciful, for so he is. Believe, through Jesus Christ, that he willeth not the death of the sinner, but had rather that he should turn to him and live; for as surely as God liveth, this is truth, and do not thou believe a He concerning thy God. The Lord is not hard or harsh, but he rejoices to pardon great transgressions. The prodigal also believed in his father’s readiness to bless him. He felt sure that his father would go as far as propriety would permit, for he said, “I am not worthy to be called thy son, but make me at least thy servant.” In this also he admitted that his father was so good, that even to be his servant would be a great matter. He was contented even to get the lowest place, so long as he might be under the shade of so good a protector

Ah, poor sinner, dost thou not believe that God wiH have mercy on thee if he can do so consistently with his justice? If thou believest that, I have good news to tell thee. Jesus Christ, his Son, has offered such an atonement, that God can be just, and yet the justifier of him that believeth; he has mercy upon the vilest, and justifieth the angodly, and accepteth the very chief of sinners through his dear Son. Oh, soul, have faith in the atonement. The atonement made by the personal sacrifice of the Son of God must be infinitely precious; believe thou that there is efficacy enough in it for thee. It is thy safety to fly to that atonement and cling to the Cross of Christ, and thou wilt honour God by so doing; is the only way in which thou canst honour him. Thou canst honour him by believing that he can save thee, even thee. The truest faith is that which believes in the mercy of God in the teeth of conscious unworthiness. The penitent in the parable went to his father too unworthy to be called his son, and yet he said, “My father.” Faith has a way of seeing the blackness of sin, and yet believing that God can make the soul as white as snow. It is not faith that says, “I am a little sinner, and therefore God can forgive me;” but that is faith which cries, “I am a great sinner, an accursed and condemned sinner, and yet, for all that, God’s infinite mercy can forgive me, and the blood of Christ can make me clean.” Believe in the teeth of thy feelings, and in spite of thy conscience; believe in God, though everything within thee seems to say, “He cannot save thee; he will not save thee.” Believe in God, sinner, over the tops of mountain sins. Do as John Bunyan says he did, for he was so afraid of his sins and of the punishment thereof, that he could not but run into God’s arms, and he said, “Though he had held a drawn sword in his hands, I would have run on the very point of it, rather than have kept away from him.” So do thou, pcor sinner. Believe thy God. Believe in nothing else, but trust thy God, and thou wilt get the blessing. It is wonderful the power of faith over God, it binds his justice and constrains his grace. I do not know how to illustrate it better than by a little story. When I walked down my garden some time ago I found a dog amusing himself among the flowers. I knew that he was not a good gardener, and no dog of mine, so I threw a stick at him and bade him begone. After I has done so, he conquered me, and made me ashamed of having spoken roughly to him, for he picked up my stick, and, wagging his tail right pleasantly, he brought the stick to me, and dropped it at my feet. Do you think I could strike him or drive him away after that? No, I patted him and called him good names. The dog had conquered the man. And if you, poor sinner, dog as you are, can have confidence enough in God to come to him just as you are, it is not in his heart to spurn you. There is an omnipotence in simple faith which will conquer even the divine Being himself. Only do but trust him as he reveals himself in Jesus, and you shall find salvation.

V. I have not time or strength to dwell longer here, and so I must notice, fifthly, that THIS ACT OF COMING INTO CONTACT WITH GOD is

PERFORMED BY THE SINNER JUST AS HE IS. I do not know how

wretched the prodigal’s appearance may have been, but I will be bound to say he had grown none the sweeter by having fed swine, nor do I suppose his garments had been very sumptuously embroidered by gathering husks for them from the trees. Yet, just as he was, he came. Surely he might have spent an hour profitably in cleansing his flesh and his clothes. But no, he said, “I will arise,” and no sooner said than done! he did arise, and he came to his father. Every moment that a sinner stops away from God in order to get better he is but adding to his sin, for the radical sin of all is his being away from God and the longer he stays in it the more he sins. The attempt to perform good works apart from God is like the effort of a thief to set his stolen goods in order, his sole duty is to return them at once. The very same pride which leads men away from God may be seen in their self-conceited notion that they can improve themselves while still they refuse to return to him. The essence of their fault is that they are far off from God, and whatever they do, so long as that distance remains, nothing is effectually done. I say the radical of the whole matter is distance from God, and therefore the commencement of setting matters right lies in arising and returning to him from whom they have departed.

The prodigal was bound to go home just as he was, for there was nothing that he could do. He was reduced to such extremities that he could not purchase a fresh piece of cloth to mend his garments, nor a farthing’s worth of soap with which to cleanse his flesh; and it is a great mercy when a man is so spiritually reduced that he cannot do anything but go to his God as a beggar, when he is so bankrupt that he cannot pay a farthing in the pound, when he is so lost that he cannot even repent or believe apart from God, but feels that he is for ever undone unless the Lord shall interpose. It is our wisdom to go to God for everything.

Moreover, there was nothing needed from the prodigal but to return to his father. When a child who has done wrong comes back, the more its face is blurred with tears the better. When a beggar asks for charity, the more his clothes are in rags the better. Are not rags and sores the very livery of beggars? I once gave a man a pair of shoes because he said he was in need of them; but after he had put them on and gone a little way I overtook him in a gateway taking them off in order to go barefooted again. I think they were patent leather, and what should a beggar do in such attire? He was changing them for “old shoes and clouted,” those were suitable to his business. A sinner is never so well arrayed for pleading as when he comes in rags. At his worst, the sinner, for making an appeal to mercy, is at his best. And so, sinners, there is no need for you to linger; come just as you are. “But must we not wait for the Holy Spirit?” Ah, beloved, he who is willing to arise and go to his Father has the Holy Spirit. It tfc the Holy Spirit who moves us to return to God, and it is the spirit •>f the flesh or of the devil that would bid us wait.

How now, sinners? Some of you are sitting in those pews; where are you? I cannot find you out, but my Master can, he has made this sermon on purpose for you. “Well, but I would like to get home and pray.” Pray where you are, in the pew. “But I cannot speak out aloud.” You may if you like, I won’t stop you. “But I should not like.” Well, don’t, then. God can hear you without a sound, though I wish sometimes we did hear people cry out, “What must I do to be saved?” I would gladly hear the prayer, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” But if men cannot hear you. the Lord can hear the cries of their hearts. Now, just sit still a minute, and say, “My God I must come to thee. Thou art in Jesus Christ, and in him thou has already come a great way to meet me. My soul wants thee; take me now, and make me what I ought to be. Forgive me, and accept me.” It is the turning-point of a man’s life when that is done, wherever it is, whether in a workshop, or in a saw-pit, in a church, or in a tabernacle; it does not matter where. There is the point — the getting to God in Christ, giving all up, and by faith resting in the mercy of God.

VI. The last point of all is this — THAT ACT WROUGHT THE

GREATEST CONCEIVABLE CHANGE IN THE MAN. He Was a new mail

after that. Harlots, winebibbers, you have lost your old companion now! He has gone to his Father, and his Father’s company and yours will never agree. A man’s return to his God means his leaving the chambers of vice and the tables of riot. You may depend upon it whenever you hear of a professing Christian living in uncleanness, he has not been living anywhere near his God. He may have talked a great deal about it, but God and unchastity never agree; if you have friendship with God you will have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

Now, too, the penitent has done with all degrading works to support himself. You will not find him feeding swine any more, or making a swine of himself either by trusting in priests or sacraments; he will not confess to a priest again, or pay a penny to get his mother out of purgatory; he is not such a fool as that any more. He has been to his God on his own account, and he does not want any of these shavelings to go to God for him. He has got away from that bondage. No more pig-feeding; no more superstition for him! “Why,” says he, “I have access with boldness to the mercy-seat, and what have I to do with the priests of Rome?”

There is a change in him in all ways. Now he has come to his father his pride is broken down. He no longer glories in that which he calls his own; all his glory is in his father’s free pardoning love. He never boasts of what he has, for he owns that he has nothing but what his father gives him; and though he is far better off than ever he was in his spendthrift days, yet he is as unassuming as a little child. He is a gentleman-commoner upon the bounty of his God, and lives from day to day by a royal grant from the table of the King of kings. Pride is gone, but content fills its room. He would have been contented to be one of the servants of the house, much more satisfied is he to be a child. He loves his father with a new love; he cannot even mention his name without saying, “And he forgave me, he forgave me freely, he forgave me all, and lie said, * Bring forth the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet.’” From the day of his restoration the prodigal is bound to his Father’s home, and reckons it to be one of his greatest blessings that it is written in the covenant of grace, “I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me.”

This morning I believe that God in his mercy means to call many ainners to himself. I am often very much surprised to find how the Lord guides my word according to the persons before me. Last Sunday there came here a young son of a gentleman, a foreigner, from a distant land, under considerable impressions as to the truth of the Christian religion. His father is a follower of one of the ancient religions of the East, and this young gentleman naturally felt it a great difficulty that he would probably make his father angry if he became a Christian. Judge, then, how closely the message of last Sabbath came home to him, when the text was, “What if thy father answer thee roughly?” He came to tell me that he thanked God for that message, and he hoped to bear up under the trial, should persecution arise. I feel that I am with equal plainness speaking to some of you. I know I am. You are saying, “May I now go to God just as I am, and through Jesus Christ yield myself up; and will he forgive me?” Dear brother, or dear sister, wherever you may be, try it. That is the best thing to do: try it; and, if the angels do not set the bells in heaven ringing, <jyod has altered from what he was last week, for I know he received poor sinners then, and he will receive them now. The worst thing I dread about you is, lest you should say, “I will think of it.” Don’t think of it. Doit! Concerning this no more thinking is needed; but to do it. Get away to God. Is it not according to nature that the creature should be at peace with its Creator? Is it not according to your conscience? Is there not something within you which cries, “Go to God in Christ Jesus.” In the case of that poor prodigal, the famine said to him, “Go home!” Bread was dear, meat was scarce, he was hungry, and every pang of want said, “Go home! Go home!” When he went to his old friend the citizen, and he asked him for help, his scowling looks said, “Why don’t you go home?” There is a time with sinners when even their old companions seem to say, “We do not want you. You are too miserable and melancholy. Why don’t you go home?” They sent him to feed swine, and the very hogs grunted, “Go home?” When he picked up those carob husks and tried to eat them, they crackled, “Go home.” He looked upon his rags, and they gaped at him, “Go home.” His hungry belly and his faintness cried, “Go home.” Then he thought of his father’s face, and how kindly it had looked at him, and it seemed to say, “Come home!” He remembered the bread enough and to spare, and every morsel seemed to say, “Come home!” He pictured the servants sitting down to dinner and feasting to the full, and every one of them, seemed ie look right away over the wilderness to him and to say, “Come home! Thy father feeds us well. Come home!” Everything said, “Come home!” Only the devil whispered, “Never go back. Fight it out! Better starve than yield! Die game!” But then he had got away from the devil this once, for he had come to himself, and he said, “No; I will arise and go to my father.” Oh that you would be equally wise. Sinner, what is the use of being damned for the sake of a little pride. Yield thee, man! Down with thy pride I You will not find it so hard to submit if you remember that dear Father who loved us and gave himself for us in the person of his own dear Son. You will find it sweet to yield to such a friend. And when you get your head in his bosom, and feel his warm kisses on your cheek, you will soon feel that it is sweet to weep for sin — sweet to confess your wrong doing, and sweeter still to hear him say, “I have blotted out thy sins like a cloud, and like a thick cloud thy transgressions.” “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

God Almighty grant this may be the case with hundreds of you this morning. He shall have all the glory of it, but my heart shall be very glad, for I feel nothing of the spirit of the elder brother within me, but the greatest conceivable joy at the thought of making merry with you by-and-by, when you come to own my Lord and Master, and we sit together at the sacramental feast, rejoicing in his love. God bless you, for his sake Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTUKE READ BEFORE SERMON — Luke XT.

C|e f eto ark Stod

THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN.

8 J&rrnum

DELIVERED OH SABBATH MORNING, FEBRUARY 7, 1858, BT THB

REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE MUSIC HALL, ROYAL SURREY GARDENS.

“But when he was yet a great way off, hii father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on kis neck, and kissed him.” — Luke xv.20.

ALL persons engaged in education will tell you that they find it far more difficult to make the mind unlearn its errors than to make it receive truth. If we could suppose a man totally ignorant of anything, we should have a fairer chance of instructing him quickly and effectually than we should have had if his mind had been previously stored with falsehood. I have no doubt you, each of you, find it harder to unlearn than to learn. To get rid of old prejudices and preconceived notions is a very hard struggle indeed. It has been well said, that those few words, “I am mistaken,” are the hardest in all the English language to pronounce, and certainly it takes very much force to compel us to pronounce them: and after having done so, it is even then difficult to wipe away the slime which an old serpentine error has left upon the heart. Better for us not to have known at all than to have known the wrong thing. Now, I am sure that this truth is never more true than when it applies to God. If I had been let alone to form my notion of God, entirely from Holy Scripture, I feel, that with the assistance of his Holy Spirit it would have been far more easy for me to understand what he is, and how he governs the world, than to learn even the truths of his own Word, after the mind had become perverted by the opinions of others. Why, brethren, who is it that gives a fair representation of God? The Arminian slanders God by accusing him (not in his own intention, but really so) of unfaithfulness; for he teaches that GOG. may promise what he never performs; that he may give eternal life, and promise that those who have it shall never perish, and yet they may perish after all. He §peaks of God as if he was a mutable being, for he talks of his loving men one day, and hating them the next; of his writing their names in the Book of Life one hour, and then erasing their names in the next. And the influence of such an error as that, is very baneful. Many children of God, who have imbibed these errors in early youth, have had to drag along their poor wearied and broken frames for many a day, whereas they might have walked joyfully to heaven if they had known the truth from the beginning. On the other hand, those who hear the Calvinistic preacher, are very apt to misinterpret God. Although we trust we would never speak of God in any other sense than that in which we find him represented in sacred Scripture, yet are we well aware that many of our hearers, even through our assertions, when most guarded, are apt to get rather a caricature of God, than a true picture of him. They imagine that God is a severe being, angry and fierce, very easily to be moved to w’rath, but not so easily to be induced to love; they are apt to think of him as one who sits in supreme and lofty state, either totally in different to the wishes of his creatures, or else determined to have his own way with them, as an arbitrary Sovereign, never listening to their desires, or com passionating their woes. Oh that we could unlearn all these fallacies, and belief* God to be what he is! Oh that we could come to Scripture, and there look into

No. 176. 33

4hat glass which reflects his sacred image, and then receive him as he is, the all« Wise, the all-Just, and yet the all-Gracious, and all-Loving Jehovah! I shall «ndeavoar this morning, by the help of God’s Holy Spirit, to represent the lovely character cf Christ; and if I shall be happy enough to have some in my audience who are in the position of. the prodigal son in the parable — coming to Christ, and yet a great way off from him — I shall trust that they will be led by the same Divine Spirit, to believe in the lovingkindness of Jehovah, and so may find peace with God now, ere they leave this house of prayer.

“When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” First, I shall notice the position intended in the words, “a great way off;” secondly, I shall notice the peculiar troubles which agitate the minds of those, who are in this condition; and then, thirdly, I shall endeavour to teach the great lovingkindness of our own adorable God, inasmuch as when we are “a great way off,” he runs to us, and embraces us in the arms of his love.

I. First, then, what is the POSITION signified by being “a great way off?” I must just notice what is not that position. It is riot the position of the man who is careless and entirely regardless of God; for you notice that the prodigal is represented now as having come to himself, and as returning to his father’s house. Though it be true that all sinners are a great way off from God, whether they know it or not, yet in this particular instance, the position of the poor prodigal is intended to signify the character of one, who has been aroused by conviction, who has been led to abhor his former life, and who sincerely desires to return to God. I shall not, then, this morning, specially address the blasphemer, and the profane. To him, there may be some incidental warning heard, but I shall not specially address such a character. It is another person for whom this text is intended: the man who has been a blasphemer, if you please, who may have been a drunkard, and a swearer, and what not, but who has now renounced these things, and is steadfastly seeking after Christ, that he may obtain eternal life. That is the man who is here said to be, though coming to the Lord, “a great way off.”

Once again, there is another person who is not intended by this description, namely, the very great man, the Pharisee who thinks himself extremely righteous, and has never learned to confess his sin. You, sir, in your apprehension, are not a great way off. You are so really in the sight of God; you are as far from him as light from darkness, as the east is from the west; but you are not spoken of here. You are like the prodigal son, only that instead of spending your life righteously, you have run away from your Father, and hidden in the earth the gold which he gave you, and are able to feed upon the husks which swine do eat, whilst by a miserable economy of good works you are hoping to save enough of your fortune to support yourself here and in eternity. Your hope of self-salvation is a fallacy, and you are not addressed in the words of the text. It is the man who knows himself lost, but desires to be saved, who is here declared to be met by God, and received with affectionate embraces.

And now we come to the question, Who is the man, and why is he said to be a great way off? For he seems to be very near the kingdom, now that he knows his need and is seeking the Saviour. I reply, in the first place, he is a great way off in his own apprehensions. You are here this morning, and you have an idea that never was man so far from God as you are. You look back upon your past life, and you recollect how you have slighted God, despised his Sabbath, neglected his Book, trampled upon the blood of sprinkling, and rejected all the invitations of his mercy. You turn over the pages of your history, and you remember the sins which you have committed — the sins of your youth and your former transgressions, the crimes of your manhood, and the riper sins of your older years* like black waves dashing upon a dark shore, they roll in wave upon wave, upon your poor troubled memory. There comes a little wave of your childish folly, and over that there leaps one of your youthful transgressions, and over the head of this there comes a very Atlantic billow of your manhood’s transgressions. At the sight of them you stand astonished and amazed.” OLord my God, how deep is the guli which divides me from thyself, and where is the power that can bridge it? I am separated from thee by leagues of sin, whole mountains of my guilt are piled upwards between me and thyself. O God, shouldest thou destroy me now, thou wouldest be just; and if thou dost ever bring. me to thyself, it must be nothing lesi khan a power as Omnipotent as that which made the world, which can ever do it. •0

pf)h! how far am I from God!” Some of you would be startled this morning, it’ your neighbours were to give you revelations of their own feelings. If yonder man standing there in the crowd could come into this pulpit, and tell out what he now feels, you might perhaps be horrified at his description of his own heart. How many of you have no notion of the way in which a soul is cut and hacked about, when it is under the convictions of the law! If you should hear the man tell out what he feels, you would say, “Ah! he is a poor deluded enthusiast; men are not so bad as that;” or else you would be apt to think he had committed some nameless crime which he dare not mention, that was preying on hia conscience. Nay, sir, he has been as moral and as upright as you have been; but should he describe himself as he now discovers himself to be, lie would shock. you utterly. And yet you are the same, though you feel it not, and would indignantly deny it. When the light of God’s grace comes into your heart, it is something like the opening of the windows of an old cellar that has been shut up for many days. Down in that cellar, which has not been opened for many months, «re all kinds of loathsome creatures, and a few sickly plants blanched by the darkness. The walls are dark and damp with the trail of reptiles; it is a horrid filthy place in which no one would willingly enter. You may walk there in the dark very securely, and except now and then for the touch of some slimy creature, you would not believe the place was so bad and filthy. Open those shutters, clean a pane of glass, let a little light in, and now see how a thousand noxious things have made this place their habitation. Sure, ’twas not the light that made this place so horrible, but it was the light that showed how horrible it was before. So let God’s grace just open a window and let the light into a man’s soul, and he will stand astonished to see at what a distance he is from God. Yes, sir, to-day you think yourself second to none but the Eternal; you fancy that you can approach his throne with steady step; it is but a little that you hare to do to be saved; you imagine that you can accomplish it at any hour, and save yourself upon your dying bed as well as now. Ah! sir, if you could but be touched by Ithuriel’s wand, and made to be in appearance what you are in reality, then you would see that you are far enough from God even now, and so far from him, that unless the arms of his grace were stretched out to bring you to himself, you must perish in your sin. Now I turn my eye again with hope, and trust I have not a few in this large assembly, who can say, “Sir, I feel I am far from God, and some times I fear I am so far from him. that he will never have mercy upon me; I dare not lift so much as my eyes towards heaven; I smite on my breast, and say, ‘Lord have mercy upon me, a sinner.’” Oh! poor heart; here is a comforting passage foi thee: “When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion on him.”

