A Wise Resolution
And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father.” — Luke xv. 17-20.
To many a clever man God says “Thou fool!” He says it to the man who says ‘’No God!” — who, with no father for his spirit, is content with an ape for his ancestor; or who, “corrupt and vile,” has so embruted that spirit as to lose all memorial of his Maker, the echo in his conscience as well as the image on his soul. He says it to those who, forgetful of the great power of God, doubt if a resurrection be possible, or who, conceding the fact, show a needless solicitude as to the method, and, with officious anxiety, offer Infinite Wisdom their best advice. And He says it to those whose brilliant husbandry bursting their barns, they are forced to build greater; whilst in all their architecture they take no thought for eternal habitations, and spend neither skill nor effort on those harvests which alone God receives to His garner. And in many a history it is the first hopeful moment when a man says it to himself That grey morning when David shouted from the hill-top, and held up the pitcher and spear which he had carried off from the pillow of his sleeping persecutor, a gleam of good-feeling flitted over the spirit of Saul, and he exclaimed,” Return, my son
David: for I will no more do thee harm. Behold, I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly.” In confessing himself a fool, it almost looked as if Saul were becoming wise; and although the moody cloud soon returned and gathered in again, these flickering revivals of a better time leave a touching pathos round a tragedy otherwise so severe and sombre.
We have now reached a new stage in the history. Up to this time the prodigal had no quarrel with himself, and had never questioned the wisdom of his own procedure. He had exhibited forethought and shrewd calculation in the steps he took when leaving home. Instead of a penniless impulsive elopement, he had curbed his impatience, and by securing his portion of goods he had provided for future enjoyment. And for anything we know, amongst his loose companions he may have been aught but a dolt or a dullard: ‘’a fellow of infinite jest, and most excellent fancy.” Nevertheless to a sound mind something more is needful than mere wit, sparkle, briniancy, and for true wisdom a poor substitute is worldly knowing. This the prodigal began to feel. Excitement at an end, the portion of goods exhausted, swine for his companions, a churl for his master, — those stern realities, hunger, hardship, nakedness, brought him to himself, and to himself he said “Thou fool!”
Where there is any nobleness in the nature, it occasionally happens that the very excess of riot leads to a revulsion. ‘’ I was converted by six weeks’ debauchery,”
A WISE RESOLUTION. loi
says a somewhat paradoxical character In fiction; and when the good minister remonstrates against his speaking thus hghtly of the Divine operations, he rephes, “I am not speaking lightly. If I had not seen that I was making a hog of myself very fast, and that pig-wash, even if I could get plenty of it, was a poor sort of thing, I should never have looked life fairly in the face to see what was to be done with it.” ‘’’ And when the Spirit of God enkindles or keeps smouldering on from better days any of the finer feelings, in the very sight of the swine-trough there is enough to sober and startle. Greek writers tell of a creature which combined every element of hideousness, and was capable of much mischief as well; but if by any chance it got a glimpse of itself, the face in the mirror was fatal — the sight of the monster slew the miscreant. The perfection of ugliness is evil, and if, like the basilisk, the sinner could only view his own deformity, it is a sight which self-complacency could never survive. We have known actual instances, and you may have known them: instances where there was a long course of levity and self-indulgence, but no remonstrance was effectual, till some crime was committed, and awakening all the furies, conscience shouted in a voice of thunder: instances where the heart was not given to God, but the life was so decorous that respectability said, ‘’ Thank heaven, I am not as other men!” till a fall into open sin killed the Pharisee, and extorted the cry,” God be * Felix Holt, vol. i. p. iii.
merciful to me a sinner: “instances where no warning, no entreaty availed, till in sight of the swine-trough and its wallowing frequenters, the husks dropped from the hand of the prodigal, and he said, “I will arise and go to my father.”
