.WTZ8 
 
GOD'S RESCUES. 
 
GOD'S RESCUES; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE LOST SHEEP, THE LOST COIN, 
 AND THE LOST SON. 
 
 three; discourses 
 
 ON 
 
 LUKE XV. 
 
 By WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & CO., 
 
 770 Broadway, cor. 9th Street. 
 
 1871. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 
 
 ANSON D. P. RANDOLPH & CO., 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
 E.O.JENKINS. ROBERT RUTTER, 
 
 STEREOTYPER AND PRINTER, BINDER, 
 
 20 N. WILLIAM ST., N. Y. 84 beekman STREET. 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sin- 
 neks roK TO heas him. 
 
 And the Pharisees asd scribes murmured, sating, 
 This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. 
 
 And he spake this parable unto them, sating, 
 
 What man of tou, having an hundred sheep, if he 
 lose one of them, doth not leave the ninett and nine 
 in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost 
 until he find it ? 
 
 And when he hath found it, he lateth it on his 
 shoulders rejoicing. 
 
 And when he cometh home, he calleth together his 
 
 FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS, SATING UNTO THEM, ReJOICE WITH 
 me '; FOR I HAVE FOUND MT SHEEP WHICH WAS LOST. 
 
 I SAT UNTO TOU, ThAT LIKEWISE JOT SHALL BE IN HEAV- 
 EN OVER ONE SINNER THAT REPENTETH, MORE THAN OVER 
 NINETT AND NINE JUST PERSONS, WHICH NEED NO REPENT- 
 ANCE. — Luke, cJiap. xv. 1-7. 
 
 IN those catacombs at Rome, where the 
 early Christians sheltered themselves 
 from their Pagan persecutors, one of the 
 favorite portrayals is that which presents 
 the Saviour in the imagery of this parable. 
 A shepherd is seen bearing a lamb flung 
 across his shoulders. In the pictures and 
 r=^- (5) 
 
6 THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 coins of old Christian art, it is a frequent 
 representation. One delineation, in these 
 dark subterranean galleries, is supposed to 
 be fifteen centuries old. It shows how, in 
 days all saddened by recent bereavement 
 and by impending martyrdom, the early 
 confessors of the faith solaced themselves 
 for the dark yesterday or darker to-mor- 
 row, by remembering the self-sacrificing 
 tenderness, and the infinite carefulness, and 
 the untiring might, and the illimitable re- 
 sources, of the great Gcfd, their Redeemer 
 and their Elder Brother — " The Chief Shep- 
 herd and Bishop of their souls" — as He is 
 elsewhere called. That name, " Bishop," 
 blends the images of the Overseer, the 
 Guardian, the Rescuer, and the Avenger^ 
 
 How touchingly is it introduced in the 
 narrative of the Gospel. The Pharisees 
 murmured — reputable and exemplary men 
 as they deemed themselves — that one, claim- 
 ing to be the Messiah, should be so accessi- 
 ble to the disreputable and the outcast. 
 " This man receiveth sinners and eateth 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. / 
 
 with them." Their own idea of sanctity 
 was, that it shunned the contact of such 
 guilty and abject souls. For a John the 
 Baptist, living sternly alone in the desert, 
 far from the ordinary resorts and the every- 
 day entanglements of society, the Pharisees 
 might have some cold and distant respect. 
 He might seem to them as shunning to be 
 brushed by the world's ordinary throng of 
 sinners, sacred in his reserve, and saintly 
 in the very fact of his utter isolation. 
 
 But that the Baptist's Master should ac- 
 cept, from Zaccheus the publican, an invita- 
 tion to dine beneath his roof — should enrol 
 Matthew, another of that hated class, the 
 tax - gatherer, the publican, among his 
 Apostles ; and should even permit a woman, 
 that had been once notoriously a sinner, to 
 bedew His feet with her tears, and wipe off 
 the fast-flowing drops with her thick tress- 
 es, was in their view unbeseeming the dig- 
 nity of His character and hardly to be 
 reconciled with the sanctity of His mission. 
 
 Our Lord replies, by a matchless train of 
 
8 THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 parables. The first, that of the Lost Sheep ; 
 the second, that of the Lost Coin ; and the 
 last, that of the Lost Son ; each bringing 
 forward some new trait of anxiety for the 
 souls ready to perish, and shedding, from 
 some new point, another beam of hope on 
 the path of the penitent. 
 
 The first parable presents the great doc- 
 trine of the Atonement, and the work of 
 God the Son, as the Redeemer. It is a con- 
 densation of the Epistle to the Hebrews : 
 Christ shown in His sacrifice and priestly 
 intercession. The second parable brings 
 out the lessons of the Gospel of John — the 
 work of God the Holy Spirit, who convicts 
 that He may convert, and disturbs, that 
 He may comfort ; like the besom sweeping 
 off the dust, that has gathered in the heart 
 and conscience, and upon the Bible and on 
 the Book of Providence, and making all 
 the soul for the time confused and discord- 
 ant, and, as it may seem, even chaotic. But 
 by the lamp, enlightening as well as con- 
 founding ; searching out truths once dispar- 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. 9 
 
 aged and neglected, and finding clues once 
 utterly lost, and bringing to view treasures 
 before unsuspected. So this parable brings 
 out the great truths of Conversion and 
 Regeneration. The last or third delinea- 
 tion, presents the great truths of Effec- 
 tual Calling and Adoption and Justification, 
 the lessons of the Epistle to the Romans. 
 These are eminently the work of God the 
 Father. Thus the three graphic sketches to- 
 gether blend the work of the Divine Trin- 
 ity ; and bring out the Full Godhead em- 
 bodied in the work of human recovery. 
 
 As these similitudes go on, the appeal 
 comes seemingly closer and closer home to 
 the daily experience of His hearers, to their 
 " business and bosoms." The husbandman 
 hears of flocks ; the housewife of besoms 
 and lamps ; and in the last parable, that of 
 the returned prodigal, what an effectual 
 knocking is there at the door of every hu- 
 man, and especially of every parental heart. 
 It is God's statement of God's regard for 
 the sinner, and of the high interest that 
 
lO THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 Heaven, though stainless and happy, has, 
 through all its angelic ranks, in the work 
 of the Lord of Angels to recover the es- 
 trayed, to win back the alienated, and to 
 rescue the self-destroyed from the edge of 
 the ruin to which they are rolling and 
 plunging, with a fearful acceleration and 
 desperate pertinacity. 
 
 Let us dwell on the first of these illustra- 
 tions, Christ, the Good Shepherd. The 
 feeling, which led the Scribes to their im- 
 peachment of our Lord's conduct toward 
 sinners, is not yet died out. Men, who 
 would scorn, as most unjust, all comparison 
 of themselves with the old Pharisees, are 
 yet, after the interval of so many centuries, 
 repeating in our times and beside our sanc- 
 tuaries, the old cavil. Are the doctrines of 
 grace earnestly and freely pressed on all 
 mankind ? Is it said from the pulpit and 
 the press, that salvation has, by the death 
 of Christ, been purchased for the vilest, 
 and that men may, turning from themselves 
 and accepting His grace and yoke, be at 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. II 
 
 once and altogether pardoned, and be per- 
 fectly and forever justified ? How many 
 censure this as preaching impunity to sin, 
 and as bidding a perilous welcome to the 
 world's veriest outcasts and reprobates. It 
 is said to be a degradation of religion, and 
 a wrong done to the moral and exemplary, 
 to represent this as the mode of man's access 
 to God ; and to paint the way to Heaven, as 
 being thus, only by the Righteousness of 
 Another, and by the blood of His one great 
 propitiatory sacrifice. 
 
 " Is it thus with Christ that He receiv- 
 eth sinners ?" exclaim they. Or, does the 
 Christian church send forth her chosen sons 
 and daughters, and call for the gifts and 
 prayers of her membership, to evangelize the 
 degraded ; and to recognize humanit}^ in the 
 brutified, who are dwelling, perhaps, on some 
 barbarian and remote coast, and in savage, 
 squahd guise, tenanting some cannibal isle ? 
 Is it not, even yet, too common to hear, 
 against such enterprise, the cavil, and from 
 some, the fierce taunt, and the flippant 
 
12 THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 sneer, at this anxiety for such remote, and 
 such uncouth, and such unpromising speci- 
 mens of the human family ? Why, it is 
 asked, should your Christianity go so far ; 
 and busy itself with such repulsive Pagan- 
 ism, ignorant of the first principles of let- 
 ters, and arts and laws, touching nearly the 
 line of kinship to the beast ? And yet, in 
 all this, does not the church of our times 
 tread in the steps of that Good Shepherd, 
 who went much further, and renounced 
 much more ; who, leaving the ninety and 
 nine, is seen to go in quest of the one es- 
 trayed and perishing, dear to Him, in its 
 very destitution, misery and peril ? Does 
 not His love need access to the misery, be- 
 cause the misery so sorely needs that love ? 
 So in the revelations of Modern Science, 
 as to the extent of the celestial system, 
 when worlds, more massive than our own, 
 are seen peopling by myriads, the depths 
 of space, and the mind begins to reel under 
 the contemplation of the hosts of orbs, that 
 God has formed, and of the intelligent 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. 1 3 
 
 beings that possibly may tenant them, the 
 conclusion has been drawn, Why should we 
 think, that to our little paltry globe, a nar- 
 row nook in the vast realm of being, and 
 that to our ephemeral race, so insignificant 
 and morally so unworthy of special regard 
 from God, there should be sent an Incarna- 
 tion of the Creator and a Revelation of the 
 God who made all this teeming universe ? 
 Is not this sending far, and overlooking 
 much that was more worthy of notice else- 
 where, for God to come down and taber- 
 nacle on our planet, and in our mortal, suf- 
 fering nature? Why expect the Infinite 
 One to seek this tiny spangle of a globe, 
 and here to visit and to receive such for- 
 lorn sinners ? 
 
 Yes — in the cavils against the doctrines of 
 grace — in the pleadings against modern mis- 
 sions to the heathen — in some of the popu- 
 lar objections from the extent of the uni- 
 verse, against the worthiness of our planet 
 and of our race to receive an embassage 
 from the Incarnate God — we see but the old 
 
14 THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 Pharisaic accusation, restated with some 
 new phraseology. But the core of the ob- 
 jection is the same. You make God stoop 
 too low ; and let man, the petty, the guilty, 
 and the perishable, presume on hopes that 
 are preposterously too large and too lofty. 
 