But again, there is a second sense in which some now present feel themselves to be far off from God. Conscience tells every man that if he would be saved he must get rid of his sin. The Antinomian may possibly pretend to believe that men can be saved while they live in sin; but conscience will never allow any man to swallow so egregious a lie as that. I have not one person in this congregation who is not perfectly assured that if he is to be saved he must leave off his drunkenness -and his vices. Sure there is not one here so stupified with the laudanum of hellish indifference as to imagine that he can revel in his lusts, and afterwards wear the white robe of the redeemed in Paradise. If ye imagine ye can be partakers of the blood of Christ, and yet drink the cup of “Belial; if ye imagine that ye can be members of Satan and members of Christ at the same time, ye have less sense than one would givd you credit for. No, you know that right arms must be cut off, and right eyes plucked out — that the most darling sins must be renounced, if ye would enter into the kingdom of God. And I have a man here who is convinced of the unholiness of his life, and he has striven to reform, not because he thinks reformation would save him, for he knows better than that, but because he knows that this is one of the first fruits of grace — reformation from sin. Well, poor man, he has for many years been an inveterate drunkard, and he struggles now to overcome the passion. He has almost effected it; but he never had such an Herculean labour to attempt before; for now some temptation comes upon him so strongly, that it is as much as he can do to stand against it; and perhaps sometimes since his first conviction of sin he has even fallen into it. Or perhaps it is another vice, and you, my brother, have set your face against it; but there are aiany bonds and idlers that bind us to our vices, and you find that though it WAS easy enough to spin the warp and woof of sin together; it is not so easy to unravel that which you have spun. You cannot purge your house of your idols; you do not yet know how to give up all your lustful pleasures. Not yet can you renounce the company of the ungodly. You have cut off one by one your most intimate acquaintances, but it is very hard to do it completely, and you are struggling to accomplish it, and you often fall on your knees and cry, “0 Lord, how far I am from thee! what high steps these are which I have to climb! Oh? how can I be saved? Sure, if I cannot purge myself from my old sins, I shall never be able to hold on my way; and even should I get rid of them, I should plunge into them once more.” You are crying out, “Oh, how great my distance from God I Lord, bring me near!”

Let me present you with one other aspect of our distance from God. You have read your Bibles, and you believe that faith alone can unite the soul to Christ. You feel that unless you can believe in him who died upon the cross for your sins, you can never see the kingdom of God; but you can say this morning,” Sir, I have striven to believe; I have searched the Scriptures, not hours, but days together, to find a promise upon which my weary foot might rest; I have been upon my knees many and many a time, earnestly supplicating a divine blessing; but though I have pleaded, all in vain have I urged my plea, for until now no whisper have I had of grace, no token for good, no sign of mercy. Sir, I have striven to believe, and I have said,

*O could I but believe!

Then all would easy be;
1 would, but cannot — Lord, relieve,
My help must come from thee!’

I have used all the power I have, and have desperately striven to cast myself at the Saviour’s feet and see my sins washed away in his blood. I have not been indifferent to the story of the cross; I have read it a hundred times, and even wept over it; but when I strive to put my hand upon the scape-goat’s head, and labour to believe that my sins are transferred to him, some demon seems to stop the breath that would breathe itself forth in adoration, and something checks the hand that would lay itself upon the head that died for me.” Well, poor soul, thou art indeed far from God. I will repeat the words of the text to thee. May the Holy Spirit repeat them in thine ear! “When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” So shall it be with thee if thou hast come thus far, though great may be the distance, thy feet shall not have to travel it, but God the Eternal One shall from his throne look down and visit thy poor heart, though now thou tarriest by the way afraid to approach him.

II. Our second point is the PECULIAR TROUBLES which agitate the breasts of those who are in this position. Let us introduce to you the poor ragged prodigal After a life of ease, he is by his own vice plunged into penury and labour. After feeding swine for a time, and being almost starved, he sets about returning to his father’s house. It is a long and weary journey. He walks many a mile until his feet are sore, and at last from the summit of a mountain he views his father’s house far away in the plain. There are yet many miles between him and his father whom he has neglected. Can you conceive his emotions when tor the first time after so long an absence he sees the old house at home? He remembers it well in the distance i for though it is long since he trod its floors he has never ceased to recollect it; and the remembrance of his father’s kindness, and of his own prosperity when he was with him, has never yet been erased from his consciousness. You would imagine that for one moment he feels a flash of joy, like some flash of lightning in the midst of the tempsst, but anon a black darkness comes over his spirit. In the first place, it is probable he will think, “Oh! suppose I could reach my home, will my father receive me? Will he not shut the door in my face and tell me to be gone and spend the rest of my life where I have been spending the first of it ?** Then another suggestion might arise: “Surely, the demon that led me first astray may lead me back again, before I salute my parent.” “Or mayhap.” thought he, “I may even die upon the road, and so before I have received my lather’s blessing my «oul may stand before its God.” I doubt not each of these three thoughts has crossed your mind if you are now in the position of one who is seeking Christ, but mourns to feel himself far away from him.

First, you have been afraid lest you should die before Christ has appeared to you. You have been for months seeking the Saviour without finding him, and now the black thought comes, “And what if I should die with all these prayers unanswered? Oh! if he would buthear me ere I departed this world I would be content, though he should keep me waiting in anguish for many years. But what, if before to morrow morning I should be a corpse? At my bed I kneel to-night and cry for mercy. Oh! if he should not send the pardon before to-morrow morning, and in the night my spirit should stand belore his bar! — What then?” It is singular that other men think they shall live for ever, but men convinced of sin, who seek a Saviour, are afraid they shall not live another moment. You have known the time, dear Christian brethren, when you dared not shut your eyes for fear you should not open them again on earth; when you dreaded the shadows of the night lest they should darken for ever the light of the sun, and you should dwell in outer darkness throughout eternity. You have mourned as each day has entered, and you have wept as it has departed, because you fancied that your next step might precipitate you into your eternal doom. I have known what it is to tread the earth and fear lest every tuft of grass should but cover a door to hell; trembling, lest every particle, and every atom, and every stone, should be so at league with God against me, as to destroy me. John Bunyan says, that at one time in his experience, he felt that he had rather have been born a dog or a toad than a man; he felt so unutterably wretched on account of sin; and his great point of wretchedness was the fact, that though he had been three years seeking Christ, he might after all die without finding him. And in truth, this is no needless alarm. It may be perhaps too alarming to some who already feel their need of Christ, but the mass of us need perpetually to be startled with the thought of death. How few of you ever indulge that thought.! Because ye live and are in health, and eat, and drink, and sleep, ye think ye shall not die. Do ye ever soberly look at your last end? Do ye ever, when ye come to your beds at night, think how one day ye shall undress for the last slumber? And when ye wake in the morning, do ye never think that the trump of the archangel shall startle you to appear before God in the last day of the great assize, wherein an universe shall stand before the Judge? No. “All men think all men mortal but themselves;” and thoughts of death we still push off, until at last we shall find ourselves waking up in torment, where to wake is to wake too late. But thou to whom I specially speak this morning, thou who feelest that thou art a, great way off from Christ, thou shalt never die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord; if thou hast really sought him, thou shalt never die until thou hast found him. There was never a soul yet, that sincerely sought the Saviour, who perished before he found him. No; the gates of death shall never shut on thee till the gates of grace have opened for thee? till Christ has washed thy sins away thou shalt never be baptized in Jordan’s floot. Thy life is secure, for this is God’s constant plan — he keeps his own elect alire till the day of his grace, and then he takes them to himself. And inasmuch as thou knowest thy need of a Saviour, thou art one of his, and thou shalt never die until thou hast found him.

Your second fear is, “Ah, sir! I am not afraid of dying before I find Christ, I have a worse fear than that; I have had convictions before, and they have often passed away; my greatest fear to-day is, that these will be the same.” I have heard of a poor collier, who on one occasion, having been deeply impressed under a sermon, was led to repent of sin and forsake his former life; but he felt so great a horror of ever returning to his former conversation, that one day he knelt down and cried thus unto God, “O Lord, let me die on this spot, rather than ever deny the religion which I have espoused, and turn back to my former conversation:** and we are credibly told, that he died on that very spot, and so his prayer was answered. God had rather take him home to heaven than suffer him to bear the brunt of temptation on earth. Now, when men come to Christ, they feel that they had rather suffer anything than lose their convictions. Scores of times have you and I been drawn to Christ under the preaching of the Word. We can look back upon dozens of occasions on which it seemed just the turning point with us. Something said in our hearts, ‘• Now, believe in Christ, now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” But we said, “To-morrow, to morrow;” and when to-morrow came our convictions were gone. We thought what we said yesterday would be the deed of to-day; but instead of it, tht procrastination of yesterday became thehardened wickedness of to-day: we wandered farther from God and forgot him. Now you are crying to him for fear, lest he should give you up again. You have this morning prayed before you came here, and you said,” Father, suffer not my companions to laugh rne out of my religion; let not my worldly business so engross my thoughts, as to prevent my due attention to the matters of another world. Oh, let not the trifles jof to-day so absorb my thoughts that I may not be preparing myself to meet my God —

Deeply on my thoughtful heart,
Eternal things impress,’

and make this a real saving work that shall never die out, nor be taken from me.’ Is that your earnest prayer? O poor prodigal, it shall be heard, it shall be answered. Thou shalt not have time to go back. To-day thy Father views thee from his throne in heaven; to-day he runs to thee in the message of his gospel; to-day he falls upon thy neck and weeps for joy; to-day he says to thee, “Thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven;” to-day, by the preaching of the Word, he bids thee come and reason with him, “for though thy sins be as scarlet, they shall be as wool, though they be red like crimson, they shall be whiter than snow.”

But the last and the most prominent thought which I suppose the prodigal would have, would be, that when he did get to his father, he would say to him, “Get along with you, I will have nothing more to do with you.” “Ah!”’ thought he to himself, “I recollect the morning when I rose up before day-break, because I knew I could not stand my mother’s tears; I remember how I crept down the back staircase and took all the money with me, how I stole down the yard and ran away into the land where I spent my all. Oh! what will the old gentleman say of me when I come back? Why, there he is! He is running to me. But he has got a horsewhip with him, to be sure, to whip me away. It is not at all possible that if he comes he will have a kind word for me. The most I can expect is that he will say, ‘Well John, you have wasted all your money, you cannot expect me to do anything for you again. I won’t let you starve; you shall be one of my servants; there, come, I will take you as footman;’ and K he will do that I will be obliged to him; nay, that is the very thing I will ask of him; I will say, ‘Make me as one of thy hired servants.’” “Oh,” said the devil within him, “your father will never speak comfortably to you: you had better run away again. I tell you if he gets near you, you will have such a dressing as you never received in your life. You will die with a broken heart; you will very likely fall dead here; the old man will never bury you; the carrion crows will eat you. There is no hope for you: see how you have treated him. Put yourself in his place: what would you do if you had a son that had run away with half your living, and spent it upon harlots?” And the son thought if he were in his father’s place he should be very harsh and severe; and possibly, he almost turned upon his heel to run away. But he had not time to do that. When he was just thinking about running away, on a sudden his father’s arms were about his neck, arid he had received the paternal kiss. Nay, before he could get his whole prayer finished, he was arrayed in a white robe, the best in the house; and they had brought him to the table, and the fatted calf was being killed for his repast. And poor soul, it shall be so with you. Thou sayest, “If I go to God, he will never receive me. I am too vile and wretched: others he may have pressed to his heart, but he will not me. If my brother should go, he might be saved; but there are such aggravations in my crime; I have grown so old since; 1 have done such a deal of mischief; I have so often blasphemed him, so frequently broken his Sabbaths; ah! and I have so often deceived him; I have promised I would repent, and when I have got well I have lied to God, and gone back to my old sin. Oh, if he would but let me creep inside the door of heaven! I will not asic to be one of his children; I will only ask that he will let me be where the Syro-Phoenician woman desired to be — to be a dog, to eat the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table. That is all I ask; and oh I if he will but grant it to me, he shall never hear the last of it, for as long as I live I will sing his praise; and when the world doth fade away, and the sun grow dim with age, my gratitude, immortal as my soul, shall never cease to sing his love, who pardoned my grossest sins and washed me in his blood.” It shall be so. Come and try. Now, sinners, dry your tears; let hopeless sorrows cease; look to the wounds of Christ, who died; let all your griefs now b« removed, there is no further cause for them: your Father loves you; he accept* and receives you to his heart.

III. Now, in conclusion, I may notice now THESE FEARS WERE MF.T IN THH PRODIGAL’S CASE, and how they shall be met in ours if we are in the same condition.

The text says,” The Father saw him ‘Yes, and God saw thee just now. That tear which was wiped away so hastily — as if thou wast ashamed ot it — God saw it, and he stored it in his bottle. That prayer which thou didst breathe just a few moments ago, so faintly, and with such little faith — God heard it. The other day thou wast in thy chamber, where no ear heard thee; but God was there. Sinner, let this be thy comfort, that God sees thee when thou beginnest to repent. He does not see thee with his usual gaze, with which he looks on all men; but he sees thee with an eye of intense interest. He has been looking on thee in all thy sin, and in all thy sorrow, hoping that thou wouldst repent; and now he sees the first gleam of grace, and he beholds it with joy. Never warder on the lonely castle top saw the first grey light of morning with more joy than that with which God beholds the first desire in thy heart. Never physician rejoiced more when he saw the first heaving of the lungs in one that was supposed to be dead, than God doth rejoice over thee, now that he sees the first token for good. Think not that thou art despised, and unknown, and forgotten. He is marking thee from his high throne in glory, and rejoicing in what he sees. He saw thee pray, he heard thee groan, he marked thy tear; he looked upon thee and rejoiced to* see that these were the first seeds of grace in thine heart.

And then, the text says, “he had compassion on him.” He did not merely see him. but he wept within himself to think he should be in such a condition. The old father had a very long range of eye-sight; and though the prodigal could not sec him in the distance, he could see the prodigal. And the father’s first thought when he saw him was this — “0 my poor son, O my poor boy! that ever he should have brought himself into such a state as this!” He looked through his telescope of love, and he saw him, and said, “Ahl he did not go out of my house in such trim as that. Poor creature, his feet are bleeding; he has come a long way, I’ll be bound. Look at his face; he doesn’t look like the same boy that he was when he left me. His eye that was so bright, is now sunken in its socket; his cheeks that once stood out with fatness, have now become hollow with famine. Poor wretch, 1 can tell all his bones, he is so emaciated.” Instead of feeling any anger in his heart, he felt just the contrary; he felt such pity for his poor son. And that is how the Lord feels for you — you that are groaning and moaning on account of sin. H« iorgets your sins; he only weeps to think you should have brought yourself to bi what you are: “Why didst thou rebel against me, and bring thyself into such a state as this?” It was just like that day when Adam sinned. God walked in the garden, and he missed Adam. He did not cry out, “Adam, come here and be judged!” No; with a soft, sorrowful, and plaintive voice, he said, “Adam, where art thou? Oh, my fair Adam, thou whom I made so happy, where art thou now? Oh, Adam! thou didst think to become a God; where art thou now? Thou hast walked with me; dost thou hide thyself from thy friend? Little dost thou know Oh Adam, what woes thou hast brought on thyself, and thine ofispring. Adam, where art thou?” And Jehovah’s bowels yearn to-day over you. He is not angry with you; his anger is passed away, and his hands are stretched out still. Inasnmch’as he has brought you to feel that you have sinned against him, and to detire reconciliation with him, there is now no wrath in his heart. The only sorrow that he leels is sorrow that you should have brought yourself into a state so mourntul as that in which you now are found.

But he did not stop in mere compassion. Having had compassion, “he ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” This you do not understand yet; but you shall. As sure as God is God, if you this day are seeking him aright through Christ, the day shall come when the kiss of full assurance shall be on your lip, when the arms of sovereign love shall embrace you, and you shall know it to be so. Thou mayest have despised him, but thou shalt know him yet to be thy Father and thy Friend. Thou mayest have scoffed his name; thou shalt one day come to rejoice jn it as better than pure gold. Thou mayest have broken his Sabbaths and despised his Word; the day is coming when the Sabbath shall be thy delight, and his Word thy treasure. Yes, marvel not; thou mayest have plunged into the kennel of sin and made thy clothes black with iniquity; but thou shalt one day

THE PKODiGAL 3 RETURN.

•tand before his throne white as the angels be; and that tongue that once curseol him shall yet sing his praise. If thou be a real seeker, the hands that have been stained with lust shall one day grasp the harp of gold, and the head that has plotted against the Most High shall yet be girt with gold. Seemeth it not a strange thing that God should do so much for sinners? But strange though it seem, it shall be strangely true. Look at the staggering drunkard in the ale-house. Is there a possibility that one day he shall stand amongst the fairest sons of light? Possibility! ay, certainty, if he repents and turns from the error of his ways. Hear you yon curser and swearer? See you the man who labels himself as a servant of hell, and is not ashamed to do so? Is it possible that he shall one day share the bliss of the redeemed? Possible 1 ay, more, it is sure, if he turneth from his evil ways. O sovereign grace, turn men that they may repent I “Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die, O house of Israel?”

“Lord do thou the sinner turn,
For thy tender mercies sake!”

One word or so, and I have done. II any of you to-day are under conviction of sin, let me solemnly warn you not to frequent places where those convictions are likely to be destroyed.