In bringing sinners to their right mind, the sobering influence which God most frequently employs is affliction. “Because they rebelled against the Word of God, and contemned the counsel of the Most High: therefore he brought down their heart with labour; they fell down and there was none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses.” This history is repeated in almost every prodigal. The counsel of the Most High is contemned, the Father’s house is forsaken; and for a time the sinner is allowed to fill himself with the fruit of his own devices. At first that fruit is pleasant — ‘’fruit to be desired to make one wise,” — opening up new experiences, revealing new enjoyments: the golden apple, the magical mandragora, the Hesperian lotus, gloriously forgetful of home, of honour, and of duty; the Noachian clustre suffusing life with false glamour, and with the lie of the first forbidden fruit cajoling its victim, till the delusion dissipates, till the drunken hero wakes up in the pig-stye, till he to whose last consciousness sounded the whisper, “Thou art a god!” aroused by a box on the ear, sees scowling over him his terrible taskmaster — his demi-god comrades transfigured into hogs, and his own fingers, lately bejewelled and daintily uplifting the goblet, In their gaunt grimy grasp no longer retentive of even such husks as the swine do eat.
If you have been forgetting God, or forsaking the Father’s house, the heart which prosperity hardens may be brought down by affliction; and you may well be thankful for the sorrow which sends you home. A man who had a praying wife was himself a drunkard. He was a gambler, and went to all the races within his reach, usually returning tipsy. Fond of fighting, he was withal a brutal husband, and often struck his wife. Beyond all this, as he wished that there was no God, he tried to persuade himself that there Is none. There never was a bolder blasphemer. One night, when he was swearing dreadfully, his wife begged him to desist. “Tom,” she said, “the Lord will strike you dead.” “Who is the Lord?” he shouted, and then started off in oath after oath with the wildest imprecations, defying the Lord to touch him, vociferating and gesticulating till the perspiration stood upon his brow, and he sank down exhausted by his paroxysm of frantic impiety. For capturing a leviathan like this, you would have thought of an iron cable; you would have been for putting a tremendous hook in his nose. But the Lord had hold of him already. How? Through his excellent wife, you reply. Well, she lost her ‘father, and on the Sabbath after the funeral she prevailed on her husband to accompany her to church. The sermon was on the depravity of man. He gnashed his teeth as he heard it, and with all his own corruption
stirred to fury he turned on his poor helpmate as she came home, and, in her new mourning, kicked her down stairs. But a silken cord, if it be God’s, will draw out leviathan — nay, with such a cord in the hand of a little child He can lead the lion. This brutal fathei* had a daughter two years of age, and out of the mouth of this babe the Lord often stilled the enemy and avenger. When coming home in a savage humour, and knocking about his helpless partner, the little Maria would scramble into her mother’s lap, and with her pinafore wiping the tears, would gently bid her ‘’ Don’t cry, mammxa,” and turning on him a reproving face, would say, “Ah! naughty papa, to make poor mamma cry.” This little one he really loved, and this little one the Lord took. Soon after returning from her grave, the father was once more persuaded to enter a place of worship; and this time the word of the Lord found him. The parable of “The wise and foolish virgins” opened his eyes, and feeling that if he continued in his wickedness he must perish eternally, with all the earnestness of an awakened conscience he began to seek salvation. Night and day he sought it, often with crying and tears; and when at last the Saviour stood revealed before him, he consecrated life to His service, and has ever since proved a faithful follower and a valiant soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ.’’’
True, there are some whom the Lord brings to Him-A Brand plucked frojn the Burni?ig (1856). The author is now (1866) a zealous and useful clergyman of the Church of England.
self in ways of wondrous gentleness; like the late saintly Csesar Malan, whose account of his conversion was, “My heavenly Father awakened me with a kiss.” But usually, where there have been great godlessness and recklessness, the ‘’riot” is followed by a ‘’mighty famine,” and it is amidst the consternation of a sore calamity, or in the wilderness of affliction, that divine mercy overtakes and brings home the wanderer. Towards the close of last century, one of the most gifted men in the Netherlands was a young physician at Dort; but to his Dutch industry he added French philosophy, and with his scientific resources and his energetic self-reliant genius, he discarded Christianity and felt no need for God. One day, however, in the capsizing of a boat, there sank into the weltering river his wife and only child, and in that overwhelming moment, poetry and philosophy could do no more to comfort him, than the poor frightened ousel which flitted to and fro shrieking over the scene. The blackness of darkness engulfed him, but through the same chasm at which the flood rushed in and drowned his world there burst upon his spirit the claims of God, the guilt of the transgressor, the need of a Saviour; till after many a dismal day the rainbow of the covenant spanned the flood, and proclaimed the divine forgiveness. Very different from the experience of the gentle Genevese was the struggle towards the cross of this sturdy Hollander. After he had become a missionary to the Hottentots, Vanderkemp’s account of it was,” The Lord sprang upon me io6 A WISE RESOLUTION.