 II. See, then, how simply, and yet over- 
 whelmingly, God replies. The Shepherd, 
 the Incarnate Son, the Perfect Resemblance 
 and Express Image of the Father, and the 
 Embodiment of the Infinite Godhead, He 
 puts, to the men and women about Him, an 
 appeal coming home to the histories of their 
 own farms and pasture grounds, to the inci- 
 dents of those very homes whence they had 
 just come out to listen, and to which, when 
 they had heard Him through, they would be 
 soon returning. Here is a shepherd, the 
 owner of a flock of a hundred sheep. They 
 had been feeding in the wilderness. By 
 this, we suppose, intended, not a bleak, deso- 
 late wild ; but a pasture, like those unfenc- 
 ed commons stretching out for leagues, to 
 which, in the old world, sheep are often 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. 1 5 
 
 driven, like our own wide prairies of the 
 West. From his flock, one sheep is missing. 
 It has quitted its fellows. When they 
 come to be counted at even, it is not found. 
 In its defencelessness and wilfulness or wit- 
 lessness, it is little likely to return ; and, if 
 encountering the wolf or the lion, its fate is 
 fixed. It can neither escape by fight nor by 
 flight. It has gone nibbling the grass, 
 bleating in its loneliness, and straying in 
 its bewilderment ; and now, as the night 
 gathers and the shadows deepen, whither is 
 it tending, and what shall become of it?" 
 The shepherd stops not to reckon, He 
 does not say, It is but a small proportion of 
 the flock ; its course is uncertain, and who 
 can tell in what direction to seek it ? I can 
 well afford to lose it. As for it, it well de- 
 serves its fate ; let it perish. To go in 
 quest of it, were to incur certain fatigue, 
 with very slender and uncertain prospects 
 of any success. Why should I vex myself, 
 and encQunter in mountain passes, a pit, 
 dark and deep, that may engulf me ; or 
 
l6 THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 some savage beast of prey, that might as- 
 sail me? But, dashing aside all such pre- 
 texts, the shepherd, who, in his pity cannot 
 afford that the poor beast perish, leaves the 
 ninety and nine in the wilderness pastures, 
 and as Matthew states it, " goeth into the 
 mountains," where many a rough steep 
 must be clambered, and many a precipice 
 may yawn for the unguarded foot, and 
 many a den may harbor its noxious ser- 
 pents, or its ferocious beasts of prey. Toil, 
 peril, and • discomfort, are braved. The 
 poor waif is found. And when found, how 
 is it treated ? Is it butchered and flayed on 
 the spot, and its skin borne home to be nail- 
 ed on the gate of the fold, or the great barn 
 door, a warning to all the rest of the flock 
 of the consequences and penalties of stray- 
 ing ? Is the crook broken heavily over its 
 shoulder, as a punishment and a warning to 
 itself though its life is spared ; a monition 
 against future wanderings ? Is the hot 
 branding-iron promptly applied, singeing 
 the fleece, and burning down its way into 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. 1/ 
 
 the quick, quivering flesh of the poor ani- 
 mal ? Or, is the watch-dog set on the poor 
 silly sheep to flesh his white tooth in the 
 side of the sheep, and to frighten it into a 
 full, indelible remembrance of its present 
 folly ? Or, does the shepherd, angry at the 
 time wasted, and the labor incurred, drive 
 the exhausted beast, bleeding and panting, 
 and foot-sore, rapidly back along the home- 
 ward way ? No. He is, however tired, wil- 
 ling to be yet more fatigued, so that his 
 poor charge be saved from further exhaus- 
 tion, and from continued exposure to peril. 
 He lays it on his shoulders, not with up- 
 braiding and grudging, chiding at its folly, 
 but rejoicing at the recovery. And, reach- 
 ing home he summons his neighbors to con- 
 gratulate him, and rejoice with him, over 
 the success of his pursuit and the restora- 
 tion, to its fellows and to its fold, of his es- 
 trayed and imperilled charge. 
 
 '* I say unto you," — I, Jesus, the Son of 
 the Father, ever in the Father's bosom, and 
 fully in the Father's confidence ; I, Jesus, the 
 
 2* 
 
l8 THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 Lord of Angels, intimately acquainted with 
 all their employments, and cognizant of all 
 their angelic sympathies ; T, the Maker of 
 your race on the earth, and of their shining 
 ranks on high, the Creator also, utter it. I 
 say unto you : " there is joy," in that bright, 
 far, and holy heaven, among its white-robed 
 and holy tenantry, over one such sinner that 
 comes penitent to my teachings, and sits, 
 docile and contrite at m-y feet, however de- 
 graded his past condition and however vile 
 his offences, and however forlorn his aspect 
 and his prospects, there is more joy in the 
 world of light over him, than over ninety 
 and nine just persons, who need no repent- 
 ance. Who are they ? The self-righteous, 
 who suppose themselves so just as to need no 
 contrition ? Elsewhere, the Saviour speaks 
 of such righteousness of Scribes and Phari- 
 sees ; and declares, that if His disciples do 
 not attain a righteousness surpassing such 
 low standard, they cannot enter heaven at 
 all. Such Pharisaic excellence would move 
 angels to tears rather than to songs. Who 
 
THE LOST SHEET. I9 
 
 then are the just? We suppose the more 
 proper allusion, to be to the angels, who, 
 keeping their first estate, have never sinned ; 
 or, if there be other beings like man, inhab- 
 iting other worlds, whose Eden wa^ never 
 marred and forfeited by sin, then we are 
 taught, that over their permanence in holi- 
 ness, there is not the loud acclaim of joy, 
 that there is over each and every conver- 
 sion of a sinner from our own lost and 
 doomed race. 
 
 We sometimes wish the privilege of read- 
 ing our neighbor's heart. But here, open- 
 ed by the hand of the Incarnate Revealer 
 and Redeemer, we have a window into the 
 very heart of God. We see His feelings 
 of compassion towards our race and our 
 own selves. He leaves the society of the 
 sinless and the angelic, and the anthems of 
 seraphim and cherubim, and the commu- 
 nion of heaven, for an earthly allotment of 
 toil and exposure. He must traverse " dark 
 mountains," when He confronts the contra- 
 diction of sinners and the assaults of the 
 
20 THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 tempter, and He becomes denied of earth 
 and buffetted of hell. To lift the victim of 
 sin, and the heir of wrath, to His shoul- 
 ders, as the recovered and ransomed one, 
 that shoulder must bear the cross of shame 
 and agony ; that soul of His must stoop to 
 the yoke of denial, mockery and betrayal. 
 He must encounter the hidings of the face 
 of the Father. Weary He sits at the well 
 of Samaria. But more weary, He faints 
 under the weight of the cross they have 
 made Him bear. More wear}', hangs He, 
 nailed to its wood ; the jeer, the shout, the 
 blasphemy, all jangling wildly in His ears, 
 as He is ready to give up the ghost, crying 
 in His extremity, as the God-forsaken one, 
 " Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabacthani ! My God ! 
 my God ! why hast Thou forsaken me ?" 
 
 And this Redemption is not all. He is, 
 as the High Priest, now and after His ex- 
 altation to the heavenly glory, still the bur- 
 den bearer of His people. In His provi- 
 dence. He brings them back from their im- 
 penitent estrayment. '* He restoreth my 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. 21 
 
 soul," said David. He bears them about, 
 through all the tangled pathway of life, as 
 a nurse her infant ; nor when mothers for- 
 get the babe of their love, can He forget. 
 He cherishes for them a vivid and lasting 
 sympathy. In all their affliction. He is 
 afflicted, never fails or forsakes them, to old 
 age and into death ; still sustains, still cher- 
 ishes, and still defends them. The High 
 Priest of the Jewish Economy had the 
 breast-plate, with its twelve jewels, bearing 
 the names of the twelve tribes, supported 
 by bands that passed over His shoulders. 
 The names of Judah and Levi and their 
 brethren thus lay on his heart ; whilst the 
 weight of the record and the memorial was 
 pressing on His shoulder. The heart, the 
 seat of feeling ; the shoulders are the seat 
 of strength. Affection and Power are 
 shown thus, blended together in undertak- 
 ing the cause, and sustaining the remem- 
 brance of his people. So is it in the great 
 Antitype. His shoulder of Omnipotence 
 sustains, and His bosom, with its Infinite 
 
22 THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 Tenderness and unforgetting Omniscience, 
 registers and defends His own Israel. 
 " The Great Shepherd of the Sheep," as 
 the Apostle entitles Him, has shed His 
 blood not idly and ineffectually, but as the 
 gory sanction, " the blood of an Everlasting 
 Covenant." 
 
 III. But why should there be more joy 
 over the recovery of the fallen, than over 
 the preservation of the unfallen ? We 
 answer, in part, because it is here, as in hu- 
 man relationship, where the mother seems 
 most to love the child whose sickness has 
 cost her most alarms and watchings, and 
 drawn most heavily on her maternal tender- 
 ness. Just as in the strifes of life, you attach 
 new importance and value to the interests 
 that had been threatened, to the venture 
 that had been nearly wrecked, and that was, 
 with effort and risk, secured again. Just as 
 in the dying benediction of Jacob, he re- 
 serves for his favorite Joseph a portion, es- 
 pecially dear to the patriarch, which he, the 
 father, had taken with his sword and his 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. 23 
 
 bow out of the hand of the alien. The 
 struggle had made that one of the dearest 
 of Jacob's possessions. Not only was Labor 
 wrought into the boon, but Valor also, and 
 Endurance. Just as in your national affairs, 
 Liberty and Union will acquire new pre- 
 ciousness from the expenditure of treasure 
 and blood required to vindicate and secure 
 them, and from the taunts and insults of Old 
 World despotism over your expected loss 
 of these rich franchises. 
 
 But, we suppose, that for the high joy of 
 angels there is another reason. They 
 might, themselves, never have been so ef- 
 fectually guarded against the approach of 
 sin to themselves ; so thoroughly encased 
 against all temptations to emulate the trea- 
 son and join the revolt of their old asso- 
 ciate and compeer Lucifer, had not the in- 
 carnation and sacrifice of the Son shown 
 the evil of sin ; had not the punishment of 
 evil men and evil angels so illustrated God's 
 wrath against iniquity. 
 
 The tininess of our planet, it may be, is 
 
24 THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 not preventing it from serving as the great 
 battle-field of God's moral universe. How 
 oft a spot of military encounter, itself not 
 larger than one of the city wards, ma)" yet 
 in our recent national struggle, have de- 
 cided, by the battle there fought, the po- 
 litical destinies of the broad continent. So 
 it is in God's government of our world 
 and race. On our small nook of a globe, 
 may yet gather and centre all the solici- 
 tudes of Heaven, and all the fierce hopes 
 of Hell. Good and evil may come here, 
 into one long and dread death-grapple. The 
 Apostle said, he was a spectacle to men 
 and angels. And all the church on earth, 
 widely dispersed and variously schooled, 
 affords a spectacle of divine wisdom and 
 faithfulness, into which angels, stooping 
 down, desire to look, catching thus pro- 
 founder glimpses than the Godhead, not en- 
 shrouded and not incarnate, elsewhere al- 
 lows them. These angels of light might 
 have swerved, had not Christ's care and 
 skill, in saving the saved of earth, so de- 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. 2$ 
 
 veloped new wonders of Divine Truth and 
 Grace, before unsuspected. 
 
