SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 270, 11 May 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

SKRMON I'Y JIHV. .lA.MKS CHAItTERIK "I will arise and go I<> mv Father."Lnke xv.-.wiii. Christ, in all His pa rallies, kept within the sphere of His audience, dejected -scenes that they themselves lmd witnessed. and doubtlessly the parable now under their notice had been realised in the lives of either themselves or some ol their acquaintances. Even to-day. wher we must of necessity call upon our ima gination tu fill in absent details, liow the story grips the heart and command: our closest attention! I!ut, oh! to havt listened when the .Master told it, to hav«j watched every gesture, inflection, or t< i have caught each passing emotion! Ho\ ■ every bosom must have throbbed at th . simple story, told in the dignified an<[ majestic words of our Lord. ■Feature after feature, common to th > country and the time, is portrayed, an 1 the listeners seem to live again, so ir r tense and real is the narrative. Silence obtains in the company and each favore 1 person hangs upon the simple words ab Christ shows the departure of the youn r man from his father's home, from th > shelter and protection of the old rooftree. At this point I can hear eacli listener asking the quest ion. "What it that inspired prodigality in the young man's heart? What consideration would prove strong enough to draw this young man from happiness and peace to the very uncertain and haphazard 1 life- in a strange land.?" Might I suggest this: A FALSE INDEPENDENCE. No doubt he vainly imagined that he could now east from himself every vestige of accountability. Now that ho had reached his majority, he was amenable to no power or person, free to satisfy every whim and caprice. How attractive the prospect was. Free! free! at liberty to please himself! But what man has found the "freedom" of which the prodigal dreamed. Could a man be found to stand before the tribunal of conscience, and declare that he could please himself? Can we successfully ignore the potent part played in our "lives by our fellow men? No: we shall never fully comprehend the restraining influence of the body called "society." We bow down to its strictures, stand guilty before its broken laws, recognise its government in our hearts, and yet someone would say that he could live as he chose, be his own providence, and be indebted to no person or power. Time passed, circumstances changed and as pressure was put upon the prodigal's resources, one by one they gave way until shunned by the fall and wakened by the wrecking of this false independence. "HE CAME TO HIMSELF." Let us view the prodigal's position after his great awakening. He considers his depleted pockets, the faithlessness of those who had assisted him in spend- : ing his money, the depravity of his condition, the height of puritv from which he has fallen, and altogether the hideous picture of his present life. Visions comejind go before the youth, face after face "loved, long since, and lost awhile" pass in the mental review of his past, but one vision remains closely related to his past life, and that one was the vision of home. Features that he had almost forgotten about his earlier years come back now with sharp and bitter poignancy. the landscape surrounding home stands nut sharply defined in the prodigal's mind. The various trees round which in happy bovhood he had played all come back to him and form a sad contrast to his present position. The £ulf between himself and his home seems Jmmeasureahle. His draught of bitterness is being measured nut to him, and l)e seems unable to bear the shame and ijf^nominy. <_But within that young man's heart Ijhere is a change taking place and it is indicated by the crv, "How many hired servants of my father's have bread ?nough and to spare, and I perish with hunger.' Can we catch the dawning of a new conception of himself? "Degradation may suit a born serf, but 1 am the son, the favorite, the idol of my father's heart. Love and attention have been my constant companions in my father's house. I was the keystone of the family circle, the heart of the home lifej and 1 perish with hunger." How essential it is to our success that we have a correct estimation of our own value. The late Lord Beaconsfield said, "A man must recognise his own worth or he can never be of use to the world." Once having viewed ourselves in the light of what it cost to redeem us we should never be satisfied with poor valuation or poor success. Let the fallen man see that he has fallen. Let him comprehend the possibilities within himself, and you have gone a great wav toward redeeming him. Ella Wheeler Wilcox says: "I gave a beggar, from my little store of well-earned gold; lie spent the golden ore. And came again and yet again, still cold and hungry as before. T gave a thought, and thought that thought oif mine. He found himself the Man, Supreme, Divine. Fed. clothed, and kept with blessing manifold, and now he begs no more." This was the exact position of the prodigal. He had made the vast discovery —of himself, of his position, and of his right place. Not to feed swine had he been brought up carefully; not to spend his father's earnings in this .shameful and debased way; not to have his father's honored name on the lips of libertines and harlots, but his end and mission were to bring honor, reverence and praise to the name he bore. This vast redemption was begun in this manner, and its course is followed and easily traced bv the natural consequential cry when he recognised that as yet his course was not fixed, nor his repentance complete.

"1 WILL ARISE AND fiO TO MY FATHER." Rising in his newly-found strength, he determined to leave no stone unturned in his attempt at reconciliation. We can easily see that an entirely new spirit has risen within this young man. "T will arise." nothing daunted, nothing retarding, "my greatest effort, back over all the mountain chains between myself and my father's home, back over the moral chasms that in the height of my follv T nave crossed, back from the degradation and sinfulness of this life, to the peace and prosperity of my home." There is the picture, there the remorse, and there the return. Have we ever noticed that the truest insight into a heart's need is to listen to its natural crv? See the course which the prodigal's repentance took, mark the perfectly natural outburst of contrition. "Arise, and go to my father." Step by step taken without any attempt at order, without premeditation, without a design. Arise from the fallen bestial state in which he now found himself. Arise from being a mere plaything to even the modest height of good intentions. "Back to my father"—no attempt to shield himself from punishment or from witnessing the white hairs which his prodigality had placed there. He did not think of returning to friends or merely to relations, but to the very one whom he had most wounded, to the verv one whom he had

most pained. Slowly, painfully lie makes his return. Weighed down with remorse, he retraced his steps ''o'er moor and ton," o'er the places that in the floodtide of previous years he had made mirthful with laughter and song. Having mounted the last long-looked-for range of hills he gazes down on the scenes of his boyhood. Every tree familiar, every brook well known, every cottage on the plain recognised, and so inspired with the realisation of his vision lie painfully hastens on. Far down the mountain track he descries a worn, bent figure, hut more with grief than with years, and ere long he recognises this man as the father whose embrace he has come thus far to seek. The moments pass slowly until, reclining in his father's arm he tells the story of his wanderings. taking care to plead no extenuating circumstances, laying all the blame 011 his own shoulders, and awaiting his father's pardon, Not long is he kept in suspense; the reconciliation is complete, the resolve accomplished, and his father's home again shelters him as in earlier and happier years. The first special and essential step to repentance is self-examination. We probe, with the powerful telescope, the marvels of the heavens, and scan the constellations hung in the firmament by the Creator Spirit, Years have been spent in making a critical examination of the moon's phenomena. Attempt after attempt has been made to ascertain the nature of the world.of matter beneath our feet, to read the autobiography of the earth in strata alnd fossil, everything organic and inorganic has had to leave its place among the hoary and honored traditions dear to us and come under the microscopic examination of science, but when it comes to an investigation of the heart's need, a diagnosis of the soul, then man stands isolated in his grandeur. Therefore it behoves us to follow David's counsel: "f thought on my ways and turned any steps to thy testimonies." This self-thought is not selfinterest. Finally, as the prodigal had not only to '-'arise," hut also to "go to his father." so must every man who has seen himself a sinner before Cod. As for the welcome which the penitent will receive, there need be 110 fear. "Come, let us reason together, though your sins he as scarlet: they shall be as wool." .Tovhells shall be ringing in heaven "over one sinner that repenteth." and that repentance shall herald in the timeWhen the night shall be filled with music. And the care that.infest the day: Shall roll up the tents like the Arabs, And as silently steal awav.