A correspondent of the New York Christian Advocate furnishes the following affecting narrative: —

“When I was travelling in the state of Massachusetts, twenty-six years ago,

after preaching one evening in the town ot, a very serious-looking young

man arose, and wished to address the assembly. After obtaining leave, he spoke as follows: — ‘My friends, about one year ago, I set out in company with a young man of my intimate acquaintance, to seek the salvation of my soul. For several weeks we went on together, we laboured together, and often renewed our covenant never to give over seeking till we obtained the religion of Jesus. But, all at once, the young man neglected attending meeting, appeared to turn his back on all the means of grace, and grew so shy of me, that I could scarcely get an opportunity to speak with him. His strange conduct gave me much painful anxiety of mind; but still I felt resolved to obtain the salvation of my soul, or perish, making the publican’s plea. After a few days, a friend informed me that my young companion had received an invitation to attend a ball, and was determined to go. I went immediately to him, and, with tears in my eyes, endeavoured to persuade him to change his purpose, and to go with me on that evening to a prayer-meeting. I pleaded with him in vain. He told me, when we parted, that I must not give him up as lost, for after he had attended that ball, he intended to make a business of seeking religion. The appointed evening came, and he went to the ball, and I went to the prayer-meeting. Soon after the meeting opened, it pleased God, in answer to my prayer, to turn my spiritual captivity, and make my soul rejoice in his justifying love. Soon after the ball opened, my young friend was standing at the head of the ball-room, with the hand of a young lady in his hand, preparing to lead down the dance; and, while the musician was turning his violin, without one moment’s warning, the young man sallied back, and fell dead on the floor. I was immediately sent for, to assist in devising means to convey his remains to his father’s house. You will be better able to judge what were the emotions of my heart, when I tell you that that young man was my own brother.’”

Trifle not, then, with thy convictions, for eternity shall be too short for thee to utter thy lamentations over such trifling.

fjutptt

THE PRODIGAL’S RECEPTION.

DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 4m, 1864, B -

C. H. 8PURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off hi* father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” —

Luke xv 20.

THERE he is! he is as wretched as misery itself; as filthy as his brute associates who could satisfy themselves with husks, while he could not. His clothes hang about him in rags, and what he is without, that he is within. He is disgraced in the eyes of the good, and the virtuous remember him with indignation. He has some desires to go back to his father’s house; but these desires are not sufficient to alter his condition. Mere desires have not scraped the filth from him, nor have they so much a« patched his rags. Whatever he may or may not desire, he is still filthy, still disgraced, still an alien from his father’s house: and he knows it, for he has come to himself. He would have been angry if we had said as much as this before, but now we cannot describe him in words too black. With many tears and sighs he assures us that he is even worse than he appears to be, and that no man can know all the depth of the vileness of his conduct: he has spent his living with harlots; he has despised a generous parent’s love and broken lose from his wise control; he has done evil with both his hands to the utmost of his strength and opportunity. There he stands, notwithstanding this confession, just what I have described him to be; for even though he has said within himself, “I have sinned,” yet that confession has not removed his griefs. He acknowledges that he is not worthy to be called a son — and it is true he is not; but his un worthiness is not removed by his consciousness of it, nor by his confession of it. He has no claims to a father’s love. If that father shuts the door in his face, he acts with justice to him; if he shall refuse so much as to speak a single word, except words of rebuke, no one can blame the father, for the son has so sadly erred. To this the son ntters no demur; he confesses that if he be cast away for ever, he deserves it well. This picture, I know, is the photograph of some who are DOW present;. You feel your vileness and sinfulness, but you cannot look

No. 583. 34 upon that sense of vileness as in any way extenuating or altering your condition. You feel, but you cannot plead your feelings. You confess this morning that you have desires towards God, but that you have no rights to him — you cannot demand anything at his hands. If your soul were sent to hell, his righteous law approves it, and so does your own conscience. You can see your rags, you can mark your filthiness, you can long for something better, but you are no better; you have no more claims than you used to have upon God’s mercy; you stand here to-day, a self-convicted offender against the loving-kindness and holiness of God. I pray that to such of you as are in this case, I may be the bearer of a message from God to your soul this morning. 0 you who know the Lord, put up earnest and silent prayers just now, that my message may come home with power to troubled consciences; and I beseech you, for your own profit, look back to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged, and to the miry clay whence ye were drawn, and remember how God received you. And while we talk of what he is willing and able to do to the far off sinners, let your souls leap with joyous gratitude at the recollection of how he received you into his love, and made you partakers of his grace in days gone by.

There are two things in the text: the first is the condition of many a seeker — he is yet a great way off; and then, secondly, the matchless kindness of the father towards him.

I. First, dear friends, THE CONDITION OF SUCH A SEEKER — HE is YET

A GREAT WAY OFF.

He is a great way off if you consider one or two things. Remember his want of strength. This poor young man had for some time been with out food — brought so very low that the husks upon which the swine fed would have seemed a dainty to him if he could have eaten them. He is so hungry that he has become emaciated, and to him every mile has the weariness of leagues within it. It costs him many pains and sore griefs to drag himself along, even though it be but an inch. So the sinner is a long way off from God when you consider his utter want of strength to come to God. Even such strength as God has given him is very painfully used. God has given him strength enough to desire salvation, but those desires are always accompanied with deep and sincere grief for sin. The point which he has already reached has exhausted all his power, and all he can do is to fall down before Jesus, and say,

“Oh! for this no strength have I,
My strength is at thy feet to lie.”

He is a great way off again, if you consider his want of courage. He longs to see his father, but yet the probabilities are that if his father should come he would run away: the very sound of his father’s footsteps would act upon him as they did on Adam in the garden — he would hide himself among the trees; so that instead of crying after his father, the great Father would have to cry after him — “Where art thou, poor fallen creature? where arc thou?” His want of courage, therefore, makes the distance long, for every step hitherto has been taken as though into the jaws of death. “Ah!” saith the sinner, “it must be long before I can dare to hope, for mine inquities have gone over my head so that I cannot look up.” Are you then in alarm and dread this morning? Your prayers seem to yourself to have been no prayers at all; when you think of God, terror comes over your mind, and you feel that you are a long, long way from him; you imagine that it is not likely that he will hear your cries nor give heed to your words. You are yet a great way off.

You are a great way off when we consider the difficulty of the way of repentance. John Bunyan tells us that Christian found, when he went back to the arbour after his lost roll, that it was very hard work going back. Every backslider finds it so, and every penitent sinner knows that there is a bitterness in momrning for sin comparable to the loss of one’s only son. A drowning man feels no great pain: the sensations of drowning are even said to be pleasant; it is only when the man is being restored to life, when the blood begins to make the veins tingle because life leaps there, when once again the nerves are sensible, then we are told that the whole body is full of many agonies, but then they are the agonies of life: and so the poor penitent feels the goal must be a great way, for if he had to feel as he now feels, even for a month, it were a great time; and if he had to journey many miles as he now journeys, so painfully, with such bleeding feet, it would indeed be a great way.

Let us look into this matter, and show that while the road seems long on this account, it really is long if we view it in certain lights. There are many seeking sinners who are a great way off in their life. I think I see the man now, and hear him thus bewail himself, “I have left off my drunkenness. I could not sit where I used to sit by the hour. I thank God I shall never be seen reeling through the streets again, for that grovelling lust I detest. I have given up Sabbath-breaking, and I am found in God’s house; and I have endeavoured, as much as I can, to renounce the habit of swearing, but still J am a great way off; I do not feel as if I could yet lay hold of Christ, for I cannot master my own passions yet. An old companion stopped me this week, and he had not long been talking before I found the old man was in me, and the old lustings came up into my face again. Why, sir, the other day an oath came rapping out. I thought 1 had got over it, but I had not — I am a great way off. When I read of what saints are, and observe what true Christians are, I do feel that my conduct is so inconsistent and so widely apart from what it ought to be, that I am a great way off.” Ah! dear friend, you are; and if you had to come to God by the way of your own righteousness you would never reach him, for he is not thus to be found. Christ Jesus is the way. He is the sale, sure, and perfect road to God. He who sees Jesus, has seen the Father; but he who looks to himself will only see despair. The road to heaven by Mount Sinai is impassable by mortal man, but Calvary leads to glory; the secret places of the stairs are in the wounds of Jesus.

Again, you feel yourself a great way off as to knoivledye. “Why,” say you,” before I felt thus I considered myself a master of all theology: I could twist the doctrines round my fingers. When I listened to a sermon I felt quite able to criticize it, and to give my judgment. Now I see that my judgment was about as valuable as the criticism of a blind man upon a picture, for I was without spiritual sight.

Now I feel myself to be a fool. I do know what sin means, but onty to a degree. Even here I feel that I am not conscious of the heinousness of human guilt. I have heard the doctrine of the atonement of Christ, and I thank God I know it to some degree, but the excellence and glory of the substitutionary sacrifice which Christ offered I confess I do not fully comprehend.” The sinner’s confession now is that instead of understanding Scripture he finds he needs to go like a child to school to learn the A B 0 of it. “0 sir,” says he, “I am a great way off from God, for I am so ignorant, so foolish, I seem to be but as a beast when I think of the deep things of God.” Ah! poor soul, poor young wandering brother, I wonder not that it seems so to you, for the ignorance of the carnal man is indeed fearful, and only God can give thee light; but he can give it to thee in a moment, and the distance between thee and him upon the score of ignorance can be bridged at once, and thou mayst comprehend even to-day, with all gainfcs, what are the heights and depths, and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.

In another point also many an earnest seeker is a great way off, I mean in his repentance. “Alas!” says he, “I cannot repent as I ought. If I could feel the brokenness of heart which I have heard and Been in some! Oh! what would I give for penitential sighs; how thankful should I be if my head were waters, and mine eyes fountains of tears, if I could even feel that I was as humble as the poor publican, and could stand with downcast eyes and beat upon my breast and say, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’ But, alas! I have been a hearer of the Word for years, and all the progress I have made is so little, that while I know the gospel to be true, I do not feel it. I know myself to be a sinner, and sometimes I mourn over it, but my mourning is so superficial, my repentance is a repentance that needs to be repented of. 0 sir, if God would use the heaviest hammer that he had, if he would but break my heart, every broken fragment should bless his name. I wish I had a genuine repentance. Oh! how I pant to be brought to feel that I am lost, and to desire Christ with that vehement desire which will not take a denial; but in this point my heart seems hard as hell-hardened steel, cold as a rock of ice, it will not, cannot yield, though wooed by love divine. Adamant itself may run in liquid torrents, but my soul yields to nothing. Lord, break it! Lord, break it!!” Ah! poor heart, I see thou art a great way off, but dost thou know if my Lord should appear to thee this morning, and say to thee, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love,” thine heart would break in a moment?

44 Law and terrors do but harden,

All the while they work alone;
But a sense of blood-bought pardon,
Can dissolve a heart of stone.”

Great way off as you are, if the Lord pardons you, while yet callous, and consciously hard of heart, will you not then fall at his feet and commend that great love wherewith he loved you, even when ye were dead in trespasses and sins? Yes, but I think I hear one say,” There is another point in which I feel a great way off, for I have little or no faith. I have heard faitJi preached every Sabbath day; I know what it is, I think I do, but I cannot reach it. I know that if I cast myself wholly upon Christ I shall be saved. I quite comprehend that he does not ask anything of me, any willings, or doings, or feelings: I know that Christ is willing to receive the greatest sinner out of hell if that sinner will but come and simply trust him. I have tried to do it; sometimes I have thought I had faith, but then again when I have looked at my sins I have doubted so dreadfully, that I perceive I have no faith at all. There are sunshiny moments with me when I think I can say —

“My faith is built on nothing less,
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.**

but oh! when I feel my corruptions within rising upon me, I hear a voice saying, “The Philistines be upon thee, Samson,” and straightway I discover my own weakness. I have not the faith that I want; I am a great way off from it, and I fear that I shall never possess it. Yes, my brethren, I perceive your difficulty, for I have felt the sorrow of it myself; but oh! my Lord, who is the giver of faith, who is exalted on high to give repentance and remission of sins, can give you the faith you so much desire, and can cause you this morning to rest with perfect confidence upon the work which he has finished for you.

To gather up all things in one word, the truly penitent sinner feels that he is yet a great way off in everything. There is no point upon which you can talk with him but it will be sure to lead to a confession of his deficiency. Begin to put him in the scales of the sanctuary, and he cries, “Alas! before you put in the weights I can tell you I shall be found wanting.” Bring him to the touchstone, and he shrinks from it “Nay,” says he,” but I cannot endure any sort of trial —

* All unholy and unclean,
I am nothing else but sin.”

See, see, how well my Master has pictured your case in this parable — “Yet a great way off,” yet covered with rags, yet polluted with filth, yet in disgrace, yet a stranger to your Father’s house, there is only this one point about you, you have your face towards your Father, you have a desire towards God, and you would, oh! you would if you could, lay hold upon eternal life. But you feel too far off for anything like comfortable hope; now I must confess I feel many tears about you who are in this state; I am afraid lest you should come so far and yet go back; for there are many whom we thought had come as far as this, and yet they have gone back after all. Oh! remember that desires after God will not change you so as to save you. You must find Christ. Remember that to say, “I will arise” is not enough, nor even to arise; you must never rest till your Father has given you the kiss, till he has put on you the best robe. I am afraid lest you should rest satisfied and say, I am in a good state; the minister tells U3 that many are brought to such a state before they are saved. I will stop here.” My dear friend, it is a good state to pass through, but it is a bad state to rest in. I pray you never be content with a sense of in, never be satisfied with merely knowing that you are not what you ought to be. It never cures the fever for a man to know he has it; his knowledge is in some degree a good sign, for it proves that the fever has not yet driven him to delirium; but it never gives a man perfect health to know that he is sick. It is a good thing for him to know it, for he will not otherwise send for the physician; but except it lead to that, he will die whether he feels himself to be sick or no. A mere consciousness that you are hungry while your father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, will not stay your hunger, you want more than this. You are a great way off, and I beseech you remember the danger is, lest you should stop here or should lose what sensibility you already have. Perhaps despair may come upon you. Some have commited suicide while under a sense of the greatness of their distance from God, because they dared not look to the Saviour. Our prayers shall go up to God that the second part of our text may come true to you, and that alike backsliding and despair may be prevented by the speedy coming of God dressed in the robes of grace to meet your guilty soul, and give you joy and peace through believing.

II. Secondly — and 0 may the Master give us his help — we have to consider THE MATCHLESS KINDNESS OP THE HEAVENLY FATHER. We must take each word and dwell upon it.

First of all, we have here divine observation. “When he was yet a great way off his father saw him.” It is true he has always seen him. God sees the sinner in every state and in every position. Ay, and sees him with an eye of love too — such a onosen sinner as is described in this text — not with complacency, but still with affection. God looks upon his wandering chosen ones. I say that father saw his son when he spent his living with harlots, saw him with deep sorrow, when he fain would have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat; but now, if there can be such a thing as for divine omniscience to become more exact, the father sees him with an eye full of a more tender love, a greater care. “His father saw him” Oh! what a sight it was for a father to see! His son, it is true, but his. reprobate son, who had dishonoured his father’s name; brought down the name of an honourable house to be mentioned among the dregs and scum of the earth. There he is! What a sight for a father’s eye! He is filthy, as though he had been rolling in the mire; and his gay clothing has long ago lost its fine colours, and hangs about him in wretched rags. The father does not turn away and try to forget him, he fixes his full gaze upon him. Sinner, thou knowest that God sees thee thia morning; sitting in this house thou art observed of the, God of heaven. There is not a desire in thy heart unread of him, nor a tear in thine eye which he doth not observe, I tell thee he has seen thy midnight sins, he has heard thy cursings and thy blasphemies, and yet he has loved thee notwithstanding all that thou hast done. Thou couldst hardly have been a worse rebel against him, and yet he has noted thee in his book of love, and determined to save thee, and the eye of his love has followed thee whithersoever thou hast gone. Is there not some comfort here? “Why could not he see his father? Was it the effect of the tears in his eyes that he could not see? or was it that his father was of quicker sight than he? Sinner, thou canst not see God, for thou art unbelieving, and carnal, and blind, but he can see thee; thy tears of penitence block up thy sight, but thy Father is quick of eye, and he beholds thee and loves thee now; in every glance there is love. “His father saw him.”

Observe this was a loving observation, for it is written, “His father saw him.” He did not see him as a mere casual observer; he did not note him as a man might note his friend’s child with some pity and benevolence, but he marked him as a father alone can do. What a quick eye a parent hath! Why, I have known a young man come home, perhaps for a short holiday: the mother has heard nothing, not even a whisper, as to her son’s conduct, and yet she cannot help observing to her husband, “There is a something about John which makes me suspect that he is not going on as he should do. I do not know, my husband,” she says, “what it is, but yet I am sure he is getting among bad companions.” She will read his character at once. And the father notes something, too. he cannot precisely say what, but cause for anxiety he knows it to be. But here we have a Father who can see everything, and who has as much of the quickness of love as he has of the certainty of knowledge. He can, therefore, see from every spot and bruise, and note ever, putrifying sore. He sees his poor son right through as though he were a vase of crystal; he reads his heart, not merely the tell-tale garments, not merely the sorrowful tale of the unwashed face and those clouted shoes, but he can read his soul, he understands the whole of his miserable plight. 0 poor sinner, there is no need for thee to give information to thy God, for he knows it already; you need not pick your words in prayer in order to -make your case plain and perspicuous, for God can see it, and all you have to do is to uncover your wounds, your bruises, and your putrifying sores, and say, “My Father, thou seest it all, the black tale thou readest in a moment, my Father, have pity upon me.”

The next thought to be well cousideied is divine compassion. “When he saw him he had compassion on him.” Does not the word corn-passion mean suffering -ivith or fellow-suffering? What is compassion, then, but putting yourself into the place of the suiferer and feeling his grief?