 In Christ, and in Christ's Church, the 
 heavenly powers see more glorious exhibi- 
 tions than elsewhere of the excellence of 
 Jehovah, and every new convert is a great 
 trophy, having its own new and peculiar 
 memorial of the Redeemer's goodness and 
 gentleness and forbearance. 
 
 Angels rejoice, again, with an especial 
 exultation at Christ's work, because of their 
 full and adoring sympathy with the Lord 
 of Angels and men. Now Christ rejoiced 
 in spirit at the revelation of the Father to 
 " babes and sucklings ;" that mere lambs, 
 estrays from the flock of the Holy, should 
 be made more than conquerors over him 
 who goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking 
 whom he may devour, was matter of exul- 
 tation to Christ. He is "anointed with joy 
 above His fellows," in His mediatorial 
 work. Angels sympathize with Jesus, from 
 their admiring adoration of His nature and 
 His career. They minister to the heirs of 
 3 
 
26 THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 salvation. They did to the disembodied 
 spirit of Lazarus, borne from the gate of 
 Dives : and fresh from the dunghill where 
 his body grovelled, his spirit mounts, on 
 their wings and under their escort, to the 
 helds of light, to meet and to enhance the 
 hymns of just men made perfect. 
 
 Because of its revelation of the Divine 
 Nature, because of their own surer confir- 
 mation in holiness by the great drama of 
 Human Redemption, and because of their 
 full sympathy with Jesus, who rejoices in 
 His own kingly and priestly triumph as 
 head of the church, there is especial joy 
 among angels over every journey of the 
 Good Shepherd to rescue His lost and per- 
 ishing charge. 
 
 Now, brethren, beloved in the Lord, arc 
 we Christ's ? We have, in such case. His 
 spirit. What joy to serve such a Master ! 
 But, if imbued with His temper, we go 
 forth to seek the lost. The world's moun- 
 tains of error and wrong, and care and toil, 
 apd persecution and blasphemy, must be 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. 2J 
 
 threaded. The gospel is an aggressive and 
 itinerant onslaught of mercy as upon earth's 
 sinners, the vile, the forlorn, the outcast, 
 the barbarous. Its messengers go out into 
 the highways and hedges, by the Master's 
 express commission and charge. It reach- 
 es the far. It grasps the self-destroyed. It 
 hopes for the hopeless. It pities the piti- 
 less. It weeps and prays and loves, though 
 confronted by the unlovely and unloving. 
 
 Are you a Christian, sad and ready to 
 faint, because of the difficulties of the path? 
 Do life's uncertainties perplex you ; and is 
 the strength fast waning, and are heart and 
 flesh ready to fail ? Look away to the sym- 
 pathies of Jesus. Fling yourselves on the 
 Shepherd and Bishop of souls. Are you 
 laboring in His service, and to meet, in re- 
 turn, often misrepresentation and wrong? 
 Look up. It is not, on your part, going as 
 far, or bearing as much, as the Master went, 
 and as the Master bore, on your behalf. 
 "The joy set before Him," sustained Him. 
 Let its anticipation cheer and hearten you. 
 
28 THE LOST SHEEP. 
 
 It is glad, and sure, and inconceivably 
 near. 
 
 Are you a sinner, living reckless of Christ, 
 and His calls, and His vast claims on your 
 gratitude ? Remember your exposure to 
 enemies, whom )^ou are not adequate to 
 outwit and to repel. The Shepherd's quest, 
 on the part of the Redeemer, goes on. You 
 shun it, and you slight it. But, side by 
 side, with the Redeemer's quest of souls, 
 goes on the great Wolf Hunt; the World, 
 the Flesh, and the Devil, in their terrible 
 leash of lying, hate and desolation, sweep 
 roaring by ; and you are sure, if continuing 
 away from Christ, to be entangled among 
 their rushing troop, and to be destroyed a 
 helpless victim in their destruction that tar- 
 rieth not. And with Avhat plea, will you 
 shelter your ingratitude to Christ, and your 
 criminal and habitual and life-long denial 
 of His right to your affection and your 
 trust? Well might the stout old sage and 
 moralist of England, Samuel Johnson, burst 
 into tears, as he habitually did, when recall- 
 
THE LOST SHEEP. 29 
 
 ing the image of our text as given in the 
 old mediaeval Judgment Hymn, in that 
 verse which runs : 
 
 " Wearily for me Thou soughtest : 
 On the cross my soul Thou boughtest ; 
 Lose not all for which Thou wroughtest." 
 
 3* 
 
THE LOST COIN. 
 
 Either what woman, having ten pieces of silver, if 
 
 SHE lose one piece, DOTH NOT LIGHT A CANDLE, AND SWEEP 
 THE HOUSE, AND SEEK DILIGENTLY TILL SHE FIND IT ? 
 
 And WHEN SHE HATH FOUND IT, SHE CALLETH HER FRIENDS 
 AND HER NEIGHBOURS TOGETHER, SATING, ReJOICE WITH ME ; 
 FOR I HAVE FOUND THE PIECE WHICH I HAD LOST. 
 
 LiKEAVISE, I SAY UNTO YOU, ThERE IS JOY IN THE PRESENCE 
 OF THE ANGELS OF GOD OVER ONE SINNER THAT REPENTETH. 
 
 — Luke, chap. xv. 8-10. 
 
 AMONGST the hearers of our Lord 
 were those of either sex. Some were 
 thus, as herdsmen and tillers, busied in the 
 field, owned flocks, and drove plows ; others, 
 the mothers and sisters, wives and daugh- 
 ters of these, had the circle of their activ- 
 ities and anxieties mainly within the nar- 
 rower lirriits of the home. To this last 
 home-keeping class speaks his next illustra- 
 tion. Do the Pharisees murmur at His 
 ready welcome of the sinner, lost to God, 
 and lost to his fellows, and lost to himself, 
 but b}^ grace to be reclaimed ? He appeals 
 
 (30 
 
32 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 to their own modes of dealing with losses 
 far more petty in character. And, by that 
 quiet gradation which chains together so 
 many of our Lord's sentences, He, who had 
 begun with a loss in men's stables and out- 
 lying sheepfolds, comes now down to a loss 
 out of the purse borne about the person, 
 and stowed in the girdle : as, in the next 
 parable, He goes yet closer to the soul, in 
 picturing a loss amongst the rarest and cost- 
 liest of the heart's treasures, dearer than 
 herds, dearer than revenues — a man's own 
 guarded and cherished offspring. What 
 Lord Bacon called a bringing home of wis- 
 dom " to men's business and bosoms," was, 
 in our Lord, exhibited in a simpler mode, 
 but on a grander scale. Thus His parables 
 travelled here, from the farmer's live-stock 
 and sheepfolds to the purse borne at the 
 girdle ; and then from the purse to the 
 heart beating under that girdle, into the 
 longing, yearning, smitten soul of a father, 
 who had nourished and brought up chil- 
 dren, but had hoped and waited, toiled, ac- 
 
THE LOST COIN. 33 
 
 cumulated, endowed and lavished, only to 
 see his bounties toward his children wasted, 
 and his affection for them requited by sullen, 
 base ingratitude. 
 
 The parables of sheep and coin touched 
 "business." The parable of the prodigal 
 shot into the *' bosom." The first illustra- 
 tion brushed the skirts, the last tugged at 
 the heart-strings. And so, too. He deepens 
 the relative amount of the loss as He pro- 
 ceeds. Of the flock, but one was missing, 
 and nigh a hundred were left. Out of the 
 purse had gone not a hundredth coin merely, 
 leaving ninety and nine behind, but a whole 
 tenth of its contents. Out of the family 
 was a Joseph missing ; but were eleven 
 brothers and a sister left to replace the one 
 absent ? There had gone, not only a tenth 
 child, leaving nine brothers and sisters to 
 replace his alienation ; but the one-half of 
 the branches of the household tree are 
 lopped off. The homestead is half unroofed. 
 It is a Jacob who has no Judah, and no 
 Dan, and no Reuben, and no Simeon. He 
 
34 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 has but a Joseph and a Benjamin ; and that 
 youngest born, his Benjamin, is not ; for he 
 had turned ingrate, and sot, and outcast, 
 flung into a remote exile of his own choos- 
 ing, and wrapt in a sad infamy of his own 
 weaving. 
 
 So, too, does our Lord deepen the shades 
 of guilt imputed to the offender in the sin 
 that has made him lost to God and rendered 
 him an estray from peace and an outcast 
 from hope. A sheep wanders from the 
 fold : it is a fit emblem of the thoughtless 
 sinner, erring through weakness and silliness 
 rather than of design. A sheep may inartic- 
 ulately confess and implore, when it bleats 
 for compassion. But the coin dropped ; 
 w'hat power has it of guiding-its own re- 
 turn, of proclaiming its sense of abandon- 
 ment, and of speaking out the rights of its 
 real and only owner? Utterly dependent 
 on that owner's care for a recovery, and it 
 all turning on the will of the first finder 
 whether the coin is to be embezzled or to 
 be restored to its own original place and 
 
THE LOST COIN. 35 
 
 proprietor, does not the dull helplessness of 
 the poor piece of money well bespeak the 
 desperate condition of a sinner morally 
 disabled — helpless by his obduracy, who 
 has neither skill, nor will, nor transient wish 
 to retvirn to God, but whom sin has bruti- 
 fied and blinded into such utter insensi- 
 bility, about his own danger and about 
 God's wrath, that over him Sabbaths and 
 Providences and Scriptures roll unnoted, 
 as the}'^ would over a shilling stamped into 
 the mire and covered with the dust of suc- 
 cessive weeks and years. And so in the 
 forlorn prodigal, how has the Saviour de- 
 picted the wilful and conscious sinner de- 
 liberately, and persistently, and habitually 
 multiplying his offences, squandering all 
 his past privileges, and scorning all his 
 earlier mercies. First have we the thought- 
 less, and next the helpless, and lastly the 
 wilful sinner ; yet, tracking the transgressor 
 through all these degrees of deepened and 
 indurated and desperate iniquity, God's 
 mercy is seen letting itself down, past 
 
36 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 thoughtlessness and helplessness and wilful- 
 ness, as by the successive shelvings of the 
 abyss of estrangement and peril and deprav- 
 ity, into which the sinner has rolled himself. 
 Does he plunge from one ledge to a deeper, 
 and is the cavernous gloom of the pit. grown 
 more horribly dark as he descends ? God 
 comes down, and with an infinite com- 
 passion, adorable to all eternity, is He seen 
 " devising methods how His banished ones 
 may return." He is scheming that His 
 lost ones may be re-installed, and how they 
 may be regenerated, that they may be fit- 
 tingly and be permanently re-instated in 
 the renounced household and homestead. 
 