like a warrior, and felled me to the earth by one stroke of his arm,”
Peradventure these pages may be turned over by some one whose life has hitherto been a course of self-pleasing, but to whom the days have come when he says, “I have no pleasure in them.” You once were happy, you at least were gay; but you have lost your fortune, you have lost your popularity or your good position; you have lost that large fund of hilarity and animal exuberance which made up for every other lack; or sadder still, there has been taken away with a stroke the desire of your eyes, and now that the light of your life Is extinguished, small is the joy which passing hours bring, faint the hope which the future awakens.
Yet, dear friend, if you are wise, from this very season may date the best and most blessed time in all your history. Like the passengers through the tunnelled Alp, from the dark and the cold and the stifling air emerging on the broad light-flooded plains of Lombardy, it is by a way which they know not, gloomy and underground, that the convoy is carried which God’s Spirit is bringing to the wealthy place; and your present grief you will have no reason to regret if it introduce you to God’s friendship, and to joys which do not perish in the using. It may not have struck you, but you have been trying to create your own Eden, and it was an Eden with the living God left out. For a time the experiment seemed to prosper, but if it is blighted you have no right to complain; and though it should never blossom again, even the howling wilderness does you a service if it makes you a pilgrim and turns your face to the better land. Affliction is God’s message. This mighty famine is no accident, it is God’s voice sounding through the far country, and saying to you, Come Home!
Yes, at this moment you are miserable. Disappointed with yourself, dissatisfied with your lot, in broken health, bereft of your dearest friend, you are in the position in which sooner or later every one will find himself who has placed his happiness in things created or things external. But even at this moment there are many outwardly less favoured than you who are contented and cheerful. You are Invited to join them. Will you not go? It is “bread” you need. You have fasted long, and your soul is weak: the word of God will give you strength and stamina. It is clothing you need. If not outwardly tattered, the inner man Is In rags; God will clothe you with the robe of a Redeemer’s righteousness, and will adorn you with the garments of the great salvation. It Is shelter you need; you will find It In the Father’s house. It is honourable employment you need; you will find It in the Father’s service. It is love you need; you will find it In the Father’s arms.
Prodigal son! prodigal daughter! has not God been very kind to you? Is there a good thing you possess which has not come from His hand? Is It not In Him that you have lived and moved and had your being? Who io8 A WISE RESOLUTION.
was it that through the eyes of your mother smiled over your cradle, and surrounded life’s outset with love and endearment? Who was it that for your first tottering steps spangled the turf with the daisies of spring, and fanned your fresh face with its breezes? Who was it that in hushed and holy hours went on before you, through Sabbaths and hymns and Jesus’ sweet name, alluring you to glory, honour, and immortality? and whose bright countenance was that which sometimes came so near your own, leaving a soft and pleasant glow, till one provocation after another rose up and darkened all the atmosphere and shut it out for ever? Oh, what a sin to go away from such goodness! what a sin to spend in self-pleasing the gifts of such bounty! what a sin to be a lover of pleasure rather than the lover of God!
Are you not sorry? In forsaking such a home and coming to this far country, have you not played the fool and erred exceedingly? In the life you have led, in the passions you have indulged, in the thorough estrangement of your heart from Infinite Excellence, do you not feel that you have sinned against heaven, and that you are no more worthy to be called God’s child?
And will you not arise and go to your Father? Is it not wonderful that He should still desire your return? In His house there is bread and to spare, and He invites you home. Arise and go.
Sobered by his altered circumstances, the prodigal was brought to his right mind, and in the way in which he spoke of himself and his father he showed right feeling, and in the determination ‘* I will arise and go to my father,” he came to a right resolution; but the whole was crowned and completed by his taking the right step: “he arose and to his father he came.” Instead of musing any longer, he started up and at once commenced his journey. Disgusted with the far country, its swine and its citizens, its harlots and riotous living, he instantly and for ever renounced them; and his heart full of shame and contrition and a timid tender hopefulness, he had already commenced his journey.