If I may so say, the father put himself into the son’s rags, and then felt as much pity for him as that poor ragged prodigal could have felt for himself. I do not know how to bring up your compassion this morning, except it is by supposing that it is your own case. I will sup. pose, father, it is a son of yours. I saw, not many hours ago, a young man who brought to my mind the prodigal in this case: his face marked with innumerable lines of sin and wretchedness, his body lean and emaciated, his clothes close-buttoned, his whole appearance the very mirror of woe. He knocked at my door. I knew his case; I cannot hurt him by telling it. He had disgraced his family, not once nor twice, but many times. At last he drew out what money he had in the business of a respectable family, came up to London with four hundred pounds, and in about five weeks spent it all; and, without a single farthing to help himself, he often wants for bread, and I fear that he has often crept at night into the parks to sleep, and thus has brought aches and pains into his bones which will hold by him till he dies. He wanders the streets by day a vagabond and a reprobate. I have written to his friends, the case has been put before them; they will not own him; and considering his shameful conduct, I do not wonder at it. He has no father and no mother left. If he were helped beyond mere food and lodging, as far as we can judge, it would be money thrown away; if he were helped, he seems so desperately set on wickedness, that he would do the same again. Yet, as I think, I can but desire to see him have one more trial at the least, and he would have it, I doubt not, if his father yet lived; but others feel the fountains of their love are stayed. As I think of him, I cannot but feel that if he were a son of mine and I were his father, and I saw him in such a case come to my door, whatever the crime was that he had committed, I must fall upon his neck and kiss him; the hugest sin could not put out for ever the sparks of paternal love. I might condemn the sin in terms the sharpest and most severe; I might regret that he had ever been born, and cry with David, “0 my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee!” but I could not shut him out of my house, nor refuse to call him my child. My child he is, and my child he shall be till he dies. You feel just now that if it were your child you would do the same. That is how God feels towards you, his chosen, his repentant child. You are his child; I hope so, I trust so; those desires which you have in your soul towards him, make me feel that you are one of his children, and as God looks out of heaven he knows what you mean. What is it? What shall I say? .Nay, I need not describe, but, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” He will have compassion upon you; he will receive you to his bosom now. Be of good courage, for the text says, “He had compassion on him.”

Notice and observe carefully the swiftness of this divine love: — “He ran.” Probably he was walking on the top of his house and looking out for his son, when one morning he just caught a glimpse of a poor sorry figure in the distance. If he had been anything but the father he would not have known it to be his son, he was so altered; but he looked and looked again, till at last he said, “It is he! oh! what marks of famine are upon him, and of suffering too!” And down cjines the old gentleman — I think I see him running downstairs, and the servants come to the windows and the doors, and say, “Where is master going? I have not seen him run at that rate for many a-day.” See, there he goes; he does not take the road, for that is a little round about; but there is a gap through the hedge, and he is jumping over it; the straightest way that he can find he chooses; and before the son has had time to notice who it is, he is on him, and has his arms about him, falling upon his neck and kissing him. I recollect a young prodigal who was received in the same way. Here he stands, it is I, myself. I sat in a little chapel, little dreaming that my Father saw me; certainly I was a great way off. I felt something of my need of Christ, but I did not know what I must do to be saved; though taught the letter of the Word, I was spiritually ignorant of the plan of salvation; though taught it from my youth up, I knew it not. I felt, but I did not feel what I wished to feel. If ever there was a soul that knew itself to be far off from God, I was that soul; and yet in a moment, in one single moment, no sooner had I heard the words, “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth,” no sooner had I turned my eyes to Jesus crucified, than I felt my perfect reconciliation with God, I knew my sins to be forgiven. There was no time for getting out of my heavenly Father’s way, it was done, and done in an instant; and in my case, at least, he ran and fell upon my neck to kiss me. I hope that will be the case this morn ing; before you can get out of this place, before you can get back to your old doubtings, and fearings, and sighings, and cryings, I hope here the Lord of love will run arid meet you, and fall upon your neck and kiss you.

After noticing thus, observation, compassion, and stvi/tness, do not for get the nearness: “He fell upon his neck and kissed him.” This I can understand by experience, but it is too wonderful for me to explain, “he fell upon his neck.” If he had stood at a distance and said, “John, I should be very glad to kiss you, but you are too filthy; I do not know what may be under those filthy rags; I do not feel inclined to fall upon your neck just yet; you are too far gone for me. I love you, but there is a limit to the display of love. When I have got you into a proper state, then I may manifest my affection to you, but I cannot just now, while you are so very foul.” Oh! no; but before he is washed he falla on his neck — there is the wonder of it. I can understand how God manifests his love to a soul that is washed in Jesus’ blood, and knows it; but how he could fall upon the neck of a foul, filthy sinner as such! There it is — not as sanctified, not as having anything good in himself, but as nothing but a filthy, foul, desperate rebel, God falls upon his neck and kisses him. Oh! strange miracle of love! The riddle is un riddled when you recollect that God never had looked upon that winner, as he was in himself, but had always looked upon him as he was in Christ; and when he fell upon that prodigal’s neck, he did in effect only fall upon the neck of his once-suffering Son, Jesus Christ, and he kissed the sinner because he saw him iri Christ, and therefore did not see the sinner’ s loathsomeness, but saw only Christ’s comeliness, and therefore kissed him as he would have kissed his substitute. Observe how near God comes to the sinner. It was said of that eminent saint and martyr, Bishop Hooper, that on one occasion a man in deep distress was allowed to go into his prison to tell his tale of conscience; but Bishop Hooper looked so sternly upon him, and addressed him so severely at first, that the poor soul ran away, and could not get comfort until he had sought out another minister of a gentler aspect. Now Hooper really was a gracious and loving soul, but the sternness of his manner kept the penitent off. There is no such stern manner in our heavenly Father, he loves to receive his prodigals. When he comes there is no “Hold off!” no “Keep off!” to the sinner, but he falls upon his neck and he kisses him.

There is yet another thought to be brought out of the metaphor of kissing; we are not to pass that over without dipping our cup in the honey. In kissing his son the father recognises relationship. He said, with emphasis, “Thou art my son,” and the prodigal was

“To his Father’s bosom pressed,
Once for all a child confessed.”

Again, that kiss was the seal of forgiveness. He would not have kissed him if he had been angry with him; he forgave him, forgave him all. There was, moreover, something more than forgiveness, there was acceptance — “I receive you back into my heart as though you were worthy of all that I give to your elder brother, and therefore I kiss you.” Surely also this was a kiss of delight — as if he took pleasure in him, delighting in him, feasting his eyes with the sight of him, and feeling more nappy to seo him than to see all his fields, and the fatted calves, and all the treasures that he possessed. His delight was in seeing this poor restored child. Surely this is all summed up in a kiss. And if this morning my Father, and your Father, should come out to meet mourning penitents, in a moment he will show you that you are his children, you shall say, “Abba, Father,” on your road to ypur own house; you shall feel that your sin is all forgiven, that every pavticle of it is cast behind

Jehovah’s back; you shall feel to-day that you are accepted — as your faith looks to Christ you shall see that God accepts you, because Christ your substitute is worthy of God’s love and God’s delight. Nay; I trust you shall this very morning delight yourself in God, because Q-od delights himself in you, and you shall hear him whisper in your ear, “Thou shalt be called Hcphzi-bah... for the Lord delighteth in thee.” I wish I could picture such a text as this as it ought to be; it needs some tender, sympathetic heart, some man who is the very soul of pathos, to work out the tender touches of such a verse as this. But, oh! though I cannot describe it, I hope you will feel it, and that is better than description. I come not here to paint the scene, except to be the brush in God’s hand to paint it on your hearts. There are some of you who can say, %<I do not want descriptions, for I have felt it; I went to Christ and told him my case, and prayed him to meet me; now I believe on him, and I have gone my way rejoicing in him.”

We will just say these words and have done. In summing up, one may notice that this sinner, though he was a great way off, was not received to full pardon and to adoption and acceptance by a gradual proctss, but he was received at once. He was not allowed to enter into the out house first, and to sleep in a barn at night, and then afterwards allow to come sometimes and have his meals with the servants in the kitch i and then afterwards allowed to sit at the bottom of the table and by degrees brought near. No; but the father fell on his neck and kissed him the first moment; he gets as near to God the first moment as he ever will. So a saved soul may not enjoy and know so much, but he is as near and dear to God the first moment he believes as he ever will be; a true heir of all things in Christ, and as truly so as even when he shall mount to heaven to be glorified and to be like his Lord. Oh! what a wonder is this? Fresh from his pigstye was he not, yet in a father’s bosom; fresh from the swine with their gruntings in his ears, and now he hears a father’s loving words; a few days ago he was putting husks to his mouth, and now it is a father’s lips that are on his lips. What a change, and all at once. I say there is no gradual process in this, but the thing is done at once, in a moment he comes to his father, his father comes to him, and he is in his father’s arms.

Observe again, as there was not a gradual reception, there was not a partial reception. He was not forgiven on conditions; he was not received to his father’s heart if he would do so-and-so. No; there were no “ifs” and no “buts;” he was kissed, and clothed, and feasted, with out a single condition of any kind whatever. No questions asked — his father had cast his offences behind his back in a moment, and he was received without even a censure or a rebuke. It was not a partial reception. He was not received to some things and refused others. He was not* for instance, allowed to call himself a child, but to think himself an inferior. No; he wears the best robe; ho has the ring on his finger; he has the shoes on his feet; and he joins in eating the fatted calf: and so the sinner is not received to a second class place, but he is taken to the full position of a child of God. It is not a gradual nor yet a partial reception.

And once more, it is not a temporary reception. His father did not kiss him and then turn him out at the back door. He did not receive him for a time, and then afterwards say to him, “Go thy way; I have had pity upon thee; thou hast now a new start, go into the far country and mend thy ways.” No; but the father would say to him what he had already said to the elder brother, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” In the parable, the son could not have the goods restored, for he had spent his part; but in the truth itself and matter of fact, God does make the man who comes in at the eleventh hour equal with the one who came in at the first hour of the day; he gives every man the penny; and he gives to the child who has been the most wandering the same privileges, and ultimately the same heritage, which he gives to his own who have been these many years with him, and have not transgressed his commandments. That is a remarkable passage in one of the prophets, where he says, “Ekro’n as a Jebusite;” meaning that the Philistine when converted should be treated just the same as the original inhabitants of Jerusalem; that the branches of the olive which were grafted in have the same privileges as the original branches. When God takes men from being heirs of wrath, and makes them heirs of grace, they have just as much privilege at the first as though they had been heirs of grace twenty years, because in God’s sight they always were heirs of grace, and from all eternity he viewed his most wandering sons.

“Not as they stood in Adam’s fall,
When sin and ruin covered all;
But as they’ll stand another day,
Fairer than sun’s meridian ray.”

O, I would to God that he would in his infinite mercy bring some of hia own dear children home this day, and he shall have the praise, world without rpnd. Amen.

gfobwnade fiulpit

PBODIGAL LOVE FOE THE PRODIGAL SON.

INTENDED FOE READING ON LORD’S-DAY, DECEMBER 27in, 1891,

DELIVERED BY

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTO1T,
On Lord’s-day Evening, March 29th, 1891.

“And kissed him.” — Luke xv. 20.

IN the Revised Version, if you will kindly look at the margin, you will find that the text there reads, “And kissed him much” This is a very good translation of the Greek, which might bear the meaning, “Kissed him earnestly,” or “Kissed him eagerly,” or “Kissed him often.” I prefer to have it in very plain language, and therefore adopt the marginal reading of the Revised Version, “Kissed him much,” as the text of my sermon, the subject of which will be, the overflowing love of God toward the returning sinner.

The first word “and” links us on to all that had gone before. The parable is a very familiar one, yet it is so full of sacred meaning that it always has some fresh lesson for us. Let us, then, consider the preliminaries to this kissing. On the son’s side there was something, and on the father’s side much more. Before the prodigal son received these kisses of love, he had said in the far country, “I will arise and go to my father.” He had, however, done more than that, else his father’s kiss would never have been upon his cheek. The resolve had become a deed: “He arose, and came to his father.” A bushelful of resolutions is of small value; a single grain of practice is worth the whole. The determination to return home is good; but it is when the wandering boy begins the business of really carrying out the good resolve, that he draws near the blessing. If any of you here present have long been saying, “I will repent; I will turn to God;” leave off resolving, and come to practising; and may God in his mercy lead you both to repent and to believe in Christ!

Before the kisses of love were given, this young man was on his way to his father; but he would not have reached him unless his father had come the major part of the way. “When you give God an inch, he will give you an ell. If you come a little way to him, when you are “yet a great way off” he will run to meet you. I do No. 2.236.

not know thctt the prodigal saw his father, but his father saw Mm. The eyes of mercy are quicker than the eyes of repentance. Even the eye of our faith is dim compared with the eye of God’s love. He sees a sinner long before a sinner sees him.

I do not suppose that the prodigal travelled very fast. I should imagine that he came very slowly —

“With heavy heart and downcast eye,
“With many a sob and many a sigh.”

He was resolved to come, yet he was half afraid. But we read that his father ran. Slow are the steps of repentance, but swift are the feet of forgiveness. God can run where we can scarcely limp, and if we are limping towards him, he will run towards us. These kisses were given in a hurry; the story is narrated in a way that almost makes us realize that such was the case: there is a sense of haste in the very wording of it. His father “ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him; “— kissed him eagerly. He did not delay a moment; for though he was out of breath, he was not out of love. uHe fell on his neck, and kissed him much.” There stood his son ready to confess his sin; therefore did his father kiss him all the more. The more willing thou art to own thy sin, the more willing is God to forgive thee. When thou dost make a clean breast of it, God will soon make a clear record of it. He will wipe out the sin that thou dost willingly acknowledge and humbly confess before him. He that was willing to use his lips for confession, found that his father was willing to use his lips for kissing him.

See the contrast. There is the son, scarcely daring to think of embracing his father, yet his father has scarcely seen him before he has fallen on his neck. The condescension of God towards penitent sinners is very great. He seems to stoop from his throne of glory to fall upon the neck of a repentant sinner. God on the neck of a sinner! What a wonderful picture! Can you conceive it? I do not think you can; but if you cannot imagine it, I hope that you will realize it. When God’s arm is about our neck, and his lips are on our cheek, kissing us much, then we understand more than preachers or books can ever tell us of his condescending love.

The father “saw” his son. There is a great deal in that word, •” saw.” He saw who it was; saw where he had come from; saw the swineherd’s dress; saw the filth upon his hands and feet; saw his rags; saw his penitent look; saw what he had been; saw what he was; and saw what he would soon be. “His father saw him.” God has a way of seeing men and women that you and I cannot understand. He sees right through us at a glance, as if we were made of glass; he sees all our past, present and future.

“When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him.” It was not with icy eyes that the father looked on his returning son. Love leaped into them, and as he beheld him, he “had compassion on him;” that is, he felt for him. There was no anger in his heart towards his son; he had nothing but pity for his poor boy, who had got into such a pitiable condition. It was true that it was all his own fault, but that did not come before his father’s mind. It was the state that he was in, his poverty, his degradation, that pale face -f his so wan with hunger, that touched his father to the quick. And Ood has compassion on the woes and miseries of men. They may have brought their troubles on themselves, and they have indeed does «o; but nevertheless God has compassion upon them. “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions foil not.”

We read that the father “ran.” The compassion of God is followed by swift movements. He is slow to anger, but he is quick to bless. He does not take any time to consider how he shall show his love to penitent prodigals; that was all done long ago in the eternal covenant. He has no need to prepare for their return to him; that was all done on Calvary. God comes flying in the greatness of his compassion to help every poor penitent soul.

“On cherub and on cherubim,

Full royally he rode;
And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad.”

And when he comes, he comes to kiss. Master Trapp says that, if we had read that the father had kicked his prodigal son, we should not have been very much astonished. Well, I should have been very greatly astonished, seeing that the father in the parable was to represent God. But still, his son deserved all the rough treatment that some heartless men might have given; and had the stgry been that oi a selfish human father only, it might have been written that ‘* as he was coming near, his father ran at him, and kicked him.” There are such fathers in the world, who seem as if they cannot forgive. If he had kicked him, it would have been no more than he had deserved. But no, what is written in the Book stands true for all time, and for overy sinner, — “He fell on his neck, and kissed him;” kissed him eagerly, kissed him much.

What does this much kissing mean? It signifies that, when sinners come to God, he gives them a loving reception, and a hearty welcome. If any one of you, while I am speaking, shall come to God, expecting mercy because of the great sacrifice of Christ, this shall be true of you as it has been true of many of us: “He kissed him much.”

I. First, this much kissing means MUCH LOVE. It means much love truly felt; for God never gives an expression of love without feeling it in his infinite heart. God will never give a Judas-kiss, and betray those whom he embraces. There is no hypocrisy with God; he never kisses those for whom he has no love. Oh, how God loves sinners! You who repent, and come to him, will discover how greatly he loves you. There is no measuring the love he bears towards you. He has loved you from before the foundation of the world, and he will love you when time shall be no more. Oh, the immeasurable love of God to sinners who come and cast themselves upon his mercy!

This much kissing also means much love manifested. God’s people do not always know the greatness of his love to them. Sometimes, IIOTTever, it is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. Some of us know at times what it is to be almost too happy to live! The love of God has been so overpowe’ngly experienced by us on some occasions, that we have almost had to ask for a stay of the delight because we could not endure any more. If the glory had not been veiled a little, we should have died of excess of rapture, or happiness. Beloved, Q-od has wondrous ways of opening his people’s hearts to the manifestation of his grace. He can pour in, not now and then a drop of his love, but great and mighty streams. Madame Guyon used to speak of the torrents of love that come sweeping through the spirit, bearing all before them. The poor prodigal in the parable had so much love manifested to him, that he might have sung of the torrents of his father’s affection. That is the way God receives those whom he saves, giving them not a meagre measure of grace, but manifesting an overflowing love.

This much kissing means, further, much love perceived. When his father kissed him much, the poor prodigal knew, if never before, that his father loved him. He had no doubt about it; he had a clear perception of it. It is very frequently the case that the first moment a sinner believes in Jesus, he gets this “much” love. God reveals it to him, and he perceives it and enjoys it at the very beginning. Think not that God always keeps the best wine to the last; he gives us some of the richest dainties of his table the first moment we sit there. I recollect the joy that I had when first I believed in Jesus; and, even now, in looking back upon it, the memory of it is as fresh as if it were but yesterday. Oh, I could not have believed that a mortal could be so happy after having been so long burdened, and BO terribly cast down! I did but look to Jesus on the cross, and the crushing load was immediately gone; and the heart which could only sigh and cry by reason of its burden, began to leap and dance and sing for joy. I had found in Christ all that I wanted, and I rested in the love of God at once. So may it be with you also, if you will but return to God through Christ. It shall be said of you as of this prodigal, “The father saw him, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him in much love.”

II. Secondly, this much kissing meant MTTOH FORGIVENESS. The prodigal had many sins to confess; but before he came to the details of them, his father had forgiven him. I love confession of sin after forgiveness. Some suppose that after we are forgiven we are never to confess; but, oh, beloved, it is then that we confess most truly, because we know the guilt of sin most really! Then do we plaintively sing —

‘* My sins, my sins, my Saviour,

How sad on thee they fall!
Seen through thy gentle patience,

I tenfold feel them all.
I know they are forgiven,

But still their pain to me
Is all the grief and anguish

They laid, my Lord, on thee.”

To think that Christ should have washed me from my sins in his own blood, makes me feel my sin the more keenly, and confess it the more humbly before God. The picture of this prodigal is marvellously true to the experience of those who return to God. His father kissed nim with the kiss of forgiveness; and yet, after that, the young man went on to say, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” Do not hesitate, then, to acknowledge your sin to God, even though you know that in Christ it is all put away.