 And as, in that great scheme of human 
 recovery, the gospel of the great salvation, 
 the whole of the Divine Trinity was em- 
 barked, so these several parables, here in- 
 terlocked, seem to allude each primarily to 
 the work of one as distinguished from the 
 others of the persons of the Divine Trinity, 
 They present, the first, the Atoning Son ; 
 and the third, the call — effectual to recall, 
 
THE LOST COIN. 37 
 
 to adopt, and to justify — the call of the 
 Eternal Father ; so does this intervening 
 parable that stands midway between the 
 others, and upon which our thoughts now 
 fix, seem to paint the offices of the Holy 
 Spirit, the Enlightener, the Disturber or 
 Reprover, and the Seeker of the souls that 
 lay buried in the gloom of ignorance and 
 the quiet dust of worldliness, and under the 
 litter and the defilement of sin. It is the 
 Spirit that builds and that orders the House 
 of God ; and his prerogative it especially is, 
 by an effectual severing, to quarry out the 
 living stones for the Heavenly Temple, to 
 search out, from the ruins of the Fall, God's 
 elect ones, who are, in the day of reckon- 
 ing, to be counted among His jewels, and 
 to be eternally treasured in His heavenly 
 kingdom. And as specially answering to 
 these, the Spirit's peculiar offices, as the 
 type of the Divine Regeneration, following 
 close on the Divine Redemption, it seems 
 fitting to put that one of the three images 
 used by our Lord as to man's lost estate, 
 4 
 
38 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 which most vividly describes man's pitiful 
 and utter helplessness, in this next or sec- 
 ond place. The Spirit follows the Son ; 
 Pentecost succeeded Calvary. It is the im- 
 age of a silver coin rolled away into ob- 
 scurity, hidden in the dust and gloom. 
 Amidst the bones last gnawed and splinter- 
 ed by the dogs in yon corner, there lies, it 
 may be, this coin beside the crusts dropped 
 by the children, or under the dust and mud 
 brought in from the highway. Man needs re- 
 pentance. The Son of God provided for the 
 bestowment of that penitence, being Him- 
 self " exalted as a Saviour to give repent- 
 ance and the remission of sins." The Father 
 welcomes the exhibition and exercise of that 
 repentance. But it is the Spirit of God who 
 works the repentance itself, who inspires 
 the contrite desire, and who sheds around 
 the sepulchre of our spiritual death, and 
 wafts down upon this moral decay, that 
 light of life — that breath of heaven — which 
 disperses the gloom, and arrests the corrup- 
 tion, and banishes the inert silence and 
 
THE LOST COIN. ' 39 
 
 apathy. It is the Spirit who restores to 
 God's treasure-house that soul, which, at 
 first, was coined in God's image, and gar- 
 nered for his revenues, but which has since 
 escaped, helplessly and hopelessly, from His 
 service, to be trodden in the dust, and to 
 be swept into the indiscriminate offscour- 
 ings " whose end is to be burned," had not 
 mercy thus interposed. 
 
 We suppose, indeed, it not an untenable 
 opinion, which many ancient worthies have 
 held, that the Spirit is represented, especial- 
 ly, as working in the Church of God ; and 
 that, therefore, the laborer in the imagery 
 of this parable is of that sex which is select- 
 ed so often to describe in the Bible the 
 Church of the Most High. " Either what 
 woman having ten pieces of silver, if she 
 lose one piece, doth not light a candle and 
 sweep the house and seek diligently till she 
 find it ?" Woman is, in the family life, espe- 
 cially designed of God, who orders the 
 household, to be the economist. Her thrift, 
 and care, and forethought may build the 
 
40 ■ THE LOST COIN. 
 
 family: as her waste and pride and sloth 
 and luxury may desolate and shatter it. She 
 is presented here, not as a princess whose 
 bracelet has lost one pearl from its appro- 
 priate setting, and who is perplexed how to 
 fill up the vacant socket: or a daughter of 
 Herodias, who is apparelling herself for the 
 dance before the chief estates of the king- 
 dom, and who finds the diamond frontlet for 
 her brow to have been in some way mis- 
 placed. It is a simple peasant-wife, whose 
 whole store is but some ten silver coins, 
 none large in size. One is wanting ; she be- 
 lieves it, though missing, yet in the house. 
 The cottage homes of Palestine, in which 
 our Lord so often lodged, and in one of 
 which He was reared at Nazareth, are often 
 furnished only with a floor of the hard earth, 
 and the chambers are often lit only by win- 
 dows high up in the wall, like the narrow 
 slits and loop-holes of our barns, admitting 
 but little of the outer sun-hght. Indeed, 
 many of the ancient homes had no light but 
 by the door. On the hard, beaten earth, 
 
THE LOST COIN. 4I 
 
 coin or trinket once dropped may be soon 
 covered among the litter, brought in by the 
 sandals of the traveller, or the crumbs and 
 fragments flung to the dogs or the house- 
 hold animals, when these are permitted to 
 enter. Perhaps the little store of savings, 
 the ten pieces of money, thus lessened, had 
 been laid up to meet the rent-day. Per- 
 haps it was the hard-won wages earned by 
 some child who served in the neighbors' 
 fields, and brought the scant, slow gains to 
 a mother to keep, — some Ruth, who glean- 
 ed after the reapers of a neighbor Boaz, or 
 some Jacob who kept sheep in the wilder- 
 ness pastures for some covetous Laban. 
 One piece is lacking. She trusts that it has 
 not yet gone from the house. If the win- 
 dows give not light enough to search each 
 nook, the lamp is lit. If the dust might 
 conceal it, the floor shall be swept, great as 
 may be the cloud raised by the broom to 
 overspread the apartment. And " diligent- 
 ly," or repeatedly, and everywhere, and 
 continually, will the owner search until she 
 4* 
 
42 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 finds it. So has God, by His Spirit, sent the 
 Light of Revelation into the world, and es- 
 pecially into the Church. So has He, in 
 that Church, by the faithful preaching of 
 the word, and by its dissemination as the 
 written word also, beamed light into the old 
 darkness and across the settled unconcern 
 of society. So has He, in dealing with the 
 individual soul, shot rays of searching light 
 into the conscience and heart. The insen- 
 sate Ahab starts at feeling that his " enemy," 
 the truth, has " found him out." The un- 
 believing Jew has been pierced to the soul 
 in the sense of his sin and its ruinousness 
 and heinousness. Lydia has had her heart 
 opened to receive the truth, as the flower 
 opens to the morning beams of the summer 
 sun. The jailer, late so fierce and brutal, 
 with a heart torn open like a rock riven by 
 the earthquake, cries out in alarm : What 
 shall I do to be saved ? — as he discerns his 
 hideous mistakes, and shudders at the new 
 light streaming in, to show his guilt and his 
 hardihood, and to lay bare the nearness of 
 
THE LOST COIN. 43 
 
 eternal death, of which he had been so bru- 
 tishly unconscious. 
 
 And as mere habit and neglect hide souls 
 from themselves, and from the just sympa- 
 thy and care of their fellows, God's Spirit 
 sends its great disturbing agencies into the 
 society, the nation, the age, or into the nar- 
 rower bounds of the family. The besom 
 does not really make the new dust ; but it 
 only brings the old and long-gathering de- 
 posit more, for a time, into the air and upon 
 the lungs. The messengers of the Gospel 
 are, for the time, regarded as " turning the 
 world upside down." Or God's provi- 
 dences, in calamities, and wars, and social 
 revolutions, show men the magnitude of 
 past hereditary errors. The besom of judg- 
 ment goes shaking society out of its torpor 
 and equanimity. It was so in Luther's day, 
 and in Calvin's. It was so in the Puritans 
 of our ancestral Britain, and in their colo- 
 nists who crossed to this countr)\ God, by 
 them, broke up many a pile of quiet litter ; 
 and brushed aside many a film of long-set- 
 
44 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 tied green mould, picturesque in its ver- 
 dure, or venerable in its grey, hoar antiqui- 
 ty, which had gathered upon the national 
 conscience. But a Bunyan, and a Milton, 
 and a Baxter, and an Owen, and a Howe 
 were precious medals brought out by the 
 besoming ; and Constitutional freedom and 
 National morality, and English literature, 
 and Christian piety were greatly enriched 
 by the agitation. It was so in the Revolu- 
 tion that made us a nation. It was so in the 
 agitations that went over Europe in the 
 train of our first Revolution. It was so in 
 our last great struggle. It has been so in 
 Modern Missions. Would you put that 
 shaking and besoming peremptorily and ef- 
 fectually down ? We hear, behind the tur- 
 moil and the thick streaming clouds of dust, 
 as God's great besoms sweep along, the 
 words of an august cry : " I will overturn, 
 and overturn, and overturn until He, whose 
 right it is to reign, shall come." That voice 
 uttered the thunders of Sinai. It will not 
 be safe, men of the earth, to lay your hands 
 
THE LOST COIN. 45 
 
 or try your potent edicts on His dread be- 
 soming. Let the potsherds of the earth 
 strive with the potsherds of the earth ; but 
 woe to him who contendeth with his Maker. 
 God is sweeping us as a nation. The an- 
 cient and dust-covered must bear the touch 
 of God's rough rods when commissioned of 
 Him, as they scrape and scatter and shiver. 
 And how often has God used sore trials, to 
 shake the unbelieving and impenitent heart 
 out of its fatal security ! Your business is 
 unremunerative. Your debtors fail: your 
 own debts grow unmanageable. Your 
 friends are sick, or far, or they grow feeble 
 and unreliable. Some darling child is vis- 
 ited with deadly sickness. The circle that 
 once girt the table of home is broken, and a 
 void place is left at the hearth and the 
 board, never to be filled again by its revered 
 and endeared occupant. Or, your own bod- 
 ily strength fails, and your mind grows de- 
 spondent and irresolute. And yet, how 
 often in just such scenes of disappointment, 
 bereavement and sore distress, has God 
 
46 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 given you to know the true emptiness of 
 earth and the indescribable excellence of 
 Christ and his salvation. He has whirled — 
 rudely, fiercely, you think — away, all the 
 old peace and ease. But He is only besom- 
 ing the habitation to recover the jewel. He 
 is filling the old familiar scenes with a whirl- 
 wind of cares and frettings and anxieties, 
 to show thee in this brief, sharp way, the 
 brightness of a better hope than earth ever 
 bred, and to let in the undying light of 
 Grace and Redemption on thy faint, dark 
 soul, and on the death-bed and the grave 
 and the far Eternity which lie before thee. 
 