That promptitude saved him. If the kind Spirit of God now moves you, let no pretext detain you; but breaking away from every snare, in this propitious moment and with full purpose of heart give yourself to God. No time can be more opportune, and whilst God waits to be gracious all that the devil asks is delay.
A good many winters ago we were sent for to see an elderly man, far gone in his last sickness. He was in a wretched comfortless attic near Lincoln’s Inn, but had once been an Edinburgh advocate. He told us his story. He had been engaged to an accomplished young lady. Her brother, a dashing officer in the army, and given to gambling, wanted some one to be his security for ^2000. ‘’ It was always my misfortune,” said the invalid,” to be of a soft and yielding nature, and I at last consented. The money was not forthcoming, neither could I pay it. As a ruined man, I could not lift up my head in the no A WISE RESOLUTION.
Parliament House, and the lady to whom I hoped to be married broke off the engagement, and I never saw her again. After spending some time in the country in a moping melancholy way, I came to London nearly thirty years ago.” Then after mentioning how, through the late Mr. Lockhart, he had obtained literary employment, amongst other things publishing a romance, and for a considerable time editing a magazine, in these latter years he had been engaged on a long-projected dictionary, of the Bible: “for although I had no real religion, I wished to have it. I had a good mother, and I had seen pious people in my youth, and I hoped that by being always engaged about the Bible, I might, some time or other, be brought under its saving influence. I spent six years compiling that dictionary, and it was quite a labour of love: but I cannot say that it answered the more important purpose; for in the literary part of my task I got so absorbed as to have no time for the spiritual.” The manuscript, however, was lost.” I was paralysed. At sixty years I could not begin again. The sun of my existence had gone down, and neither object was accomplished. I was not to be allowed to publish a book which I thought readers of the Bible would welcome, and I had failed to find for myself the pearl of great price. I seemed like one bewitched. In order to earn a crust of bread, I have sat down on a summers morning, intending to write a story for the magazines, and I have folded the paper and dipped the pen and held it In my fingers till
it dried; and I have dipped it again, hoping that the thought would come, and gone on in this way till the sun went down, without ever marking the paper. Then I grew so weak that I could not come up these stairs except on my hands and feet, and by-and-by I could not come up at all: and for the last three weeks I have not left this bed, and now they tell me I am dying.” Then he burst into tears as he told how he had often come to our own and other churches, and been “almost persuaded “to close with Christ; but he did not tell what had hindered. From other sources we learned that there were besetting sins which kept him back, and from which even for his soul’s salvation he could never break away. So there for many years he had stood spell-bound on Balaam’s pinnacle, envying the righteous, but never joining their company: a prodigal who knew about the Father’s house, but whose ‘’soft and yielding nature” after arising always sat down again; an example of that remissness which lets slip life’s long opportunity, perpetually promising that some future day shall be the day of decision, till at last in the shadow of death the last gleam of hope disappears from Its eyes.
So you who are still the prodigal, in this lucid interval be entreated, and at once arise. Take leave of every sin: especially in strength of God’s own giving flee away from the sin which more easily besets you. And go to God. It is the reign of grace. You are still in the world where pardon may be found. God has not let you go. He has not forgotten you. It is His voice which calls you. It is His Spirit which is striving with your spirit. Notwithstanding all that you have done, He has not yet cast you off for ever. The cord of His love has still hold of you — that cord of compassion, overstrained, ever-lengthening, which you are doing the utmost to sever. Oh, yield at last to God’s mercy, and let these bands of love draw you home!
And take with you words. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee. A rebel and a runaway, I am no more worthy to be called thy child. With a heart so depraved, dare I hope that a holy God can have any pleasure in me? and after the life I have led may I look for forgiveness? But with God there is mercy, and although utterly unworthy, I come to thee in the name of that beloved Son who alway pleased the Father, and who came on the Father’s behalf to seek and to save that which was lost. I believe the faithful saying. Lord Jesus, who didst come into the world to save sinners, save me. God and Father of our Lord Jesus, magnify the riches of thy grace and the merits of thy dear Son; pity and pardon me. Make me as one of thy hired servants. Weary of wandering, take me into thy house. Weary of self-pleasing, let me taste the blessedness of new obedience. Other lords have had dominion over me: henceforth let me be called by Thy name.”