From this point of view, those kisses meant, first, “Tour sin is all gone, and will never be mentioned any more. Come to my heart, my son! Thou hast grieved me sore, and angered me; but, as a thick cloud, I have blotted out thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins.”

As the father looked upon him, and kissed him much, there probably came another kiss, which seemed to say, “There is no soreness left: I have not only forgiven, but I have forgotten too. It is all gone, clean gone. I will never accuse you of it any more. I will never love you any the less. I will never treat you as though you were still an unworthy and untrustworthy person.” Probably at that there came another kiss; for do not forget that his father forgave him “and kissed him much,” to show that the sin was all forgiven.

There stood the prodigal, overwhelmed by his father’s goodness, yet remembering his past life. As he looked on himself, and thought, “I have these old rags on still, and I have just come from feeding the swine,” I can imagine that his father would give him another kiss, as much as to say,” My boy, I do not recollect the past; I am so glad to see you that / do not see any filth on you, or any rags on you either. I am so delighted to have you with me once more that, as I would pick up a diamond out of the mire, and be glad to get the diamond again, so do I pick you up, you are so precious to me.” This is the gracious and glorious way in which God treats those who return to him. As for their sin, he has put it away so that he will not remember it. He forgives like a God. Well may we adore and magnify his matchless mercy as we sing —

“In wonder lost, with trembling joy

“We take the pardon of our God;
Pardon for crimes of deepest dye;

A pardon bought with Jesus’ blood;
Who is a pardoning God like thee P
Or who has grace so rich and free?”

“Well,” says one, “can such a wonderful change ever take place with me?” By the grace of God it may be experienced by every man who is willing to return to God. I pray God that it may happen now, and that you may get such assurance of it from the Word of God, by the power of his Holy Spirit, and from a sight of the precious blood of Christ shed for your redemption, that you may be able to say, “I understand it now; I see how he kisses all my sin away; and when it rises, he kisses it away again; and when I think of it with shame, he gives me another kiss; and when I blush all over at the remembrance of my evil deeds, he kisses me again and again, to assure me that I am fully and freely forgiven.” Thus the many kisses from the prodigal’s father combined to make his wayward son feel that his sin was indeed all gone. They revealed much love and much forgiveness.

III. These repeated kisses meant, next, FULL RESTORATION. The prodigal was going to say to his fathom “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” In the far country he had resolved to make that request, but his father, with a kiss, stopped him. By that kiss, his sonship was owned; by it the father said to the wretched wanderer, “You are my son.” He gave him such a kiss as he would only give to his own son. I wonder how many here have ever given such a kiss to anyone. There sits one who knows something of such kisses as the prodigal received. That father’s girl went astray, and, after years of sin, she came back worn out, to die at home. He received her, found her penitent, and gladly welcomed her to his house. Ah, my dear friend, you know something about such kisses as those! And you, good woman, whose boy ran away, you can understand something about these kisses, too. He left you, and you did not hear of him for years, and he went on in a very vicious course of life. When you did near of him, it well-nigh broke your heart, and when he came back, you hardly knew him. Do you recollect how you took him in? You felt that you wished that he was the little boy you used to press to your bosom; but now he was grown up to be a big man and a great sinner, yet you gave him such a kiss, and repeated your welcome so often, that he will never forget it, nor will you forget it either. You CRH understand that this overwhelming greeting was like the father saying, “My boy, you are my son. Despite all that you have done, you belong to me; however far you have gone in vice and folly, I own you. You are bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” In this parable Christ would have you know, poor sinner, that God will own you, if you come to him confessing your sin through Jesus Christ. He will gladly receive you; for all things are zeady against the day that you return.

‘* Spread for thee the festal board,
See with richest dainties stored,
To thy Father’s bosom pressed,
Yet again a child confessed;
Never from his house to roam,
Come and welcome, sinner, come.”

The father received his son with many kisses, and so proved that Ins prayer was answered. Indeed, his father heard his prayer before ke offered it. He was going to say, “Father, I have sinned,” and ko ask for forgiveness; but he got the mercy, and a kiss to seal it, before the prayer was presented. This also shall be true of thee, 0 sinner, who art returning to thy God, through Jesus Christ! You shall be permitted to pray, and God will answer you. Hear it, poor, despairing sinner, whose prayer has seemed to be shut out from heaven! Come to your Father’s bosom now, and he will hear your prayers; and, before many days are over, you shall have the clearest proofs that you are fully restored to the divine favour by answers to your intercessions that shall make you marvel at the Lord’s lovingkindness to you.

Further than this, you shall have all your privileges restored, even as this wandering young man was put among the children when he i»4urned. As you see him now in the father’s house, where he was iw»ived with the many kisses, he wears a son’s robe, the family ring v& “bis finger, and the shoes of the home are on his feet. Ho eats no longer swine’s food, but children’s bread. Even thus shall it be with you if you return to God. Though you look so foul and so vile, and really are even more defiled than you look; and though you smell so strongly of the hogs among which you have been living that some people’s nostrils would turn up at you, your Father will not notice these marks of your occupation in the far country with all its horrible defilement. See how this father treats his boy. He kisses him, and kisses him again, because he knows his own child, and, recognizing him as his child, and feeling his fatherly heart yearning over him, he gives him kiss after kiss. He kisses him much, to make him know that he has full restoration”.

In this repeated kissing we see, then, these three things: much love, much forgiveness, and full restoration.

IY. But these many kisses meant even more than this. They revealed his father’s EXCEEDING JOY. The father’s heart is overflowing with gladness, and he cannot restrain his delight. I think he must have shown his joy by a repeated look. I will tell you the way I think the father behaved towards his son who had been dead, but was alive again, who had been lost, but was found. Let me try to describe the scene. The father has kissed his son, and he bids him tiit down; then he comes in front of him, and looks at him, and feels eo happy that he says, “I must give you another kiss,” then he walks away a minute; but he is back again before long, saying to himself, “Oh, I must give him another kiss!” He gives him another, for he is so happy. His heart beats fast; he feels very joyful; the old man would like the music to strike up; he wants to be at the -dancing; but meanwhile he satisfies himself by a repeated look at his long-lost child. Oh, I believe that God looks at the sinner, and looks at him again, and keeps on looking at him, all the while delighting in the very sight of him, when he is truly repentant, and comes back to his Father’s house.

The repeated kiss meant, also, a repeated blessing, for every time he put his arms round him, and kissed him, he kept saying, “Bless you; oh, bless you, my boy!” He felt that his son had brought a blessing to him by coming back, and he invoked fresh blessings upon his head. Oh, sinner! if you did but know how God would welcome you, and how he would look at you, and how he would bless you, surely you would at once repent, and come to his arms and heart, and find yourself happy in his love.

The many kisses meant, also, repeated delight. It is a very wonderful thing that it should be in the power of a sinner to make God glad. He is the happy God, the source and spring of all happiness; what can we add to his blessedness? And yet, speaking after the manner of men, God’s highest joy lies in clasping his wilful Ephraims to his breast, when he has heard them bemoaning themselves, and has seen them arising and returning to their home. God grant that he may see that sight even now, and have delight because of sinners returning to him self! Yea, we believe it shall be even so, because of his presence with us, and because of the gracious working of the Holy Spirit. Surely that is the teaching of the prophet’s words: “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thoe with joy; lie will rest in his love, he will joy over thee witn singing.” Think of the eternal God singing, and remember that it is because a wandering sinner has returned to him that he sings. He joys in the return of the prodigal, and all heaven shares in his joy.

Y. I have not got through my subject yet. As we take a fifth look, we find that these many kisses mean OVERFLOWING COMFORT. This poor young man, in his hungry, faint, and wretched state, having come a very long way, had not much heart in him. His hunger had taken all energy out of him, and he was so conscious of his guilt that he had hardly the courage to face his father; so his father gives him a kiss, as much as to say, “Come, boy, do not be cast down; I love you.”

“Oh, the past, the past, my father!” he might moan, as he thought of his wasted years; but he had no sooner said that than he received another kiss, as if his father said, “Never mind the past; I have forgotten all about that.” This is the Lord’s way with his saved ones. Their past lies hidden under the blood of atonement. The Lord saith by his servant Jeremiah, “The iniquity of Israel shall be sought for? and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them whom I reserve.”

But then, perhaps, the young man looked down on his foul garments, and said, “The present, my father, the present, what a dreadful state I am in!” And with another kiss would come the answer, “Never mind the present, my boy. I am content to have thee as thou art. I love thee.” This, too, is God’s word to those who are “accepted in the Beloved.” In spite of all their vileness, they are pure and spotless in Christ, and God says of each one of them, “Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee. Therefore, though in thyself thou art unworthy, through my dear Son thou art welcome to my home.”

“Oh, but,” the boy might have said, “the future, my father, tk» future! What would you think if I should ever go astray again?” Then would come another holy kiss, and his father would say, “I will see to the future, my boy; I will make home so bright for you that you will never want to go away again.” But God does more than that for us when we return to him. He not only surrounds us with tokens of his love, but he says concerning us, “They shall be my people, and I will be their God: and I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me.” Furthermore, he says to each returning one, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”

Whatever there was to trouble the son, the father gave him a kiss to set it all right; and, in like manner, our God has a love-token for every time of doubt and dismay which may come to his reconciled sons. Perhaps one whom I am addressing says,” Even though I

PRODIGAL LOVE FOR THE PRODiuUi. SON. 66T

confess my sin, and seek God’s mercy, I shall still be in sore trouble, for through my sin, I have brought myself down to poverty.” “There is a kiss for you,” says the Lord: “Thy bread shall be given thee, and thy water shall be sure.” “But I have even brought disease upon myself by sin,” says another. “There is a kiss for you, for I am Jehovah-Rophi, the Lord that healeth thee, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases.” “But I am dreadfull down at the heel,” says another. The Lord gives you also a kiss, and says, “I will lift you up, and provide for all your needs. No good thing will I withhold from them that walk uprightly.” All thy promises in this Book belong to every repentant sinner, who returnB to God believing in Jesus Christ, his Son.

The father of the prodigal kissed his son much, and thus made him feel happy there and then. Poor souls, when they come to Christ, are in a dreadful plight, and some of them hardly know where they are. I have known them talk a lot of nonsense in their despair, and say hard and wicked things of God in their dreadful doubt. The Lord gives no answer to all that, except a kiss, and then another kiss. Nothing puts the penitent so much at rest as the Lord’s repeated assurance of his unchanging love. Such a one the Lord has often received, “and kissed him much,” that he might fetch him up even from the horrible pit, and set his feet upon a rock, and establish his goings. The Lord grant that many whom I am addressing may understand what I am talking about!

VI. And now for our sixth head, though you will think I am getting to be like the old Puritans with these many heads. But I cannot help it, for these many kisses had many meanings: love, forgiveness, restoration, joy, and comfort were in them, and also STRONG ASSURANCE.

The father kissed his son much to make him quite certain that it was all real. The prodigal, in receiving these many kisses, might say to himself, “All this love must be true, for a little while ago I heard the hogs grunt, and now I hear nothing but the kisses from my dear father’s lips.” So his father gave him another kiss, for there was no way of convincing him that the first was real like repeating it; and if there lingered any doubt about the second, the father gave him yet a third. If, when the dream of old was doubled, the interpretation was sure, these repeated kisses left no room for doubt. The father renewed the tokens of his love that his son might be fully assured of its reality.

He did it that in the future it might never be questioned. Some of us were brought so low before we were converted, that God gave us an excess of joy when he saved us, that we might never forget it. Some times the devil says to me, “You are no child of God.” I have long ago given up answering him, for I find that it is a waste of time to argue with such a crafty old liar as he is; he knows too much for me. But if I must answer him, I say, “Why, I remember when I was saved by the Lord! I never can forget even the very spot of ground where first I saw my Saviour; there and then my joy rolled in like some great Atlantic billow, and burst in mighty foam of bliss, covering all things. I cannot forget it.” That is an argument which even the devil cannot answer, for he cannot mak? me believe that such a thing never happened. The Father kissed me much, and I remember it full well. The Lord gives to some of us such a clear deliverance, such a bright, sunshiny day at our conversion, that henceforth we cannot question our state before him. but must believe that we are eternally saved.

The father put the assurance of this poor returning prodigal beyond all doubt. If the first kisses were given privately, when only the father and son were present, it is quite certain that, afterwards, he kissed him before men, where others could see him. He kissed him much in the presence of the household, that they also might not be calling in question that he was his father’s child. It was a pity that the elder brother was not there also. You see he was away in the field. H« was more interested in the crops than in the reception of his brother. I have known such a one in modern days. He was a man who did not come out to week-evening services. He was such a man of business that he did not come out on a Thursday night, and the prodigal came home at such a time, and so the elder brother did not see the father receive him. If he lived now, he would probably not come to the church-meetings; he would be too busy. So he would not get to know about the reception of penitent sinners. But the father, when he received that son of his, intended all to know, once for all, that he wa& indeed his child. Oh, that you might get these many kisses even now f If they are given to you, you will have, for the rest of your life, strong assurance derived from the happiness of your first days.

VII. I have done when I have said that I think that here we have a specimen of the INTIMATE COMMUNION which the Lord often gives to sinners when first they come to him. “His father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him much.”

You see, this was before the family fellowship. Before the servants had prepared the meal, before there had been any music or dancing in the family, his father kissed him. He would have cared little for all their songs, and have valued but slightly his reception by the servants, if, first of all, he had not been welcomed to his father’s heart. So i& it with us; we need first to have fellowship with God before we think much of union with his people. Before I go to join a church, I want iny Father’s kiss. Before the pastor gives me the right hand of fellowship, I want my heavenly Father’s right hand to welcome me. Before I become recognized by God’s people here below, I want a private recognition from the great Father above; and that he gives to all who come to him as the prodigal came to his father. May he give it to some of you now!

This kissing, also, was before the table communion. You know that the prodigal was afterwards to sit at his father’s table, and to eat of the fatted calf; but before that, his father kissed him. He would scarcely have been able to sit easily at the feast without the previous kisses of love. The table communion, to which we are invited, is very sweet. To eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ, in symbol, in the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, is, indeed, a blessed thing; but I want to have communion with Grod by the way of the love-kiss before I come there. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” This is something private, rav^H“”Tj and sweet. God give it to many of youJ

May you get the many kisses of your Father’s mouth before you come into the church, or to the communion table!

These many kisses likewise came before the public rejoicing. The friends and neighbours were invited to share in the feast. But think how shamefaced the son would have been in their presence, if, first of all, he had not found a place in his father’s love, or had not been quite sure of it. He would almost have been inclined to run away again. But the father had kissed him much, and so he could meet the curious gaze of old friends with a smiling face, until any unkind remarks they might have thought of making died away, killed by his evident joy in his father. It is a hard thing for a man to confess Christ if he has not had an overwhelming sense of communion with him. But when we are lifted to the skies in the rapture God gives to us, it becomes easy, not only to face the world, but to win the sympathy of even those who might have opposed themselves. This is why young converts are frequently used to lead others into the light; the Lord’s many kisses of forgiveness have so recently been given to them, that their words catch the fragrance of divine love as they pass the lips just touched by the Lord. Alas, that any should ever lose their first love, and forget the many kisses they have received from their heavenly Father!

Lastly, all this was given before the meeting with the elder brother. If the prodigal son had known what the elder brother thought and said, I should not have wondered at all if he had run off, and never come back at all. He might have come near home, and then, hearing what his brother said, have stolen away again. Yes, but before that could happen, his father had given him the many kisses. Poor sinner! you have come in here, and perhaps you have found the Saviour. It may be that you will go and speak to some Christian man, and he will be afraid to say much to you. I do not wonder that he should doubt you, for you are not, in yourself, as yet a particularly nice sort of person to talk to. But, if you get your Father’s many kisses, you will not mind your elder brother being a little hard upon you. Occasionally I hear of one, who wished to join the church, saying, “I came to see the elders, and one of them was rather rough with me. I shall never come again.” What a stupid man you must be! Is it not their duty to be a little rough with some of you, lest you should deceive yourselves, and be mistaken about your true state? We desire lovingly to bring you to Christ, and if we are afraid that you really have not yet come back to God, with penitence and faith, should we not tell you so, like honest men? But suppose that you have really come, and your brother is mistaken; go and get a kiss from your Father, and never mind your brother. He may remind you how you have squandered your living, painting the picture even blacker than it ought to be; but your Father’s kisses will make you forget your brother’s frowns. If you think that in the household of faith you will find everybody amiable, and everyone willing to help you, you will be greatly mistaken. Young Christians are often frightened when they come across some who, from frequent disappointment of their hopes, or from a natural spirit of caution, or perhaps from a lack of spiritual life, receive but coldly those upon whom the Father has lavished much love. If that is your case, never mind these cross-grained elder brethren; get another kiss from your Father. Perhaps the reason it is written, “He kissed him much” was because the elder brother, when he came near him, would treat him so coldly, and so angrily refuse to join in the feast.

Lord, give to many poor trembling souls the will to come to thee! Bring many sinners to thy blessed feet, and while they are yet a great way off, run and meet them; fall on their neck, give them many kisses of love, and fill them to the full with heavenly delight, for Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTUBR REAP BEFORE SERMON — Lllke XT.

THE RECEPTION OF SINMERS.

DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 22ND, 1874, BY

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTOH.

“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.” — Luke xv. 22, 23.

LAST Lord’s-day we spoke upon the consecration of priests. That theme might seem too high for troubled hearts and trembling consciences, who fear that they shall never be made priests and kings unto God. So glorious a privilege appears to them to hang in the dim, distant future, if, indeed, they reach it at all. Therefore, at this time, we will go down from the elevated regions to comfort those who are seeking the Lord, with the view of helping them in their turn to climb also.