 God, in His enlightening and His dis- 
 turbing agencies, is bidding the people and 
 His churches, to seek out, and is Himself, 
 drawing out lost souls. These times of agi- 
 tation may become seasons of great moral 
 renovation. The church should, in her 
 own bounds, look for the lost — the neglect- 
 ed — the overlooked — the estrayed — the dis- 
 regarded, and the down - trodden. Her 
 Lord's jewels may be amongst these sweep- 
 
THE LOST COIN. 47 
 
 ings. So Carey, and Fuller, and Ryland, 
 and Sutcliffe, looked over seas and conti- 
 nents to the Bengalee sweepings in the In- 
 dian chambers of the wide imperial domin- 
 ions of Britain. What spoils for Heaven — 
 what new gems for the Saviour's mediato- 
 rial crown, did they not find, rewarding the 
 search. So Judson, and Boardman, and 
 Vinton, labored for the Burman and Karen. 
 And so, at home, the Sabbath-school Teach- 
 er, and the Tract Visitor, and the Home 
 Missionary, may find, and should seek dili- 
 gently and prayerfully until they do find, 
 the lost, that are their Master's, in the 
 wide wastes of the neglect and squalor and 
 ignorance and destitution of our great cities. 
 So may battle-fields and hospitals and mov- 
 ing armies, have going through them, the 
 quest of Christian sympath}^, and Christian 
 labor, and Christian prayer, and Christian 
 generosity, and Christian brotherhood, and 
 Christian patriotism. Who shall calculate 
 the gains thus secured to Christs' cause ? 
 The Spirit convinces of sin. His first 
 
48 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 lessons are of neccssit_v, then, humiliating, 
 alarming and arousing. He leads the poor, 
 burdened pilgrim by the quaking mountain 
 of Sinai, under the canopy of its gloom and 
 thunderings, and over the miry depths of 
 the Slough of Despond. Men feel them- 
 selves strangely conscious of a misery and 
 guilt and weakness, which before they had 
 never suspected as belonging to them. 
 They go from side to side, in pursuit of a 
 vain relief, and meet only disappointment 
 and rebuffs. But as the light shines from 
 the Strait Gate and the Atoning Cross, they 
 begin to hope, and believe, and love, and 
 repent. They fall at the feet of the Redeem- 
 er, whom they have so long forgotten or 
 spurned. They find under the strong, 
 steady light of Scripture, as expounded and 
 made intense by the Spirit, that Saviour in 
 His glorious fullness. In finding Him, they 
 find themselves ; and their own souls thus 
 saved — souls, that, if found at death out of 
 Christ, would have had their redemption 
 ceasing forever — are in Him, become re- 
 
THE LOST COIN. 49 
 
 splendent centres, each in its own orbit, of a 
 glory never to be clouded, and fountains of 
 a peace unspeakable and eternal. Out of 
 the dust and the darkness comes the gem 
 imperishable. 
 
 And Avhat shall be the result of all the 
 toil and the turmoil to the laborious search- 
 er for souls, and the successful .'* Fatigue, 
 repining and sad exhaustion ? No — the 
 neighbors are made sharers of the joy, al- 
 though not called to partake the search. 
 The grace won in the closet, streams free 
 over the mart and the highway. True 
 piety is the love of the God of Love ; and 
 rejoices in the transmission of its own image 
 and feelings to others. The number of fel- 
 low - heirs diminishes not, in religion, the 
 share of each kinsman in the common heri- 
 tage. The more, the richer. Each angel 
 is the happier on this very day, for this 
 day's conversions of sinners on the earth to 
 God ; though it be but some ignorant child, 
 groping its way to the feet of Jesus, some 
 poor outcast, feeling on his soiled brow and 
 S 
 
50 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 shrivelled heart, the first beams of Christ 
 as the Morning Star; some sufferer, turn- 
 ing, amid sorrow and death, the eye of a 
 new-born hope and a new-found peace to- 
 wards a Blessed Redeemer and an opened 
 Pai-adise. If, in the presence of Christ's 
 Pharisaic opponents, who watched for occa- 
 casion of complaint, there was a pang of 
 envy and disappointment at his reception 
 of the poor, penitent publicans, that feel- 
 ing of discontent did not pervade the bosom 
 of the unseen, angelic attendants of our 
 Lord. " He was seen of angels," as they 
 watched His earthly pathway ; and angels, 
 as they now survey the course of His 
 Church, rejoice in each sinner repenting, 
 though his be dying breath, drawn like that 
 of the penitent thief, on the cross where he 
 hangs in mortal anguish. 
 
 What then is the lesson of all this? Are 
 men to do nothing ? Are they to wait pas- 
 sively the Spirit's approach? No, my Chris- 
 tian brother. The Spirit is freely given to 
 your asking. No, my unbelieving friend, it 
 
THE LOST COIN. 5 I 
 
 is your fault, to be continually resisting and 
 grieving that Spirit. It has solicited you in 
 every time of sober thoughtfulness. You 
 have gazed on the starry heavens, and felt the 
 paltriness of earth's trifles. You have looked 
 over the ocean, and in view of its depths 
 or its storms, felt the feebleness of man and 
 the majesty of man's Maker. You have 
 stood by the bed-side of a dying Christian, 
 and have heard the appeal bidding you to 
 seek God. In the sanctuary, your lethargy 
 has been disturbed ; God has sent truth to 
 hunt and harass you. In all these scenes 
 and seasons, the still, small voice of the Spirit 
 has been calling you to seek God ; and love 
 has been calling you to know Christ, and 
 thus be at peace. 
 
 Nor let the church forget the terrible 
 dangers of a false peace and a carnal se- 
 curity. It is not the cr)'ing " Peace, Peace," 
 that brings it to State or to Church, when 
 there is not the putting away of sin, and 
 the doing of justice, when there is no 
 " peace," of equity — of truth — and of 
 
52 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 brotherhood. God threatens those who 
 " settle," like Moab, in mere apathy and 
 worldliness, " on their lees," and mistake 
 sloth and luxury for the repose of innocence 
 and blessedness. He warns His people of 
 the slow accretions of scandals, and errors 
 and judgments, when the strong man armed 
 keepeth his house in peace — when excluded 
 light, and gathered dust, have festooned the 
 habitation for the abode of Lukewarmness 
 and Indolence, of Apathy and Spiritual 
 Death. How terrible is the warning of 
 God, by His prophet, Malachi, to a degen- 
 erate Israel. They allowed, so to speak, 
 the litter of their heartlessness and formal- 
 ism to gather around their religious assem- 
 blies, and over their devout services. Then 
 the priest and the people became, as repro- 
 bate silver, fit for the fate of the refuse into 
 which they had fallen. The besom of judg- 
 ment was about to gather, and to hurl 
 forth, such from the courts and privileges 
 which they had profaned. " If you will 
 not hear," saith the Lord, "I will, curse 
 
THE LOST COIN. 53 
 
 your blessings : yea, I have cursed them al- 
 ready, because ye do not lay it to heart. 
 Behold, I will spread dung upon your faces, 
 even the dung of )^our solemn feasts, and 
 one shall take you away with it."* The 
 Roman legions, and the fire-brands of Titus, 
 flung in at temple windows, to set ablaze 
 the temple hangings, were God's rude 
 scavengers to sweep, from the land and 
 courts of God, formalism and worldliness ; 
 as a band of sweepers goes in after some 
 great gathering, to remove the mire which 
 the multitude had brought in, by their 
 trampling feet, and the accumulated frag- 
 ments and offal of their turbulent convoca- 
 tion. 
 
 When the Jews were about to keep the 
 Passover, the feast of unleavened bread, 
 they searched the whole house with candles 
 to cleanse it from the last vestige of ordinary 
 bread which had leaven in it. Paul uses this 
 as an illustration of the Christian Church, 
 as needing to purge themselves anxiously 
 
 * Malachi, ii. 2, 3. 
 
54 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 for revival, and thus they might be ready to 
 receive a blessing from God. But if the 
 ■gospel searches and scatters and disturbs, 
 it comes also to sift and to recover. It 
 elevates multitudes, who were before igno- 
 rant and careless and depraved, and makes 
 them to sit in heavenly places in Christ 
 Jesus. It takes the soul, a coin stamped 
 for its Maker, in His own image, with His 
 superscription. That coin has been trodden 
 on and encrusted, until it is black and un- 
 sightly. It lies in the ashes — it is swept 
 into the dust-bin. But He, who has " no 
 pleasure in the death" and banishment of 
 the sinner, brings it forth. He says over 
 His people : " Though ye have lain among 
 the pots,* yet ye shall be as the wings of a 
 dove covered with silver and her feathers 
 with yellow gold." The grovelling shall 
 soar and the lethargic become aspiring and 
 exultant. The dimness shall be burnished. 
 Human nature shall be made sterling by 
 the alchemy of Divine Grace. Man shall 
 
 *Psalm, Ixviii. 13. 
 
THE LOST COIN. 55 
 
 be rendered the mate of angels. The 
 earthly Church shall become the ante- 
 chamber of the heavenly. What lay, with 
 Lazarus, among dogs, shall, Avith Lazarus, 
 disenthralled and disembodied, rise to the 
 society of seraphim, and the presence and 
 smile of the Lord our God, in the fullness 
 of His glory and the clear beamings of His 
 love, seen at His own home, where is full- 
 ness of joy, and where are pleasures forever 
 more. God smites, but it is to heal you ; 
 He disturbs you, but it is to give ultimate 
 calm and peace. He searches you out, 
 buried and dark in your low estate : it is to 
 lift you to His own diadem, to shine as His 
 jewels with a cloudless, endless splendor. 
 
 And the Church of God needs in her own 
 home and house to be busy, grieving not 
 the Spirit, but earnest in keeping the light 
 burning clearly, and vigilant that she may 
 prevent the dust from settling, in passive 
 quiet, on her inner furniture. To remain 
 by the past is, in a world of loss and change, 
 not the sufficient safesfuard of religfious life 
 
56 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 and religious usefulness. The dust of for- 
 malism, and lethargy, and worldliness, may 
 soon bury up all her treasures of grace and 
 truth, as far as these consist in Christian ex- 
 ample. The discipline, that for the time 
 agitates, may be the first and inevitable con- 
 dition precedent, for the life and growth that 
 is promised to her pra3'ers and her efforts. 
 
 The Church has, in her own bounds, scope 
 for large work. All that is needed is but to 
 set about it, in God's sight and strength, in 
 the love of souls, and in the entreaty for, 
 and the expectation of, aid from His good 
 Spirit. 
 
 It is work, in which the very stars of 
 heaven, and the angels that always behold 
 the face of our Father in heaven, will work 
 with, and will work energetically and heart- 
 ily for, her. Arise and shine, then, Church 
 of God! Shake thyself from the dust, and 
 put on thy beautiful garments, and become 
 the praise of the earth and the joy of thy 
 Lord. 
 
