(2) He reflected on his past error and folly. — He saw what was the genesis of his whole miserable condition : he ought never
1 Hugh Macmillan, Life- Work of G. F. WaMs, 165.
ST. LUKE XV. 17-20 293
to have left his father's home. That was the beginning of his undoing ; and, if he was ever to be saved, he must get back to where he started from. " Why ! " he says : " in my father's house the very servants have enough and to spare, whilst I, his son, perish with hunger." In the past he had been stinted in nothing, and now he was dying from hunger. The truth dawned upon him. He saw not only his perilous condition but the reason for it. The insane man had become sane.
^ At St. Helena the Emperor turns upon Gourgaud with pathetic truth ; " You speak of sorrow, you ! And I ! What sorrows have I not had ! What things to reproach myself with ! You at any rate have nothing to regret." And again : " Do you suppose that when I wake at night I have not bad moments — when I think of what I was, and what I am ? " ^
Why feedest thou on husks so coarse and rude ? I could not be content with angels' food.
How earnest thou companion to the swine ?
I loathed the courts of heaven, the choir divina
Who bade thee crouch in hovel dark and drear ? I left a palace wide to hide me here.
Harsh tyrant's slave who made thee, once so free ? A father's rule too heavy seemed to me.
What sordid rags float round thee on the breeze ? I laid immortal robes aside for these.
An exile through the world who bade thee roam ? None, but I wearied of a happy home.
Why must thou dweller in a desert be ? A garden seemed not fair enough to me.
Why sue a beggar at the mean world's door ? To live on God's large bounty seemed so poor.
What has thy forehead so to earthward brought? To lift it higher than the stars I though t.^
' Lord Rosebery, Napoleon, the Last Phase, 49. « R. C. Trench, Poerris, 234.
294 THE RETURN TO THE FATHER
(3) He recalled the privileges and the happiness of the home on which he so lightly turned his back. The poor prodigal — homeless, friendless, starving — remembered his home, his father's loving care of him, his mother's tender schooling. He could see, as in a vision, the old house where he was born, the garden where he played as a child, the flowers that he had trained, the trees that he had climbed. He had grown tired of home ; now how he longed to see it once more ! In his father's house there was plenty of bread and to spare, and the loving ministry of his parents.
^ The German poet tells us of a robber who, in his lawless stronghold beside the Rhine, remembered the days when he, a little child, could not sleep unless his mother had kissed him. Danton, one of the blood-stained leaders of the French Revolution, thought lovingly in his latter days of the little village where he was born, and visited the simple farm where he spent his child- hood. Napoleon, a crushed and ruined man, could recall with a sigh the day when he received his first communion in his innocent boyhood long ago. Many a one in his hour of remorse and misery has echoed the words of Job — " Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me ; when nis candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness ; as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle." ^
Does that lamp still burn in my Father's house Which he kindled the night I went away?
I turned once beneath the cedar boughs,
And marked it gleam with a golden ray; Did he think to light me home some day?
Hungry here with the crunching swine, Hungry harvest have I to reap;
In a dream I count my Father's kine,
I hear the tinkling bells of his sheep, I watch his lambs that browse and leap.
There is plenty of bread at home.
His servants have bread enough and to spare; The purple wine-fat froths with foam.
Oil and spices make sweet the air,
While I perish hungry and bare.
^ W. Buxton, The Battle of Life, 112.
ST. LUKE XV. 17-20 295
Eich and blessed those servants, rather
Than I who see not my Father's face!
I will arise and go to my Father: —
"Fallen from sonship, beggared of grace, Grant me. Father, a servant's place." ^
II.
Eepentance.
1. Eepentance means a change of mind, so that we hate the evil which we once loved ; we shrink from the bad company in which we delighted ; we go back to the God whom we neglected ; we turn from the cup of sinful pleasure as from poison. It will not do for us to remain with the swine and the filth of sin, and bewail that we are not clean. If we would be clean we must leave the dirty ways ; we must arise. The prodigal made up his mind at once. He did not hesitate as to what he should do ; he did not try to join himself to yet another citizen of the far country, or to seek some other sin. There was only one thing for him to do, and he did it.