AVe speak this morning, not of the consecration of priests, but of the reception of sinners, and this, according to our text, is a very joyful business, it is even described as a merrymaking, accompanied with music and with dancing. We very frequently speak of the sorrow for sin which accompanies conversion, and I do not think we can speak of it too often; but yet there is a possibility of our overlooking the equally holy and remarkable joy which attends the return of a soul to God. It has been a very common error to suppose that a man must pass through a very considerable time of despondency, if not of horror of mind, before he can find peace with God: now in this parable the father seems determined to cut short that period; he stops his son in the very middle of his confession, and before he can ask to be made as one of the hired servants, his mournful style is changed for rejoicing, for the father has already fallen on his neck and kissed his trembling lips into a sweet silence. It is not the Lord’s desire that sinners should tarry long in the state of unbelieving conviction of sin, it is some thing wrong in themselves which keeps them there; either they are ignorant of the freeness and fulness of Christ, or they harbour self-righteous hopes, or they cling to their sins. Sin lieth at the door, it

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t!50 METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE PULPIT.

is no work of God which blocks the way. He delights in their delight, and joys in their joy. It is the Father’s will that the penitent sinner should at once believe in Jesus, at once find complete forgiveness, and immediately enter into rest. If any of you came to Jesus without the dreary interval of terror which is so frequent, I pray you do not judge yourselves as though your conversions were dubious — they are all the more instead of all the less genuine because they bear rather the marks of the gospel than of the law. The weeping of Peter, which in a few days turns to joy, is far better than the horror of Judas, which ends in suicide. Conversions, as recorded in Scripture, are for the most part exceedingly rapid. They were pricked in the heart at Pentecost, and the same day they were baptised and added to the church, because they had found peace with God through Jesus Christ. Paul was smitten down with conviction, and in three days was a baptised believer. Perhaps the figure is inapt, but I was about to say that sometimes God’s power is so very near us that the lightning flash of conviction is often attended at the very same moment by the deep thunder of the Lord’s voice, which drives away our fears and proclaims peace and pardon to the soul. In many cases the sharp needle of the law is immediately followed by the silken thread of the gospel; the showers of repentance are succeeded at once by the sunshine of faith; peace overtakes penitence, and walks arm in arm with her into yet fuller rest.

Having thus reminded you that God would have penitents very soon rejoice, I want to spend this morning in setting forth the joy which is caused by pardoned sin. That joy is threefold. We will talk about it, first, as the joy of God over sinners; secondly, the joy of sinners in God; and, thirdly, what is so often forgotten, the joy of the servants, for they too rejoiced, for the father said, “Let us eat and be merry;” and one of the points of the parable is just this, that as in the case of the lost sheep the shepherd calleth together his friends and neighbours, and as in the case of the piece of money the woman calleth her neighbours together, so in this case, also, others share in the joy which chiefly belongs to the loving father and the returning wanderer.

I. THE JOY OF GOD OVER SINNERS. It is always difficult to speak of the ever-blessed God becomingly when we have to describe him astouched by emotions; I pray, therefore, to be guided in my speech by the Holy Spirit. We have been educated into the idea that the Lord is above emotions, either of sorrow or pleasure. That he cannot suffer, for instance, is always laid down as a self-evident postulate. Is that quite so clear? Cannot he do or bear anything he chooses to do? What means the Scripture which says that man’s sin before the flood made the Lord repent that he had made man on the earth, “and it grieved him at his heart”? Is there no meaning in the Lord’s own language, “Forty years long was I grieved with this generation”? Are we not forbidden to grieve the Holy Spirit? Is he not described as having been vexed by ungodly men! Surely, then, he can be grieved: it cannot be an altogether meaningless expression. For my part, I rejoice to worship the living God, who, because he is living, does grieve and rejoice. It makes one feel more love to him than if he dwelt on some serene Olympus, careless of all our woes, because incapnUe of any concern about us, or interest in us, one way or the other. To look upon him as utterly impassive and incapable of anything like emotion does not, to my mind, exalt the Lord, but rather brings him down to be comparable to the gods of stone or wood, which cannot sympathise with their worshippers. No, Jehovah is not insensible. He is the living God, and everything that goes with life, — pure, perfect, holy life, is to be found in him. Yet must such a subject always be spoken of very tenderly, with solemn awe, because, albeit we know something of what God is, for we are made in the image of God, and the best likeness of God undoubtedly was man as he came from his Maker’s hand, yet man is not God, and even in his perfectness he must have been a very tiny miniature of God; while now that he has sinned he has blotted and blurred that image. The finite cannot fully mirror the Infinite, nor can the grand, glorious, essential properties of Deity be communicated to creatures: they must remain peculiar to God alone. The Lord is, however, continually represented as displaying joy. Moses declared to sinful Israel, that if they returned and obeyed the voice of the Lord, the Lord would again rejoice over them for good, as he rejoiced over their fathers (Deut. xxx. 9). The Lord is said to rejoice in his works and to delight in mercy, and surely we must believe it. Wherefore should we doubt it? Many passages of Scripture speak very impressively of God’s joy in his people. Zephaniah puts it in the strongest manner: “He will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.” Our God is for ever the happy or blessed God; we cannot think of him as other than supremely blessed. Still, from the Scriptures we gather that he displays on certain occasions a special joy which he would have us recognise. I do not think that it can be mere parable, but it is real fact, that the Lord does rejoice over returning and repenting sinners.

Every being manifests its joy according to its nature, and seeks means for its display suitable to itself. It is so with men. When the old Romans celebrated a triumph because some great general returned a victor from Africa, Greece, or Asia with the spoils of a long campaign, how did the fierce Roman nature express its joy? Why, in the Colosseum, or in some yet vaster amphitheatre, where buzzing nationschoked the ways, they gathered in their myriads to behold not only beasts, but their fellow men, “butchered to make a Roman holiday.” Cruelty upon an extraordinary scale was their way of expressing the joy of their iron hearts. Look at the self-indulgent man! He has had a prosperous season, and has made a lucky hit, as he calls it, or some event has occurred in his family which makes him very jubilant; what will he do to show forth his joy? Will he bow the knee in gratitude, or lift a hymn of praise? Not he. He will hold a drinking bout, and when he and his fellows are mad with wine his joy will find expression! The sensual show their joy by sensuality. Now, God whose name is good, and whose nature is love, when he has joy expresses it in mercy, in lovingkindness, and grace. The father’s joy in the parable before us showed itself in the full forgiveness accorded, in the kiss of perfect love bestowed, in the gift ol the best robe, the ring, and the sandals, and in the gladsome festival which filled the whole house with hallowed mirth. Everything expresses its joy according to its nature; infinite love, therefore, reveals its joy in acts of love.

The nature of God being as much above ours as the heaven is above the earth, the expression of his joy is therefore all the loftier, and his gifts the greater,- Still, there is a likeness between God’s way of expressing joy and ours, which it will be profitable to note. How uo we express ourselves, ordinarily, when we are glad? We do so very commonly by a display of bounty. When in the olden time our kings came into the city of London, or a great victory was celebrated, the conduit in Cheapside ran with red wine, and even the gutters flowed with it. Then were there tables set in the street, and my lords, and the aldermen, and the mayor kept open house, and everybody was fed to the full. Joy was expressed by hospitality. You have seen the picture of the young heir coming of age, and have noticed how the artist depicts the great yard of the manor-house as full of men and women, who are eating and drinking to their hearts’ content. At Ohristmas seasons, and upon marriage days and harvest homes, men ordinarily express their joy by bountiful provision; so also does the father in this wondrous parable exhibit the utmost bounty, representing thereby the boundless liberality of the great Father of spirits, who shows his joy over penitents by the manner in which he entertains them. The best robe, the ring, the shoes, and the fatted calf, and the “Let us eat and be merry,” all show by their bountifulness that God is glad. His oxen and his fatlings are killed, for the feast of mercy is the banquet of the Lord. So unrivalled are the gifts of his gracious hand that the receivers of his favours have cried out in amazement, “Who is a God like unto thee!” Beloved, consider awhile the Lord’s bounty to returning sinners, blotting out their sins like a cloud, and like a thick cloud their iniquities, justifying them in the righteousness of Christ, endowing them with his Holy Spirit, regenerating them, comforting them, illuminating them, purifying them, strengthening them, guiding them, protecting them, filling them with all his own fulness, satisfying their mouth with good things, and crowning them with tender mercies. I see in the bounty of God with which he so liberally endows returning sinners a mighty proof that his inmost soul rejoices over the salvation of men.

At glad times men generally manifest some speciality in their bounty. On the day of the young heir’s coming of age the long stored cask of wine is broached, and the best bullock is roasted whole. So here in the parable we read, “Bring forth the best robe,” indicating that it had been laid by and kept in store until then. Nobody had used that robe, it was locked up in the wardrobe, only to be brought out on some very special occasion. This was the happiest day that ever had made glad the house, and therefore “Bring forth the best robe,” no other will suffice. Meat is wanted for the banquet. Let a calf be killed. Which shall it be? A calf taken at random from the herd? No, but the fatted calf which has been standing in the stalls, and is well fed, and has been reserved for a festival. Oh, beloved, when God blesses a sinner he shows his joy by giving him the reserved mercies, the special treasures of everlasting love, the precious things of grace, the secret of the covenant: yea, he has given to sinners the best of the best in giving them Christ Jesus, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The best that heaven affords God bestows on sinners when they conie to him. No scraps and odds and ends are dealt out to hungry and thirsty seekers, but in princely munificence of unstinting love the heavenly Father deals out abundant grace. I would that sinners would corne and try my Lord’s hospitality; they would find his table to be more richly loaded than even that of Solomon, though thirty oxen and a hundred sheep did not suffice for one day’s provision for the household of that magnificent sovereign. If they would but come, even the largest-hearted among them would be wonder-struck as they saw how richly God supplied all their need, according to his riches in glory by. Christ Jesus.

44 Rasrs exchanged for costly treasure,

Shoes and rinj? and heaven’s best robe!
Gifts of love which knows no measure;

Who can tell the heart of God?
All his loved ones — his redeemed ones,

Perfect are in his abode.”

We also show our joy by a concentration of thought upon the object of it. When a man is carried away with joy he forgets everything else, and gives himself up to the one delight. David was so glad to bring back the Ark of the Lord that he danced before the Lord with all his might, being clad only with a linen ephod. He laid aside his stately garments, and thought so little of his dignity that Michal sneered at him; he was so much absorbed in adoring his Lord that all regard to appearances was quite gone. Observe well the parable, and think you hear the father say, “Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and let us eat and be merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again.” The son alone is in the father’s eye, and the whole house must be ordered in reference to him. Nothing is to be thought of to-day but the long-lost son, he is paramount in the wardrobe, the jewel room, the farmyard, the kitchen, and the banquetting chamber. He that was lost, he that was dead, he being found and alive, engrosses the whole of the father’s mind. Sinner, it is wonderful how God sets all his thoughts on you according to his promise, ‘* I will set mine eyes upon them for good,” (Jer. xxiii. 6); and again, “I will watch over them to build and to plant saith the Lord.” The Lord thinketh upon the poor and needy, his eyes are upon them and his ears are open to their cry. He thinks as much of each penitent sinner as if he were the only being in the universe. 0 penitent, for you is the working of the Lord’s providence to bring you home, for you the training of his ministers that they might know how to reach your heart, for you the gifts of the Spirit upon them that they might be power ful with your conscience; yea, for you his Son, his eternal Son once bleeding on the cross, and now sitting in the highest heavens making intercession for you. I saw in Amsterdam the diamond cutting, and I noticed great wheels, a large factory and powerful engines, and all the power was made to bear upon a small stone no larger than the nail of my little finger. All that huge machinery for that little stone, because it was so precious! Methinks I see you poor insignificant sinners, who have rebelled against your God, brought back to your Father’s house, and now the whole universe is full of wheels and all those wheels are working together for your good, to make out of you a jewel fit to glisten in the Redeemer’s crown. God is not represented as saying more of creation than that “it was very good,” but in the work of grace he is described as singing for joy. He breaks the eternal silence and cries, “my son. is found.” As the philosopher when he had compelled nature to yield her secret ran through the street crying, u Eureka! Eureka! I have found it! I have found it! “so does the Father dwell on the word, “my son that was dead, is alive again, he that was lost is found.” The whole of Scripture aims at the bringing back again of the Lord’s banished, for this the Redeemer leaves his glory, for this the church sweeps her house and lights her candle, and when the work is done all other bliss is secondary to the surpassing joy of the Lord, of which he bids his ransomed ones partake, saying, “Enter ye into the joy of your Lord.”

We also show our joy by an alacrity of motion. I quoted David just now. It was so with him, he danced before the ark. I cannot imagine David walking slowly before the ark, or creeping after it like a mourner at a funeral. I often notice the difference between your coming to this place and people going to other places of worship. I remark a very solemn, stately, and sombre motion in almost everybody else, but you come tripping along as if you were glad to go up to the house of the Lord; you do not regard the place of our joyous assemblies as a sort of religious prison, but as the palace and banquetting house of the great King. When any one is joyous he is sure to show it by the quickness of his motions. Hearken to the father, he says, “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 let us eat and be merry.” As quickly as possible he pours out sentence after sentence. There is no delay; no interval between the commands. Might he not have said, “Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and let us look at him awhile, and sit down and prepare him for the next step; and in an hour’s time, or to-morrow, we will put a ring on his hand; and then soon we will put shoes on his feet; he is best without shoes for the present, for perhaps if he has shoes on he will run away. As to the festival, perhaps we had better rejoice over him when, we see whether his repentance is genuine.” No, no, no, the father’s heart is too glad; he must bless his boy at once, heap on his favours, and multiply his tokens of love. When the Lord receives a sinner, he runs to meet him, he falls on his neck, he kisses him, he speaks to him, he forgives him, he justifies him, he sanctifies him, he puts him among the children, he opens the treasures of his grace to him, and all in quick succession. Within a few minutes after he has been cleansed from sin, the prodigal is robed, and adorned, and shod for service. The love of our Redeemer’s heart made him say to the poor thief, “To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;” he would not let him linger in pain on the cross, but carried him away to Paradise in an hour or two. Love and joy are ever quick of foot. God is slow to anger, bat he is so plenteous in his mercy that his grace overflows and rushes on like a torrent when it leaps along the ravine.

Once more, the joy of the father was shown as ours often is by open utterance. It is hard for a glad man to hold his tongue. What can dumb people do when they are very happy? I cannot imagine how they endure silence at such times; it must then be a terrible misfortune. When you are very happy you must tell somebody. So does this father. He pours out his joy, and the utterance is very simple. “My son was dead, and is alive again, was lost, and is found.” Yet, simple as it is, it is poetry. The poetry of the Hebrews consisted in parallelism, or a repetition of the sense or a part of the words. Here are two lines which pair with each other, and make a verse of Hebrew poetry. Glad men when they speak naturally and simply always say the right thing in the very best manner, using nature’s poetry, as does the father here. Note, also, that there is reiteration in his utterance. He might have been satisfied to say, “This my son was dead and is alive again.” No; the fact is so sweet he must repeat it, “He was lost, and is found.” Even thus we speak when we are very full of sweet content; the heart bubbleth up with a good matter, and over again and over again we rehearse our joy. When the morsel is sweet we roll it under the tongue. We cannot help it. So the Lord rejoices over sinners, and tells his joy in holy scripture in varied phrase and metaphor, and though those scriptures are simple in their style, yet they contain the very essence of poetry. The bards of the Bible stand in the first rank amongst the sons of song, God himself deigning to use poetry to utter his joy because a more prosaic manner would be all too cold and tame. Hear how he puts it: “As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.” “I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in my people.” We might have been left in the dark about this joy of God; we might have been coldly informed that God would save sinners, and we might never have known that he found such joy in it; but the divine joy was too great to be concealed, the great heart of God could not restrain itself, he must tell out to all the universe the delight which the exercise of mercy brought to him. It was meet that he should make merry and be glad, and therefore he did it, for nothing that is meet to be done will ever be neglected by the Lord our God.

Thus, dear friends, have I feebly spoken of the joy of God, and I want you to notice that it is a delight in which every attribute of God takes a share. Condescension ran to meet the son, love fell on his neck, grace kissed him, wisdom clothed him, truth gave him the ring, peace shod him, wisdom provided the feast, and power prepared it. No one attribute of the divine nature quarrels with the forgiveness and salvation of a sinner; not one attribute holds back from the beloved employ. Power strengthens the weak, and mercy binds up the wounded; justice smiles upon the justified sinner, for it is satisfied through the atoning blood, and truth puts forth her hand to guarantee that the promise of grace is fulfilled; immutability confirms what has been done, and omniscience looks around to see that nothing is left undone. The whole of Deity is brought to bear upon a poor worm of the dust, to lift it up and transform it into an heir of God, joint-heir with the Only Begotten. The joy of God occupies the whole of his being, so that when we think of it we may well say, “Bless the Lord, 0 my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name,” since all that is within him is engaged to bless his saints.

This joy of the Lord should give every sinner great confidence in coming to God by Jesus Christ, for if you would be glad to be saved, he will be glad to save you; if you long to lay your head in your Father’s bosom, your Father’s bosom longs to have it there; if you pant to say, “I have sinned,” he equally longs to say to you, by acts of love, “I forgive thee freely.” If you pine to be his child in his own house once more, the door is open, and he himself is on the watch. Come and welcome, come and welcome, and no more delay.

II. I have now to speak of THE JOY OF THE SINNER. The son was glad. He did not express it in words, as far as I can see in the parable, but he felt it none the less — but all the more. Sometimes silence is discreet, and it was so in this case; at other times it is absolutely forced upon you by inability to utter the emotion, and this also was true of the prodigal. The son’s heart was too full for utterance in words, but he had speaking eyes, and a speaking countenance as he looked on that dear father. As he put on the robe, the ring, and the shoes, he must have been too astonished to speak. He wept in showers that day, but the tears were not salt with grief; they were sweet tears, glittering like the dew of the morn ing. What would make the son glad, think you? Why, the father’s love, the father’s forgiveness, and restoration to his old place in the father’s heart. That was the point. But then each gift would serve as a token of that love and make the joy overflow. There was the rote put on, — the dress of a son, and of a son well beloved and accepted. Have you noticed how the robe answered to his confession? The sentences match each other thus: u Father, I have sinned;” — “Bring forth the best robe and put it on him.” Cover all his sins with Christ’s righteousness; put away his sin by imputing to him the righteousness of the Lord Jesus. The robe also met his condition; he was in rags, therefore, “Bring forth the best robe and put it on him,” and you shall see no more of his rags. It was fit that he should be thus arrayed, in token of his restoration. He who is re-endowed with the privileges of a son should not be dressed in sordid clothes, but wear raiment suitable to his station. Moreover, as a festival was about to begin he ought to wear a festive garment. It would not be seemly for him to feast and be merry in his rags. Put the best robe on him that he may be ready to take his place at the banquet. So when the penitent comes to God he is not only covered, as to the past, by the righteousness of Christ, but he is prepared for the future blessedness which is reserved for the pardoned ones, yea, he is fitted to begin the rejoicing at once.

Then came the ring, a luxury rather than a necessary, except that now he was a son it was well that he should be restored to all the honours of his relationship. The signet ring in the east in former times conferred great privileges: in those days men did not sign their names, but stamped with their signet upon wax, so that the ring gave a man power over property, and made him a sort of other self to the man whose ring he wore. The father gives the son a ring, and how complete an answer was that gift to another clause of his confession. Let me read the two sentences together, “I am no more worthy to be called thy son.” “Put a ring on his hand.” The gift precisely meets the confession. It also tallied with his changed condition. How singular that the very hand which had been feeding swine should now wear a ring. There were no rings on his hands when they were soiled at the trough, I warrant you; but now he is a swine-feeder no longer, but an honoured son of a rich father. Slaves wear no rings. Juvenal laughs at certain freed-men because they were seen walking up and down the Via Sacra with conspicuous rings on their fingers, the emblems of their new-found liberty. The ring indicated the penitent’s liberty from sin, and his enjoyment of the full privileges of his Father’s house. 0, beloved, the Lord will make you glad if you come to him, by putting the seal of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling upon you, which is both the earnest of the inheritance and the best adornment of the hand of your practical character. You shall have a sure and honourable token, and shall know that all things are yours, whether things present, or things to come. This ring upon your finger will declare your marriage union to Christ, set forth the eternal love which the Father has fixed upon you, and be .the abiding pledge of the perfect work of the Holy Ghost.