 Times of change and commotion, and 
 
THE LOST COIN. 57 
 
 great social upheaval, and darkenings that 
 cloud the whole horizon, need bring no sad 
 and chill forebodings. Seek Christ, and 
 seek the increase of Christ's Church ; seek 
 diligently the souls of the perishing. Hang 
 out the lamp, and scan the omens of duty 
 and hope; ply patiently and cheerily thy 
 task in thy own special field — in thy nook 
 of sorrow and toil. Above all, pray with- 
 out ceasing; and thou shalt not look in 
 vain, or find thy toil bootless or thy prayer 
 unheeded. The promise for the enquirer, 
 is made to diligent effort and patient, per- 
 sistent research. The miner does not ex- 
 pect to wash gold dust into his coffers, with 
 the first stroke of his pick, and the first 
 waving of his sieve. He must turn the 
 flood, stand deep in its current for weary 
 days, and lift pick, and urge spade, till the 
 arm aches and the heart wearies ; but, so 
 and thus only, comes success. It is so, God 
 has said, in heavenly things, " If thou shalt 
 search for wisdom as for hid treasures, thou 
 shalt find her." 
 
58 THE LOST COIN. 
 
 Let not the burdened soul, distracted 
 with cares, to whom the outlook on life is 
 dark and tempestuous, who feels God's 
 Providence tearing into the old rest and 
 scattering roughly and suddenly, the old 
 confidences, therefore give way to despair. 
 It is even thus that God is righting His 
 own house and making the walls of His 
 cause and His Zion to be built in troublous 
 times. 
 
 And what is the joy of the regenerate 
 soul, in prospect of these changes, even 
 whilst yet prisoned in the body and sur- 
 rounded with the conflicts and trials and 
 besetments of earth, if but the grace of God 
 shines in the soul. How can it, then, adopt 
 the words of Charles Wesley, the hymn- 
 writer of our Methodist brethren — 
 
 " Long my imprisoned spirit lay, 
 
 Fast bound in sin and nature's night ; 
 Thine eye diffused a quickening ray — 
 
 I woke — tlie dungeon flamed with light: 
 I rose, went forth, and followed Thee." 
 
 The soul lost is found again. The creature. 
 
THE LOST COIN. 59 
 
 wandering and diving and plunging hell- 
 ward, is saved ; and now journeying in the 
 care and under the conduct of God, it is 
 climbing, and, one day, to be soaring heav- 
 enward. And if householders are glad over 
 their augmented stores and their increasing 
 home comforts, as the fields grow broader, 
 and the harvests richer, and the revenues 
 ampler, and the ten pieces become thou- 
 sands and tens of thousands — what greater 
 joy is his, who is rich toward God, whom 
 God has made useful in winning immortal 
 souls to the knowledge and service of 
 Christ Jesus. The mother, the Sabbath- 
 school teacher, the father, the pastor, the 
 missionary, thus honored, are, indeed, blest in 
 having turned any or many, or brought but 
 the individual, or won the multitude from the 
 error of their ways. God grant that each of 
 us may be thus rich, as said Paul, though 
 ourselves poor, " yet making many rich." 
 What the joy of a father and a Christian 
 mother, greeting a whole household given 
 to their prayers, and safely housed at last 
 
6o THE LOST COIN. 
 
 in the upper skies. The waving sieve, the 
 tossing besom, the shadowing cross, all will, 
 in that world of light, be remembered with 
 a fervid gratitude, 
 
 " I will search Jerusalem with candles," 
 says our God by Zephaniah.* Blessed 
 those ready for the Divine scrutin)^ " I 
 will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver," 
 is His declaration elsewhere, f Thrice 
 blessed those whom He, the Great Refiner, 
 shall stamp as His truly, and own as His 
 eternally. May each of us, my hearers, 
 thus blessed in the search, and even under 
 and by the refining, be found shining, at 
 the last, as the sun forever in the kingdom 
 of the Father, to Whom — with the Son, the 
 Redeemer — and the Spirit, the Renewer, the 
 Sealer, Sanctifier and Comforter, be glory 
 evermore. Amen. 
 
 * Zephaniah, i. 12. \ Malachi, iii. 3. 
 
THE LOST SON. 
 
 And he said, A certain man had two sons : 
 
 And the tounger op them said to his father, Father, give 
 
 ME THE PORTION OF GOODS THAT FALLETH TO ME. AnD HE DI- 
 VIDED UNTO THEM HIS LIVING. 
 
 And NOT MANX DATS after, the tounger SON GATHERED ALL 
 TOGETHER, AND TOOK HIS JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY, AND 
 THERE WASTED HIS SUBSTANCE WITH RIOTOUS LIVING. 
 
 And WHEN HE HAD SPENT ALL, THERE AROSE A MIGHTY FAMINE 
 IN THAT LAND ; AND HE BEGAN TO BE IN WANT. 
 
 And HE WENT AND JOINED HIMSELF TO A CITIZEN OF THAT 
 COUNTRY ; AND HE SENT HIM INTO HIS FIELDS TO FEED SWINE. 
 
 And he WOULD pain have filled his belly with THE HUSKS 
 
 that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto hin. 
 
 And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired 
 servants of my father have bread enough, and to spare, 
 and i perish with hunger i 
 
 i will arise and go to my fapher, 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. But when he was 
 
 YET A great WAT OFF, HIS FATHER SAW HIM, AND HAD COMPAS- 
 SION, AND RAN, AND FELL ON HIS NECK, AND KISSED HIM. 
 
 And THE SON said unto HIM, Father, I have sinned against 
 Heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more wortuy to be 
 
 CALLED thy son. 
 
 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 : 
 
 For this my son was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, 
 
 AND 18 FOUND. AnD THEY BEGAN TO BE MERRY. 
 
 Now his elder son was in the field : and as he came and 
 drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. 
 
 6 (6i) 
 
62 THE LOST SON. 
 
 Akd he called oxe of the servants, and asked ■what these 
 things meant. 
 
 And he said unto him. Thy brother is come ; and thy fa- 
 ther HATH KILLED THE FATTED CALF, BECAUSE HE HATH RECEIVED 
 niM SAFE AND SOUND. 
 
 And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came 
 his father out, and entreated him. 
 And he answering, said to his father, Lo, these mant years 
 
 do I SERVE THEE, NEITHER TRANSGRESSED I AT ANY TIME THY 
 
 commandment ; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, THAT I 
 
 MIGHT make merry WITH MY FRIENDS : 
 
 But AS soon as this thy son was come, which hath devour- 
 ed THY LIVING WITH HARLOTS, THOU HAST KILLED FOR HIM THE 
 FATTED CALF. 
 
 And HE SAID UNTO HIM, SoN, THOU ART EVER WITH ME, AND ALL 
 THAT I HAVE IS THINE. 
 
 It was MEET THAT WE SHOULD MAKE MERRY, AND BE OLAD : 
 FOR THIS THY BROTHER WAS DEAD, AND IS ALIVE AGAIN ; AND WAS 
 LOST, AND IS FOUND. —Luke, Chttp. XV. 11-32. 
 
 IS it not disparaging to compare man to 
 a prodigal, insensate and impoverished 
 and imbruted? The debasement was of 
 man's own making. God is but stooping to 
 uplift us from that degradation ; and to en- 
 trench and environ us upon the heights of 
 His recovered favor, and amid the securi- 
 ties of His avowed Fatherhood. 
 
 All may have noticed the startling ap- 
 pearance of reality, — the distinctness of out- 
 line, the body wath its shadows standing 
 forth until it seems it could almost be touch- 
 
THE LOST SON. 63 
 
 ed, — which distinguishes the stereoscopic 
 view of some landmark or monument from 
 the ordinary picture. It arises from the in- 
 strument's furnishing two different views 
 taken at two different points ; but made in 
 the after survey both to blend into one. It 
 is, by seeming to see it from two sides and 
 under two aspects, that we feel the apparent 
 wholeness and roundness and reality, of the 
 scene or the structure to be represented. 
 
 Is it not part of the crowning glory of 
 Revelation that it gives us a more impres- 
 sive and vivid representation of truths and 
 duties and sins, by its giving us the two- 
 fold aspect of many a scene and character 
 which the ordinary literature of the race 
 can see and can limn only on one side? 
 The Bible stereoscopes great facts of hu- 
 man experience. Where the history, the 
 philosophy, or the poetry, of merely earthly 
 origin can afford us but only the one side 
 of an incident or character, and draws 
 thus but a dead and flat sketch, God's in- 
 spired messengers present us the two as- 
 
64 - THE LOST SON. 
 
 pects — the side that man surveys, and the 
 side that angels and God behold. Thus de- 
 picted, the portraiture catches an inimitable 
 reality and prominence. When the woman 
 that had been a sinner stole her trembling 
 way, uninvited and unheralded, into the 
 house of Simon to wipe the feet of his Di- 
 vine Guest, it seemed on the human side, as 
 the host and his friends regarded it, the 
 unwarranted intrusion of a disreputable 
 stranger giving very questionable honors 
 that compromised and tarnished the Re- 
 ceiver. As the angels of God beheld it, 
 there was a penitent renouncing sin, and 
 absolved of the God whose pardon can re- 
 mit the offence as His grace can renew the 
 offender. 
 
 When the dwarfish Zaccheus climbed the 
 tree, to gaze over the heads of a wonder- 
 loving and tumultuous throng at the illus- 
 trious Prophet of Nazareth, it seemed to 
 neighbors, and it may be to apostles, only 
 the curiosity of one whose interest in Christ 
 was likely to do himself little good, and to 
 
THE LOST SON. 65 
 
 do the Master little service, belonging, as 
 the eager gazer did, to a class generally, 
 and not without reason, disliked of the Jew- 
 ish people, — the tax-gatherers, not very 
 scrupulous as to means of levying, and not 
 very exact and honest as to amounts report- 
 ed at the treasury, of a tax laid by heathen 
 conquerors upon the proud and chafed and 
 bigoted Hebrew people. But to the Mas- 
 ter's own eyes, it was salvation coming 
 home, that day and in that wild gathering, 
 to the house and the heart of Zaccheus ; it 
 was another trophy snatched for Heaven ; 
 another channel hewn for the gospel's free 
 currents over the world. What a new view 
 of life might we have if we would but, be- 
 side the world's view and hasty superficial 
 sketch of it, take out of Scripture the juster 
 and far different view and judgment of it as 
 it appears unto Him who seeth not as man 
 seeth — if we would let the Bible stereoscope, 
 so to speak, all our estimates of character 
 and duty, of trial and temptation, by casting 
 them before us under the twofold light, as 
 
^ THE LOST SON. 
 
 man sees and as angels see them. How 
 would trifles shrink from the world's exag- 
 geration of their size, and grow pale and 
 dim, spite of the world's elaborate painting 
 of them with tinsel and borrowed hues, if 
 we would but let in upon them the light of 
 another world, and the strong glare of the 
 judgment day. So did Moses turn from the 
 splendors of a flattering, and from the ter- 
 rors of a menacing, court, and find all dead- 
 ened down in tone and dwarfed into insig- 
 nificance as to size, under the calm and aw- 
 ful light of a higher sovereignty and an 
 eternal recompense. He endured, as seeing 
 Him who is invisible ; and feared not the 
 wrath of the king. So martyrs, threatened 
 with death, but solicited by the proffer of a 
 resurrection from the peril of a yawning 
 tomb, if they would only consent to sin, if 
 they would simply offer incense — a pinch 
 of it — to an idol, rise superior to intimida- 
 tion and blind to allurement, by looking to 
 a better resurrection — aye — a far better than 
 the world could promise — even the escape 
 
THE LOST SON, 6/ 
 
 of the soul to God and the recovery of the 
 tortured and mangled body, in the day of 
 the opened grav^e and the opened dooms- 
 day book, then to be a deathless and pain- 
 less and glorious body, a glorified taberna- 
 cle, ever the home of a sanctified and im- 
 mortal and untempted spirit. 
 
 So our Saviour, in those parables of which 
 we now would scan the third and last, meets 
 the cavils of His enemies against His kind- 
 ness towards publicans and sinners, by bring- 
 ing in, — upon the partial and limited view 
 which His accusers had of the Saviour and 
 His penitent listeners — the light in which 
 angels and the God of angels looked upon 
 these same lost ones, whom these Pharisees 
 so denounced, and upon the penitence and 
 recovery, which these Pharisees deemed so 
 questionable as to sincerity, and which they 
 judged, if sincere, so certainly and so utter- 
 ly insignificant as to influence. When the 
 lights of earth on the one side, and the lights 
 of heaven on the other side, fall thus on one 
 and the same incident or character, what a 
 
68 THE LOST SON. 
 
 new reality does it put on. We are verita- 
 bly and reall}' — each one of us — not what 
 we judge ourselves, or as we seem to our 
 erring fellow man — fallible and precipitate 
 — partial in his over-friendliness, it may be, 
 or prejudiced in his animosity. But we are 
 intrinsically and really as we seem to the 
 eyes of another order of beings — to holy 
 angels and the God of angels. We are 
 what Christ the judge sees us as being — ■ 
 nothing more, nothing less. An English 
 statesman spoke of merely titular nobility 
 as " the accident of an accident." Beings 
 of a higher world regard man as the crea- 
 ture and the charge of God, the denizen of 
 eternity. To them, the true sorrow for sin, 
 and the consequent welcome of the Redeem- 
 er, displayed in the case of earth's vilest 
 rebel, and lowliest and leas^ intelligent 
 transgressor, are causes of joy. The morn- 
 ing stars, who shouted over our earth's 
 creation as over a new exhibition of their 
 Maker's glory, do, this very Sabbath, won- 
 der, and blaze, and warble out new ecstasies 
 
THE LOST SON. 69 
 
 of adoration, as they see the greater achieve- 
 ments of the Redeemer and the Renewer, in 
 the conversion of but one sinner from the 
 error of his ways. Why not you, that con- 
 verted one : the receiver, yourself of a free 
 pardon ; the theme, yourself, of a celestial 
 anthem ? To us, the victor's palm, and the 
 capitalist's revenues, and the poet's laurel, 
 and the crown of empire, show like realities. 
 To them, the realities are God's smile, or 
 God's ban — heaven or hell — souls in their 
 apostacy — souls in their recovery — souls in 
 their communion with God — or souls self- 
 banished from God to an irremediable sin 
 and an unreturning exile. Let us implore 
 from God's Spirit aid aright to ponder, on 
 God's pages, the lessons of this new light, 
 bringing into solemn prominence and sa- 
 lient distinctness, the facts of our desti- 
 ny and our interest — our danger for both 
 worlds, and our duty for all time and for all 
 eternity. 
 
 I. As to the order and connection, then, 
 of the three parables, does it not seem as if 
 
70 THE LOST SON. 
 
 they were iatended — the Lost Sheep, the 
 Lost Coin, and the Lost Son — to present the 
 great scheme and fact of human salvation 
 as it lies in the Divine Mind ? Consistently 
 with Divine Equity and with the faithful- 
 ness of the holy law which man has broken, 
 God cannot be the Father of a lost race un- 
 til His Divine Law, which man has tram- 
 pled under foot, be magnified and made 
 honorable. He must be "Just" — just to 
 Himself — just to His angels — just to the 
 unfallen tenantry of other worlds before He 
 can be "the Justifier" of him, the peni- 
 tent and returning prodigal, who believes 
 in Jesus. The Redemption precedes the 
 Renovation. 
 
 The Shepherd seeking his estrayed sheep, 
 must be reminding us of the Divine Speak- 
 er of the parable, when elsewhere He de- 
 nominates Himself, the Good Shepherd lay- 
 ing down His Hfe for the sheep. Does not 
 this first parable bring forward that atoning 
 sacrifice of the Son, provided in Heaven, 
 and demanded by the Law and the Nature 
 
THE LOST SON. J I 
 
 of God, as the prerequisite for man's recov- 
 ery and forgiveness? 
 
 Then, on this redemption go forth, in the 
 second parable, the Providence of God, and 
 the Spirit of God, and the Revelation of 
 God, as the lamp and besom and the dili- 
 gent search of the housewife, recovering 
 the lost coin ; and bringing and enabling the 
 soul of man, to see the danger of its condi- 
 tion by sin, and its need of the gracious 
 provisions of the Great Atonement. But, 
 whilst man is dependent on God's Spirit for 
 each good thought, he is not saved in inert 
 carelessness, and in utter apathy and inac- 
 tion. He is turned of God ; but he turns 
 himself, when thus turned of the Good 
 Spirit. If quickened, he is converted ; and 
 repents and considers his ways, and sets his 
 face toward a forsaken home and an out- 
 raged Father. Then comes to the soul thus 
 seeking and self- destroyed, the thought : 
 Will God receive, and can the Holy ac- 
 cept so worthless a petitioner? And to the 
 soul of man, thus awakened and humbled, 
 
72 THE LOST SON. 
 
 distressed in its self-accusations, and per- 
 plexed as to its possible disenthralment, 
 how docs this closing parable of the three 
 address its consolations. You are unwor- 
 thy, but you are the sought and the wel- 
 comed of a most loving and generous and 
 placable Father. You cannot so yearn to 
 return, as He longs to 'welcome your re- 
 turn. 
 
 II. Let us dwell next on the affecting 
 picture of man's apostacy, and of man's 
 return, and of God's acceptance, and of 
 man's mistakings and mislikings as to that 
 acceptance. 
 
 It is a tender and opulent parent. His 
 sons, housed and trained under his eye, 
 have not requited aright the father's love 
 and bounty. The younger cries. Give me 
 " my portion that falleth to me." Was 
 it his right that he asks it thus ? Till 
 the father died, was there any " falling to 
 him ?" Had the parent needed the rough 
 hint, that he had lived too long, and now 
 lagged a supernumerary and incumbrance 
 
THE LOST SON. 73 
 
 on life's stage ? The father, even to a plea 
 so rude and unfilial, yet responds. It is — 
 alas — the daily, hourly appeal of man to his 
 Maker. We want our share, as we think 
 it, of earth and happiness, away from 
 God ; and in some imaginary but impossi- 
 ble independence of Him. You have your 
 own scheme of happiness ; and, though 
 God's creature, stalking over His earth, 
 and inhaling with each new respiration, 
 His air — the eye seeing by His light, and 
 the ear hearing by the vibration of His 
 atmosphere, upon your bodily organs of 
 His wise framing ; — each returning Spring, 
 with its starting buds and shooting grasses, 
 with its fields again green, and its skies 
 again blue, but a new loan from his unstint- 
 ed, untiring, unconstrained generosity ; — a 
 loan, not a debt from Him — all that you 
 have, all that you are, and all that you hope, 
 but His handiwork and His loan, you seem 
 to suppose it must be '' given" you, as if to 
 enjoy it for yourself, apart from the Author 
 of it all. Why is this ? By what right 
 7 
 
74 THE LOST SON. 
 
 make you such a claim on God ? By what 
 shadow of reason, can you defend the feasi- 
 bleness of a happiness apart from Him ? 
 But be this as it will. It is given. God 
 allows you the use of your liberty though 
 it be misimproved, to your own injury and 
 His dishonor. The portion is gathered, to 
 be carried afar from and to be enjoyed out 
 of the sight of its parental Earner and Be- 
 stower. Follow the young adventurer to his 
 far land. He is now shaken loose of the old 
 restraints ; and hurls off the old fetters of a 
 father's lessons and Sabbath training, and 
 wipes away all a mother's prayerful tears 
 and nursery traditions. The old family Bi- 
 ble shall not pester him. Sabbaths shall not 
 hamper his free, proud movements. Now, 
 for the swing of the free passions ; for gaiety 
 and license and self-will. But, along with 
 the new riot of an imaginary and willful 
 freedom, the happiness does not come. 
 Strangers aid the prodigal, by interested 
 flatteries, to wing his treasures, and seize 
 his long-coveted goal of self-indulgence and 
 
THE LOST SON. 75 
 
 earthliness. The reveller, in his cups ; the 
 skeptic, in his cavillings ; gets loose of 
 God's curbs of conscience and scripture 
 and early training. But somehow, the por- 
 tion of time and means and strength allotted 
 the reveller, is fast spent. The life fleets 
 by — the powers now flag and fail, and the 
 shadows fall and the amusements grow vap- 
 id. The wine has run to lees ; th'e varnish 
 and paint scale off the gaudy scenes of the 
 world's glittering drama. Like the dying 
 Chesterfield, he complains that he has been 
 behind the scenes, and has seen the dirty 
 pulleys and daubed canvas of the world's 
 paltry spectacles. He is disenchanted. But, 
 in the failure of his old illusions, the prodi- 
 gal is far from God ; but not nearer thereby 
 to any true friend, or true home, in the 
 land of his exile. Suddenly he finds that 
 he is poor and in want. But his want is 
 obstinate and his poverty is proud. He 
 will not gratify the old instructors of his 
 childhood by owning a mistake. Not He. 
 He will not ask a Father's pity or forgive- 
 
76 THE LOST SON. 
 
 ness. He will rather keep his complaints 
 from a father's knowledge, and seek the ser- 
 vice of strangers ; as he has coveted happi- 
 ness in the society and boon companion- 
 ship of aliens. But, instead of sympathy, 
 he finds the shrugged shoulder, and the dis- 
 tant bow, and the unrecognizing stare. 
 When he appeals for help, he is sent to me- 
 nial work and a starving stipend. He must 
 go into the fields to feed swine ; he yearns 
 for their food ; and, seeing his hungry 
 glances, and wan cheeks, his step that has 
 lost its elasticity, and his cowed air, none 
 of his old mates, who had drained the 
 veins of his prosperity, like the hungry 
 leech, choose to waste a thought, or turn 
 aside from their new revels and new dupes, 
 to bestow a tear on the poor unthrifty out- 
 cast, whom they had aided to beggar, and 
 whom they now combine to disavow. The 
 old story — is it not — of the world's large 
 welcome of the prosperous, and quick de- 
 sertion of the wretched ? Plaudits for the 
 man of the full purse, if its strings are held 
 