Then they put shoes on his feet. I suppose he had worn out his own. In the east servants do not usually wear shoes at home, and especially in the best rooms of the house. The master and the son wear the sandals, but not the servants, so that this order was an answer to the last part of the penitent’s prayer, “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” “No,” says the father, “put shoes on his feet.” In the forgiven sinner the awe which puts off its shoes is to be overmatched by the familiarity which wears the shoes which infinite love provides. The forgiven one is no longer to tremble at Sinai, but he is to come unto Mount Zion, and to have familiar intercourse with God. Thus also the restored one was shod for filial service — he could run upon his father’s errands, or work in his father’s fields. He had now in every way all that he could want — the robe that covered him, the ring that adorned him, and the shoe that prepared him for travel or labour.

Now ye awakened and anxious ones who are longing to draw nigh to God, I would that this description of the joy of the prodigal would induce you to come at once. Come, ye naked, and he will say, “Bring forth the best robe.” Come, ye that see your natural deformity through sin, and he will adorn you with a ring of beauty. Come, ye who feel as if you could not come, for ye have bleeding, weary feet, and he will shoe you with the silver sandals of his grace. Only do but come, and you shall have such joy in your hearts as you have never dreamed of. There shall be a young heaven born within your spirit, which shall grow and increase until it comes to the fulness of bliss.

III. The time has now come for us to dwell upon THE JOY OF THE SERVANTS. They were to be merry, and they were merry, for the music and the dancing which were heard outside could not have proceeded from one person only, there must have been many to join in it, and who should these be but the servants to whom the father gave his commands? They ate, they drank, they danced, they joined in the music. There are many of us here who are the servants of our own heavenly Father; though we are his children, we delight to be hia servants. Now, whenever a sinner is saved, we have our share of joy. We have joy, first, in the Father’s joy. They were so glad, because their lord was glad — good servants are always pleased when they see that their master is greatly gratified, and I am sure the Lord’s servants are always joyous when they feel that their Lord is well pleased. That servant who went out to the elder brother, showed by his language that he was in sympathy with the father, for he pleaded with the son upon the matter; and when you are in sympathy with God. my dear brother or sister, if the Lord lets you see poor sinners saved you must and will rejoice with him. It will be to you better than finding a purse full of money, or making a great gain in business; yea, nothing in the world can give you more delight than to see some brother oi yours or some child of yours made to rejoice in Christ. A mother once beautifully said, “I remember the new and strange emotions which trembled in my breast when as an infant he was first folded to my heart — my first-born child. The thrill of that moment still lingers; but when he was ’ born again,’ clasped in my arms a ’ new creature in Christ Jesus,’ my spiritual child, my son in the gospel, pardoned, justified, adopted, saved, for ever saved! Oh! it was the very depth °’* Jov j°7 unspeakable! My child was a child of God! The prayers which preceded his birth, which cradled his infancy, which girdled his youth, were answered. My son was Christ’s. The weary watchings, the yearning desires, the trembling hopes of years were at rest. Our first-born son was avowedly the Lord’s.” May every father and mother here know just such joy by having sympathy with God.

But they had sympathy with the son. I am sure they rejoiced to see him back again, for somehow usually even bad sons have the good will of good servants. When young men go .away, and are a great grief to their fathers, the servants often stick to them. They will say, “Well, Master John was very inconsiderate and gay, and he vexed his father a great deal, but I should like to see the poor boy back again.” Especially is this true of the old servants who have been in the house since the boy was born: they never forget him. And you will find that God’s old servants are always glad when they see prodigal children return ;«they are delighted beyond measure, because they love them after all, notwithstanding their wanderings. Sinner, with all your faults and hardness of heart we do love you, and we should be glad” for your sake to see you delivered from eternal ruin and from the wrath of God which now abideth on you, and brought to rejoice in pardoned sin, and acceptance in the Beloved.

We should rejoice for the sinner’s sake, but I think the servants rejoiced most of all when they were the instruments in the father’s hand of blessing the son. Just look at this. The father said to the servants, “Bring forth the best robe.” He might have gone to the wardrobe himself with a key and opened it, and brought out the robe himself, but he gave them the pleasure of doing it. When I get my orders from my Lord and Master on the Lord’s-day morning to bring forth the best robe, I am delighted indeed. Nothing delights me more than to preach the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, and the substitutionary sacrifice of our exalted Redeemer. “Bring forth the best ‘robe.” Why, my Master, I might be content to keep out of heaven if thou wouldst always give me this work to do — to bring forth the best robe and extol and exalt Jesus Christ in the eyes of the people. Then he said, “Put it on him.” When our Lord gives us grace to do that there is more joy still. How many times I have brought forth the best robe, but could not put it on you. I have held it up, and expatiated on its excellencies, and pointed to your rags, and said what a delightful thing it would be if I could put it on you, but I could not; but when the heavenly Father, by his divine grace and the power of the Spirit, makes us the means of bringing these treasures into the possession of poor sinners, oh, what joy! I should rejoice to bring forth the ring of the Spirit’s sealing work, and the shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace, for it is a joy to exhibit these blessings, and a greater joy still to put them upon the poor, returning wanderer. God be thanked for giving his servants so great a pleasure! I would not have dared to describe the Lord’s servants as putting on the robe, the ring, and the shoes, but as he has himself done so I am rejoiced to use the Holy Spirit’s own language.

How sweet was the command, “Put it on him” Yes, put it on the poor trembling, ragged, shivering sinner, “Put it on him,” even on him, though he can hardly believe such mercy to be possible. “Put it on him?” Yes, on him. He who was a drunkard, a swearer, an adulterer? Yes, put it on him, for he repents. What joy it is when we are enabled by God’s commission to throw that glorious mantle over a great sinner. As for the ring, put it on him; that ia the beauty of it. And the shoes, put them on him; that they are for him is the essence of our joy — that such a sinner, and especially when he is one of our own household, should receive these gifts of grace is wonderful! It was most kind of the father to divide the labour of love. One would put on the robe, another the ring, and a third the shoes. Some of my brethren can preach Jesus Christ in his righteousness gloriously, and they put on the best robe; others seem most gifted ‘n dwelling upon the work of the Spirit of God, and they put on the ring: while yet another class are practical divines, and they put on the shoes. I do not mind which I have to do, if I may but have a part in helping to bring to poor sinners those matchless gifts of grace, which at infinite expense the Lord has prepared for those who come back to him. How glad those were who helped to dress him I cannot tell. Meanwhile, another servant was gone off out of doors to bring in the fatted calf, and perhaps two or three were engaged in killing and dressing it, while another was lighting a fire in the kitchen, and preparing the spits for the roast. One laid the table, and another ran to the garden to bring flowers to make wreaths for the room, — I know I should have done that if I had been there. All were happy. All ready to join in the music and dancing. Those who work for the good of sinners are always the gladdest when they are saved. You who pray for them, you who teach them, you who preach to them, you who win them for Christ, you shall share their merriment.

Now, dear brethren, we are told that they “began to be merry,” and according to the description it would seem that they were merry indeed, but still they only “began.” I see no intimation that they ever left oft”. “They began to be merry,” and as merriment is apt to grow beyond all bounds when it once starts, who knows what they have come to by this time. The saints begin to be merry now, and they will never cease, but rejoice evermore. On earth all the joy we have is only beginning to be merry, it is up in heaven that they get into full swing. Here our best delight is hardly better than a neap tide at its ebb; there the joy rolls along in the majesty of a full spring tide.

**Oh what rapturous hallelujahs
In our Father’s home above I
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

O’er the embraces of his love!
Wondrous welcome — God’s own welcome,
May the chief of sinners prove.

44 Sweet melodious strains ascending,

All around a mighty flood;
Servants, friends, with joy attending —

Oh! the happiness of God!
Grace abounding, all transcending,
Through a Saviour’s precious blood.*1

Let us begin to be merry this morning. But we cannot unless we are labouring for the salvation of others in all ways possible to us. If we have done and are doing that, let us praise and bless the Lord, and rejoice with the reclaimed ones, and let us keep the feast as Jesus would have it kept; for I hope there is no one here of the elder brethren who will be angry and refuse to go in. Let us continue to be merry as long as we live, because the lost are found and the dead are made alive. God grant you to be merry on this account world without «nd. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Luke xv. 1 1 — 32,

Cfce pp f mi Street fulfil

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHER — A STEWARD.

DBUTEBED ON TUESDAY EVENING, MAY 4, 1358, BY THB

REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

AT BLOOMSBDRY CHAPEL,

On behalf of the Sunday School Union.
“Gire an account of thy stewardship.” — Luke Tri. 2.

WE have heard many times in our lives, that we are all stewards to Almighty God. We hold it as a solemn truth of our religion, that the rich man is responsible for the use which he makes of his wealth; that the talented m;m must give an account to God of the interest which he getteth upon his talents; that every one of us, in proportion to our time and opportunities, must give an account for himself before Almighty God. But, my dear brothers and sisters, our responsibility is even deeper and greater than that of other men. We have the ordinary responsibility which falls upon all professors of religion, to give an account of all we have to God; but besides this, you and I have the extraordinary responsibilities of our official standing — you, as teachers for Christ in your classes; and others of u§ as preachers for him before the great congregation. The first responsibility is too heavy for any man to fulfil. Apart from divine grace, it is not possible that any man should so use all that God has given him as to be accepted at last with a “Well done thou good and faithful servant;” yet even if that were possible, it would still remain an utter impossibility for us fully to sustain the fearful weight of responsibility which rests upon us as teachers of the Word of God to our fellow immortals. Upon our necks there are two yokes; Sovereign grace can make them light and easy, but apart from that they will gall our shoulders for they are, of themselves, too heavy for us to bear. Common responsibility is aa Solomon’s whip; but extraordinary responsibility derived from official standing, when not regarded, will be as the scorpion of Rehoboam, its little finger hall be* thicker than its father’s loins. Woe unto the watchman who warns them not| woe unto the minister who fails to teach the truth; woe unto the Sabbath-school teacher who is unfaithful to his trust. Now, let us try to stir one another up, upon this seriously important matter. You will pray for me while I preach, that I may utter some things that may do good to all now present, and I will labour that God may, in answer to your prayers, give me words and thoughts which shall be blessed to you.

Now, first, let me show the meaning of our being stewards; then let us consider what kind of account we shall have to give-, and lastly, let us notice the days of reckoning when we OUGHT to cast up our account, and the days of reckoning when wt MUST give in our account.

L First, then, THE STEWARD — WHAT is HE?

In the first place, the steward is a servant. He is one of the greatest of servants, but he is only a servant. Perhaps he is the bailiff of a farm, and looks, to all intents and purposes, like a country farmer: he rides over his master’s estate, and has many men under him; still he is only a servant, he is under authority, he is only a steward. Perhaps he is steward in the house of some gentleman, who employs him to see after the whole of his establishment, in order that he may be free from cares. In that capacity he is himself a master, but still he is a servant; far

No 182. -6;
“?HB SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHER — A STEWARD.

ne has one over him. Let him be as proud as he pleases, he has little to be proud of, for the only rank he holds in life, is the rank of a servant. Now, the minister, and the Sunday-school teacher specially stand in the rank of servants. Why, we are m-ne of us our own masters; we are not independent gentlemen, who may do as we please; our classes are not our own farms, which we may till in our own manner, and neglect if we please, out of which we may produce any harvest, or none at all, at our own discretion. No, we are nothing better than stewards, and we are to labour for our Master in heaven. What a strange thing it is to see a minister or a teacher giving himself fine airs, as if he were everybody in the world, and might do as he pleased. Is it not an anomaly? How is he to talk about the sacrifices that he makes, when he is spending only his master’s property? How is he to boast about the time which he expends, when his time is not his own? It is all his Master’s. He is a servant, and therefore, do he what he may, he only discharges the duty for which he is well rewarded. He has no reason to be proud, or to lord it over others, for whatever his power among them may b3, he is himself neither more nor less than a servant. Let each of us try to recollect that henceforth “I am only a servant.” If a superintendent puts a teacher to a class which she does not like, she will recollect that she is a servant. She does not allow her servants at home to stand up and say, they are not going to do scullerywork but will only wait at table; they are servants, and must do as they are bidden; and if we felt that we were servants, we should not object to do what we are told for Christ’s sake: though we would not do it at the dictation of men, yet for Christ’s sske we do it as unto the Lord. We do not suppose that our servants will come to us at night, and expect us to say to them, “You have done your work very well to-day;” we do not imagine that they will look for constant commendation. They are servants, and when they get their wages, that is their encomium on their work. They may judge they are worth their money, or else we should not keep them. When you do your work for Jesus, recollect you are only a servant. Do not expect always to have that encouragement, which some people are constantly crying after. If you get encouragement from your pastor, from other teachers, from your friends, be thankful; but if you do not get it, go on with your work notwithstanding. You are a servant, and when you receive your reward, that is of grace, and not of debt, then you will have the highest encomium that can be passed upon you, the plaudit of’your Lord, and eternal glory with him whose you are, and whom you desire to serve.

But still while the steward is a servant, he is an honourable one. It does not do for the other servants in the house to tell him that he is a servant. He will not endure that: he knows it, and feels it; he desires to act and work as such, but at the same time, he is an honoured servant. Now, those who serve Christ in the office of teaching, are honourable men and women. I remember to have heard a very unseemly discussion between two persons, as to whether the minister was not superior to the Sabbath-school teacher. It reminded me of that talk of the disciples, as to who among them was the greatest. Why, we are all of us “the least,” if we feel aright, and though we must each of us exalt our office as God hath given it to us, yet, I see not anywhere in the Bible, anything that should lead me to believe that the office of the preacher is more honourable than that of the teacher. It seems to me, that every Sunday-school teacher has a right to put “Reverend” before his name as much as I have, or if not, if he discharges his trust he certainly is a “Eight Honourable.” He teaches his congregation and preaches to his class. I may preach to more, and he to less, but still he is doing the same work, though in a smaller sphere. I am sure I can sympathise with Mr. Carey, when he said of his son Felix, who left the missionary work to become an ambassador, “Felix has drivelled into an ambassador;” meaning to say, that he was once a great person as a missionary, but that he had afterwards accepted a comparatively insignificant office. So I think we may say of the Sabbath-school teacher, if he gives up his work because he cannot attend to it, on account of his enlarged business, he drivels into a rich merchant. If he forsakes his teaching because he finds there is so much else to do, he drivels into something less than he was before; with one exception, if he is obliged to give up to attend to his own family, and makes that family his Sabbath-school class, there is no drivelling there; he stands in the same position as he did before. I say they who teach, they who seek to pluck souls as brands from the burning, are to be considered as honoured persons, second lar to him from whom they received their ocm mission; but still in some sweet seusu lifted up to become fellows with him, for

.*2 &CKDAY-SCHGOL FJCACHER — A

he Lfttts them his brethren and his friends. “The serrant kaoweth not what his Lord doeth, but I have called you friends, for all things I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”

Only one more thought here. The steward is also a servant who has very (jreat responsibility attached to his position. A sense of responsibility *eems to right man always a weighty thing. To do a thing where there is no responsibility involved at all, is a very slight matter, and hence we find in ordinary affairs that the labour which involves no trust is but poorly paid. But where there is a large amount of trust reposed the labour is paid in proportion. Now the work of the Sabbath-school teacher is one of the most responsible in the world. It has sometimes staggered me to think how greatly God trusts you and me. You remember the story of the prodigal. It finds a counterpart in each of us, who after long wandering in sin have come home to Jesus. I sometimes think that a prudent father, when the prodigal was restored to his house, would receive him to his heart, would press him to his bosom, and give him a share of all his wealth, but would be very slow to trust him in any matter of responsibility. The next market-day the old gentlemen would say, “Now John I love you with all my heart, but you know you ran away once, and spent your living riotously; I must send your elder brother to market; I camua trust you with my purse: I love you; I have totally forgiven you, at the same time I cannot yet rely upon you.” Why does not God say so to us? Instead of that, when he takes poor prodigals to his heart, he trusts us with his most precious jewels, he trusts us with immortal souls. He permits us to be the means of seeking his lost sheep, and then allows us to feed the lambs after they are gathered. He puts the prodigal into the most important station, and hath confidence in him. Then my brethren and sisters, seeing he hath been gracious enough to repose confidence in such unworthy persons, shall we deceive bpa? Oh no; let us earnestly labour as stewards that every part of the e&-ate committed to us shall be found in good order when our Master comes; that every jot and tittle of our account shall be found correct when he sums it up in the great day of the audit before his throne. Our office is a very, very solemn one. Some think little of it. Some take it upon themselves very lightly. Giddy youths are enticed into the school and not rendered more sober by their connection with it. Let such depart from us. We want none but those who are sober, none but those who solemnly weigh what they are doing, and who enter upon the work as a matter involving life or death; not as a trivial affair which concerns the interests of time, but an awfully solemn thing which even an angel would be incapable of performing, unless he had the abundant assistance of God the Holy Spirit. I have thus endeavoured very simply to set forth the idea couched in the word “stewardship.” We are servants highly honoured, very responsible, and much trusted.

II. And now, THE ACCOUNT — “Give an account of thy stewardship.” Let us briefly think of this giving an account of our stewardship.

Let us first notice that when we shall come to give an account of our stewardship before God, that account must be given in personally, by every one of us. While we are here, we talk in the mass; but when we come before God, we shall have to speak as individuals. You hear persons boasting about “our Sabbath-school.” Many persons are wicked enough to call the Sabbath-school “their school,” when they never see it by the year together. They say, “I hope our school is flourishing,” when they never subscribe a halfpenny, when they neper give the teachers a word of encouragement, or even a smile, and do not know how many children the school contains. Yet they call it theirs. Thieves that they are, taking to themselves that which does not belong to them! Well, but we, in our measure, make the same mistake. As a ministry, we often talk of the doings of the ‘’body,” and what wonders have been done by the ‘’denomination.” Now, let us recollect, when we come before God, there will be no judging us in denominations, no dealing with us in schools and in churches, but the account must be given for each one by himself. So, then, thou that hast the infant class, thou wilt have to give thine own account. It was but the other day thou wast finding fault with the conduct of the senior class, and thou wast told then to look at home. Conscience told thee so. But at last, when thou shalt have to stand before God, thou wilt have no account to give of the senior class, but of that infant class committed to thee. And you, my sister, you have been seven or eight years a teacher — you must give an acc«unt for lourself, not for that other teacher of another class, ot whom you hare often boasted, because she has been the means of bringing «ix 01 aeyen children to Christ lately. Remember, her six won’t be put with your none at all, in order to make the total at the year’s end look respectable; but there will stand your great blank at the end of your labours, and there will remain the dark mark for your negligence, for your unpunctuality, your carelessness in your class, without the relief of the bright side of the diligent teacher’s success. You must be judged each of you for yourself, not in parties, but one by one. This makes it terrible work, for a’man to be looked at all alone. I have known people who could not bear to stand up in a pulpit; the very fact of so many eyes looking upon them seemed so horrible; but how will it be when we must stand up and hear our hearts read by the all-searching eye of God, and when the whole of our career in the offices which we now hold will be published before the sun, and that, I repeat it. without the salvo of the success of others, without any addition to our labours derived from the diligence of other teachers? Come, Mr. Steward, what is your account? Not that one, sir, not that one; your account. “Lord, I have brought in the account of the Sunday-school books.” “No, not that; the account of your own class?” “Well, my Master, I have brought in the account of the class for the last twenty-five years, showing how many were converted.” “No, not that; the account of your own class while you were its teacher.” “Well, I have brought in the account of the class during the time I was teacher with So-and-so.” “No, not that; the account of the class while you were the teacher of it alone; the account of how you taught, what you taught, how you prayed, how earnestly you laboured, how diligently you studied, and what you sought to do for Christ.” Not the addenda of the other teacher who helped you in another part of the duty, but your own personal account alone must be brought in before God. “Give an account of thy stewardship.” Putting it in this light, what account will some of you give in at the last and great day?

Just let me stop a minute to charge your memories. What kind of account will it be? I trust a very large number here can humbly in their hearts say, “I have done but little, but I did that sincerely and prayerfully; may God accept it through Jesus Christ 1” But I fear there are some others, who, if they are true to their consciences, will say, “I have done but little; I did that little carelessly; I did it without prayer; I did it without the help of the Holy Spirit.” Then, my brother and sister, 1 hope you will add after that, “Oh, my God, forgive me, and help me from this good hour to be diligent in this divine business, fervent in my spirit, serving the Lord.” And may God bless you in that prayer! Make no resolve, but offer a prayer which is better far; and may you be heard in heaven, the dwelling-place of God.

And note again, that while this account must be personal it must be exact. You will not, when you present your account before God, present the gross total, but every separate item. When thou givest in thine account of thy stewardship, it will be thus. Thou hadst so many children. What didst thou say to this child, and to this, and to this, and to the other? How often didst thou pray for that child with his bitter temper; for that child with his unbending obstinacy; for that child with its quickness, and its sweet affection for that child, that sulky one; for that child, the headstrong, vicious one, that had learned all the evils of the street, and seemed to taint others? What didst thou do for each one of these? How didst thou labour for the conversion of every one? And to make the account still more particular, it will run thus — What didst thou do lor each child on each Sabbath? Thou heardest one child utter an ill word: didst thou reprove it? Thou sawest another child oppress a little one: didst thou deliver the less out of his hand and reprove himr and teach both children to love each other? Didst thou notice the follies of each, and strive to understand the temperament of each, so that thou shouldest fit thy discourse or thy prayer to each? Didst thou travail in birth for the conversion tf each one? Didst thou agonise in prayer with God, and then didst thou agonise in exhortation with them, beseeching them to be reconciled to Christ? 1 Relieve the account will be far more minute than this, when God shall come to try our heart? and reins as well as our works and ways. My poor way of putting it does but becloud the truth which I seek to bring forth, but nevertheless so shall it be; a special and exact account shall be given. And then there shall be an account given, for every opportunity; not only for every child, but for every opportunity of doing good to the child. Did you avail yourself of that afternoon, when the child was in a peculiarly solemn frame because his little brother lay at home dead? Did you seek to send the arrows home when providence had made

THE *rNI>AY-§CHOOL TEACHER — A STEWARD.

ft wound in his little heart because he had lost his dear mother? Did you seek to turn every event which occurred in the school to account, whether it was joyous or the reverse? God pave you the opportunity, and he will at last ask you what you did with it. We shall many of us make but a sorry account, for we have neglected much that we ought to have done; and the general confession must be ours as teachers, “We have done those things which we ought not to hare done, and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done.”

And then remember, again, the account will bs exact as to everything that we did. We shall not only be examined as to how we addressed the school; we may have had peculiar gifts for that, and we may have done well; it will be, “How did you address your own class?” and not that alone, but “How did you study the lessons?” If thou hadst no time it will not be required of thee to do what “hou couldst not do; but if thou hadst much leisure how didst thou spend it? Was it for thy children, for thy Master’s good, that thou mightest find polished shafts to shoot forth from thy bow, that God might bless thee, by giving thee strength to send them home into the heart? And then, what didst thou do in thy closet? Wast thou cold and careless there? Were thy children forgotten, or didst thou bring them on thy heart, and in thine arms, and with tears and cries commend them to Christ? Ah, Sunday-school teachers, your closet shall be turned into the open air one day, and the contents of your secret chambers be published before the sun. Oh, ye whose cobwebbed closets witness against you; oh, ye against whom the beam out of the wall exclaimeth because your voice has not been heard there, against whom the very floor might bear witness, because it hath never felt the weight of your knees, how will you stand this searching test? How will you endure this day of burning, when God shall try you for everything you did, and everything you did not do which you ought to have done, in connection with the work of teaching your children? The account must be exact and precise, as well as personal. I shall not stop to enlarge upon that; your own conscience and judgment can enlarge upon it at home.

Now, remember, once again, that the account must be complete. You will not be allowed to leave out something, you will not be allowed to add anything. Perhaps some of you would like to begin with to-morrow, or next Sabbath-day, and strike out the past. No, Sunday-school teacher, when God says, “Give an account of thy stewardship,” you will have to begin with the day when you first were a teacher. Ah, my God, how many there are who profess to preach the Word, who might well beg that thou wouldest let many a year of their ministry be buried in forgetfulness! Ah, might not some of us fall upon our knees and say, “Lord, let me give account of my diligent years, not of my idle years?’r But we must begin with our ordination, we must end with our death; and you must begin with the first hour when you sat down in your class, and you must end when life ends, and not till then. Does not this put a very solemn aspect upon your account, some of you? You are always saying, “I will be better to-morrow.” Will that blot out yesterday? “I must be more diligent in future.” Will that redeem the lost opportunities which have departed in the years gone by? No; if you have loitered long, and lingered much, you will find the hardest running of to-day will not make up for the loitering of yesterday. There have been some men who, alter spending many years in sin, have been doubly diligent for Christ afterwards, but they have always felt that they have only done the day’s work in the day, and they mourned over those years which the locusts had eaten, as gone beyond recall. Oh! catch the moments as they fly, Sabbath-school teachers; use the days as they come. Do not be talking about making up for the badness of the first part of the account by the brilliant character of the conclusion; you cannot do it, you must give an account for each day separately, for each year* by itself; and do what you may to retrieve your losses, the losses still stand upon the book, and the Master will say, at last, “How came these here?” And, though they are all covered up in Sovereign grace, if thou belie vest in Christ Jesus, yet thou wouldest not wish to have any the more stains for that. Because Christ hath washed thee, thou dost not desire to make thyself filthy; because he hath atoned, thou dost not desire to commit sin. No, live, my brothers and sisters, as Sunday-school teachers should live. Live as if your own salvation depended upon the strictness of your fulfilling your duty; and yet recollect your salvation does not depend upon that, hut on your personal interest in the everlasting covenant, and in the all-prevailing blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is Israel’s strength and Redeemer.

.’II. And now, though there are many other things I might say, I fear lest I might weary you, therefore, let me notice some occasions when it will be WELL for you all to give an account of your stewardship; and then notice when you MUST give an account of it.

You know there is a proverb, that “short reckonings make long friends,” and a very true proverb it is. A man will always be at friendship with his conscience as long as he makes short reckonings with it. It was a good rule of the old Puritans, that of making frank and full confession of sin every night; not to leave a week’s sin to be confessed on Saturday night, or Sabbath morning, but to recall the failures, imperfections, and mistakes of the day, in order that we might learn from one day of failure how to achieve the victory on the morrow, and that washing ourselves daily from our sins we might preserve the purity and whiteness of our garments. Brothers and sisters, do the same; make short reckonings. And it will be well for you every Sabbath evening, or at any other time, if so it pleaseth you, to make a reckoning of what you do on the Sabbath. I do not say this in order that you may be encouraged in any self-righteous congratulation that you have done well; because, if you make your reckoning correct, you will never have much cause to congratulate yourself, but always cause to mourn that you did your duty so ill compared with what you ought to have done. When the Sabbath is over, and you have been twice to the house of God to teach your class, just sit down and try to recollect what were the points in which you failed. Perhaps you exhibited a hasty temper; you spoke to a boy too sharply when he was a little rebellious. Perhaps you were too complacent; you saw sin committed, and ought to have reproved it, and you did not do so. If you find out your own failing, that is half the way to a cure. Next Sabbath you can try and set it right.

Then, there are times which Providence puts in your way, which will be excellent seasons for reckoning. For instance, every time a boy or girl leaves the school, there is an opportunity afforded you of thinking to yourselves, “Well, how did I deal with Betsy? How did I treat John? Did I give William such teaching as will help him in his future life, to maintain integrity in the midst of temptation, and preserve righteousness when he shall be subjected to imminent perils? Howdid I teach the girl? Did I so teach her that she will know her duty when she goes into the world? Did I strive with all my might to lead her to the foot of the cross?” There are many solemn questions which you may put concerning the child. And when you meet with any of them grown up in after years, you will find that a very proper season for giving an account of your stewardship to your conscience, by seeing whether you really did with that person, when a child, as you could have desired.

Then, there is a peculiar time for casting up accounts when a child dies. Ah! what a host of thoughts cluster around the dying-bed of a child whom we have taught. Next to the father and the mother, I should think the Sabbath-school teacher will take the most interest in the dying one. You will recollect, “There lies withering the flower which my hand hath watered; there is an immortal soul about to pass the portals of eternity, whom I have taught. O God, have I taught this dying child the truth, or have I deceived him! Have I dealt faithfully with him? “Have I told him of his ruin? Have I set before him how he was fallen in Adam and depraved in himself? Have I told him about the great redemption of Christ? Have I shown him the necessity of regeneration and the work of the Holy Spirit? or have I amused him with tales about the historical parts of the Bible, and pieces of morality, and kept back the weightier matters of the law? Can I put my hand into his dying hand, and silently lifting my heart to heaven, can I say, *O God thou knowest I am clear of his blood?’” Ah! that is a thing that stingg the minister often — when he recollects that any of his congregation are dying. When I stand sometimes by the dying-bed of any of the ungodly in my congregation, it brings many a tearful thought to me. Have I been as earnest as I ought to have been? Did I cry to this man, ‘” Escape for thy life, look not behind thee, stay not in all the plain, flee to the mountain? Did I pray for him, weep over him, tell him of his sin, preach Christ simply, plainly, boldly, to him? Was there not an occasion when I used lightness when I ought to have been solemn? Might there not have been a season when I uttered something by mistake, which may have bten a pillow for the armhole of his conscience on which he might rest? Have not I helped to smooth his path to hell, instead of putting blocks in his way, and chains across his path that he might be turned out of it and led to seek the ‘Saviour?” Ah! while we know that salvation is all of grace, let none of usp imagine we are free from the blood of souls, unless we warn them with diligence, unless vre preach with faithlulness; for this same Bible which tells me that Christ shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied, tells me that if I warn them not, their blood, if they perish, shall be required at my hand.

But now, teacher, let me tell you an occasion when you must give in your account. You may put off all ttyese seasons if you like; you may live as carelessly as you please, but if you have a particle ot heart in you, you will have to give an account when you are sick, and cannot go to your class. If your conscience is worth having — which some people’s consciences are not, for they are dead and seared — if your conscience is an awakened one, when you are put out of your work, you will begin to think how you did it. You should read the letters of that holy man Rutherford. If ever there was a man who preached the gospel sweetly and with divine unction, I should think it must have been he; and yet when he was shut up in Aberdeen, and could not get out to his much-loved flock, he began to say, “Ah, if the Lord will let me go out to preach again, I will never be such a dull drone as I was wont to be. I will preach with tears in mine eyes, so that the people may be comforted, and the sinners converted.” Perhaps when you are lying ill in your bed-room, little Jane comes to see you, and says, “I hope you will soon get well, teacher;” or William, or Thomas calls and enquires about you every Sunday afternoon, and asks the servant to give his love to you, and hopes that teacher will soon come back again. Then is the time when I know you will be sure to cast up your account. You will say, “Ah, when I get back to my class, I won’t teach them as I used to do; I will study my lesson more, I will pray more. I won’t be so hot or so fast with them as I was wont to be. I will bear with their ill manners. Ah, if my Master will give me, like Hezekiah, another fifteen years of labour, and will give me more grace, I will strive to be better.” You will be sure to cast up your accounts when you get sick.

But if you do not do it then, I will tell you when you must; that is when you

come to die. What a dreadful thing it must be to be an unfaithful preacher on a

dying- bed. (Oh that I may be saved from that!) To be upon one’s bed when life

is over; to have had great opportunities, mighty congregations, and to have been

so diligent about something else as to have neglected to preach the full and free

gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ! methinks as I lie in my bed a-dying, I should

see spectres and grim things in the room. One would come and stare upon me

and say, “Ah! you are dying. Remember how many times I sat in the front of

the gallery, and listened to you, but you never once told me to escape from the

wrath to come; you were talking to me about something I did not understand; but

the simple matter of the gospel you never preached to me, and I died in doubt and

trembling. And now you are coming to me to the hell which I have inherited

because you were unfaithful.” And when- in our grey and dying age we see the

generations which have grown up around our pulpits, we shall think of them all.

We shall think of the time when as striplings we first began to preach; we shall

recollect the youths that then crowded, then the men, and then the grey heads

that patsed away. And methinks as they come on in grim procession, they will

everyone leave a fresh curse upon our conscience because we were unfaithful.

The death-bed of a man who has murdered his fellows, of some grim tyrant who

has let the bloodhounds of war loose upon mankind, must be an awful thing.

When the soldier, and the soldier’s widow, and the murdered man of peace rise up

before him; when the smoke of devastated countries seems to blow into his eyes

and make them sore and red; when the blood of men hangs on his conscience like a

great red pall; when bloody murder, the grim chamberlain, draws red curtains

round his bed, and when he begins to approach the last end where the murderer

must inherit his dreary doom, it must be a fearful time indeed. But, methinks to

have mdrdered souls must be more awful still — to have distributed poison to

children instead of bread, to have given them stones when they asked us for right

food, to have taught them error when we ought to have taught them the truth a»

it is in Jesus, or to have spoken to them with cold listlcssness when earnestness

was needed. Oh, how your children seem to curse you, when you lie there and

have been unfaithful to your charge. Yes, you will have to cast up your account

then; and let me tell you, though your hope must all be fixed on Jesus, and that

must be the consolation of your life and death, yet it will be very sweet tt

remember when you eouie to die, that you have been successful in winning souls to

Christ. Ah! that will bring a little life into the cheek of the consumptive teacher,

who sickens young when you remind her that there was a little girl who, a year before she was taken ill, kissed her hand, and said, “Good bye, teacher, we shall meet in heaven. Do not you recollect, teacher, telling me the story of Jesus on the cross, and taking me home one Sunday afternoon, and putting your arms around my neck, and kneeling down and praying that God would bless me? Oh, my teacher, that brought me to Jesus.” Yes, teacher, when you are lying on your bed, pale and consumptive, you will recollect that there is one up there beside your Saviour who will receive you into eternal habitations — that young spirit who has gone before you, who by your means was emancipated from the wickedness and bondage of a sinful worM. Happy is the teacher who has the hope of meeting a whole band of such in heaven. Such a thought often cheers me. Let the world say what it will, I know when I die there is many a spirit that will think of me in after years as the man who preached the gospel to him; many a drunkard brought to Jesus, and many a harlot reclaimed. And to the teacher it must be the same to think that when he claps his wings and mounts from this lower valley of earth to heaven, he will see a bright spirit coming down to meet him, and he will hear the Spirit saying —

“Sister spirit, come away.’

And when he opens his eyes, he will see that the song came from the lips of one to whom he had been blessed as the u:eans of conversion. Happy you who shall be welcomed at the gates of Paradise by your spiritual sons and daughters, and who shall have beside your Master’s welcome, the welcome of those whom he hath given you to be jewels in your crown of glory for ever and ever.

Now to conclude. We must all give an account to God in the day of judgment. That is the thing which makes death so terrible. Oh, Death, if thou wert all, what art thou but a pinch, and all is over! But after Death the judgment. This is the sting of the dragon to the ungodly. The last great day is come. The books are opened — men, women, and children are assembled. Many have come, and some on the right, and some on the left, have already heard the sentence. It is now your turn. Teacher! what account will you render? In the first place, are you in Christ yourself? or have you taught to others what you did not know yourself? Have I any such here? Doubtless, I have; for alas! there are many such in our schools. Oh, my friend, what wilt thou say when the Master, opening the book, shall ask thee, “What hadst thou to do, to declare my statutes?” Will you look at him and say, “Lord I taught in thy schools, and thou hast eaten and drunk in our streets.” If you should say so, he will say, “Verily, I never knew you; depart from me ye cursed.” Then, what have you to say with regard to your schools — for although our state at last will really be settled according to our interest in Christ, you will be judged by your works, as evidences. The Scripture always says that we are to be judged according to our works. Well, then, the book is opened. You hear your own name read, and you hear that one brief sentence — “Inasmuch as thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee a ruler over many things — enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!” Oh, heaven of heavens! and is this the reward of the little trouble of teaching a few children? Oh, Master, thou givest ingots of gold for our grains of dust — our fragments of service thou rewardest with crowns and kingdoms! But he turns to others, and to you he says, u Inasmuch as ye did it not unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me. Depart from me into everlasting fire in hell, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Which of these two shall be saidtowe? Which of these two shall be said to you? Oh! as in God’s sight I charge you by him who is the Judge of quick and dead, by the swiftness of his chariot-wheels which now are bringing him here, by the solemnity of his awful tribunal, by that sentence which shall never be reversed, judge yourselves, for then ye shall not be judged. Give an account of youi stewardship to your conscience, and to your God. Confess your sins, seek his help, and begin from this hour, by his Holy Spirit, to undertake his work afresh; so shall ye stand before his face, clothed in the righteousness of your Redeemer and washed in his blood. Though not boasting in your works you shall be able to stand accepted in him, and your works shall follow when you rise from youi labours, and you shall be among the blessed that die in the Lord.