THE LOST SON, y-J 
 
 but loosely tied ; and sharp criticisms and 
 speedy disavowal of the man whose purse 
 had been rapidly emptied or cunningly 
 stolen. You go to the world for happiness. 
 Long as you can seem to give it to the 
 world, they will live on you. But you be- 
 come discontented and sad ; and then the 
 world ships you off to her Botany Bay of 
 the foiled and the baffled and the disap- 
 pointed. In his sorrow, the prodigal comes 
 to himself. His superiority to his father's 
 grave lessons, and his impatience of the re- 
 straints of the home, and his preference for 
 the far land and the wild revel ; all were, as 
 he now sees, not merely follies but sins, the 
 sheerest blunders and the saddest insults 
 and wrongs. How many hired servants of 
 his father — men who had less religious 
 knowledge than himself, are now, in true 
 peace, far superior to him. Men who were 
 idolaters and cannibals, in the time of his 
 being a Sabbath - school child, are now, 
 thanks to God's grace, true Christian wor- 
 shippers ; and he is a sad, forlorn, hopeless, 
 
 r 
 
78 THE LOST SON. 
 
 wanderer. The estrangement from God, 
 and escape from the Sanctviary and Sabbath 
 of his youthful training, had not left him as 
 happy, even as much so as less favored men 
 in endowment, in privilege, in station, the 
 mere servants of his ancestral household. 
 They have enough. He is in pinching want. 
 And, coming to himself, he will no longer 
 stay by himself. He who had trusted in 
 self and the world — who had said to the 
 Father: "Give me mine," and had said to 
 the strangers : " Help me spend what is 
 mine," now will turn his back on his fatal 
 choice and his recent associates. How his 
 father may treat his confessions is doubtful. 
 But they are due to justice and to truth ; 
 and he will make the attempt. He comes 
 in shame, and in rags. But he is descried 
 afar. Does his father send one of his low- 
 est retainers, to warn off the bounds of the 
 estate the prodigal, who had so disgraced 
 his house and kin ? Is he bidden to forbear 
 poisoning with his leprous rags, the air of 
 the mansion of which he was so unworthv ? 
 
THE LOST SON. 79 
 
 No, he is descried, to be pitied. The fa- 
 ther does not excuse himself for inaction ; 
 but runs to meet and welcome him. His 
 confessions are broken off by his father's 
 frank forgiveness. That father runs to 
 meet his child when yet "a great way off;" 
 and falling on his neck, embraces him. 
 The child would have fallen at the parent's 
 feet. The father forbids it, and clasps his 
 son's neck. He bids bring out the best 
 robe, and slay and dress the stalled calf; he 
 puts the shoes on those bared feet lately so 
 bemired, and the ring on the brown hands 
 of the poor forlorn penitent ; and the feast 
 begins, without waiting the return of the 
 brother, as yet busied in some distant por- 
 tion of the estate. That brother is startled 
 on his homeward way at the sights and 
 sounds of some strange rejoicing. He 
 will not rush in, well assured though he 
 might be, that his wise and good father 
 could have no such festival days without 
 some good cause — without some new felici- 
 ty, that he, like his father, should at once 
 
8o THE LOST SON. 
 
 exult over. He beckons a servant to be his 
 informant. Instead of sharing and helping 
 the father's generous welcome, and adding 
 a brother's greeting and a brother's tears to 
 the glad return of the exile and the attesta- 
 tions of paternal tenderness, he is discon- 
 tented and will not enter. The father 
 comes out. Insulting his parent, this un- 
 natural and envious man, speaks of the joy 
 as unjust to himself. The return he talks 
 of, not as a return home, but as a " coming," 
 as if it were unwarranted, and should, of 
 right, have been barred and disallowed — a 
 mere visit, meant to sponge afresh on a lib- 
 erality already abused and a tenderness that 
 had been vilely dishonored. He speaks of 
 the new comer as " thy son," not recogniz- 
 ing that he was as really " my brother." 
 He recalls not the prodigal's sorrows and 
 his amendment and his humiliation, but his 
 sins only ; and he paints, in envy and in 
 self-esteem, his own comparative merits. 
 He had no paltry kid, though he would 
 have used it with respectable friends — men 
 
THE LOST SON. 8 1 
 
 all in good repute, orderly and cosy and 
 moral tax - payers. This outcast had the 
 fatted calf, though his past waste had been 
 with " harlots." But the father responds 
 by the touching remark. Was the elder 
 brother's stay with himself, a mere separa- 
 tion from all " friends ?" Was he, the father, 
 then no "friend" of the elder son? Had 
 he not, in the father's presence, and in the 
 father's society, all things as "his own?" 
 Did the feast and the welcome really confer 
 — if he were but right-minded — more pleas- 
 ure on his parent, than they ought to have 
 done on himself — a son and a brother? 
 Had not the younger child, of the same 
 hearth-stone and roof-tree, been dead ; was 
 he not alive again ? Had he not been lost ; 
 was he not found ? Was it natural, manly, 
 filial, fraternal, thus to scowl on Redemp- 
 tion from Hell : and make his growlings of 
 selfish envy the under-base of the melodi- 
 ous anthems of glad angels over a new res- 
 cue from Abaddon and a new trophy for 
 Heaven? 
 
82 THE LOST SON. 
 
 III. And now, let us see the application 
 of this most simple and yet profound of 
 parables. How did it show the Pharisees, 
 tenderly, yet keenly, the unworthiness of 
 their discontent at the conversion of sin- 
 ners. What right had they, as true sons 
 and as true brothers, to remain thus strange 
 to the joys of the loving and the Holy 
 Jehovah, and have thus no response, no ear, 
 no tolerance for the anthems and gratula- 
 tions of all His holy and heavenly worship- 
 pers, over the conversion and recovery of 
 the estrayed and the self- destroyed, now 
 brought happily and forever back ? When 
 the Pharisees heard of the ninety and nine 
 sheep that had not wandered, the ninety 
 and nine just men needing no repentance, 
 how readily they appropriated the character 
 as their own. When they listened to the par- 
 able of the lost coin, how they congratulated 
 themselves, as bright medals that had never 
 rolled from the meshes of the Law's purse, 
 and never stooped to the sinner's I'ow plane 
 of contamination, tumbled and mired up- 
 
THE LOST SON, 83 
 
 on the soil. But when the prodigal was 
 painted in his excess, how did their self- 
 righteousness take new honors to itself, in 
 the thought of their own lofty escape from 
 all such prodigal vanities and vagabond ex- 
 cesses and disreputable intemperance ! But 
 when came, at last, the elder brother's irrev- 
 erence to the father, and unnatural harsh- 
 ness to his misguided junior, all this jars 
 unpleasantly on them. It was a mirror, 
 that showed them, so faithfully and yet so 
 delicately, their own stolid selfishness, and 
 their sullen alienation from God's delight 
 over the recovery of the lost, and from 
 God's joy in the redemption of the self-de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 You look at the Ragged School, with its 
 noise and unseemly sights and unfragrant 
 steams. You hear of the misery and vice, 
 it may be, of parents and homes from which 
 these children have come. You read of 
 cannibals, devouring their missionary guests. 
 It is hard, is it not, but is it not also blessed, 
 to bring in the other aspect, and the stereo- 
 
84 THE LOST SON. 
 
 scopic view, of angels exultant over light 
 shed into earth's dark nooks, and over souls 
 snatched out of the miry clay of earth's fetid 
 pools, to shine ultimately in the Redeemer's 
 diadem ? 
 
 Let each say to himself: Thou, my soul, 
 art the prodigal. Like him, hast thou wan- 
 dered far; and, like him, hast thou wasted 
 much ; and, like him, hast thou sunk low. 
 Even thus, hast not thou wandered from the 
 innocence of childhood, and from the high 
 aspirations of thy ingenuous youth, to earth- 
 liness and selfishness — from God's law, to 
 thy own mad will ? Hast thou not wasted 
 much ? not merely of property, for frivolous 
 and unworthy objects and for idlest self-in- 
 dulgence, but of that, which is more valuable 
 than riches, influence and talent and oppor- 
 tunity — the warnings of conscience and the 
 teachings of the sanctuary and the lessons 
 of the Spirit ? Hast thou not sunk low ? 
 Exalted above the beast and bird in intelli- 
 gence, in the possession of conscience and 
 in the anticipations of eternity, hast thou 
 
THE LOST SON. 8$ 
 
 not too often been the inferior of these less 
 highly endowed creatures, less true to thy 
 God than these are to their own narrower 
 instincts ? The ox knoweth his owner and 
 the ass his master's crib ; but Israel, reared 
 on miracles, and pampered with divine 
 revelations — Israel knoweth not its Feeder, 
 its Master, its untiring, ungrudging Bene- 
 factor. Is not this a degradation, stolid- 
 ity, and brutality — more than animal, lower 
 than mere brutishness ? But, ingratitude to 
 an Incarnate Redeemer, what can be so 
 monstrous as this ? 
 
 But gazing through the parables, and 
 across the sufferings of our Lord and 
 Saviour, into the heart of God thus laid 
 bare, what cause of adoring gratitude and 
 wonder have we in the pledged readiness of 
 God to meet and to pardon the self-accusing, 
 self-destroyed sinner ! The new and over- 
 whelming view of our folly and demerit ; 
 the juster sense than was ever before attain- 
 ed of our own provocations, of the bright- 
 ness of the Divine Holiness, of the excellent 
 
86 THE LOST SON. 
 
 righteousness of the Divine Law, and of the 
 glory of the salvation long spurned, seems 
 now to make our offences hopeless of for- 
 giveness. But look up, through the mist 
 and storm of self-reproach to the Father, 
 as these parables paint Him, and see, in the 
 errand of the Ransoming Son, and of the 
 Convincing, Converting Spirit, the incred- 
 ible and surpassing goodness of the Father. 
 Ready is the Fatherhood of God, waiting 
 even now, and waiting for thee, the sinner, 
 in thy past follies, in all thy sad requital of 
 His tenderness and bounty. Cast not away 
 the salutary humiliations and warnings. 
 Put not from thee the parental invitations, 
 and the fraternal entreaties of thy Saviour 
 and God. Low as may have been thy grov- 
 elling, and great and lavish as has been thy 
 wasting, and far as has been thy wandering, 
 all Heaven adjures thee to turn, and waits, 
 intently, thy acceptance of the gracious 
 overture. Turn and live. Retrace the 
 steps of estrangement, and renounce the 
 ways of folly and sin. If man, thy brother, 
 
THE LOST SON. 87 
 
 distrust thee, do not thou distrust the Com- 
 mon Father, Let the scowl of the Pharisee 
 be, for thee, drowned in the beaming, trans- 
 forming smile of thy Father in Heaven. 
 Christ, thine Elder Brother — not like him of 
 the parable, an accuser against thee, but an 
 Advocate for thee — welcomes thee with an 
 eager generosity, and pursues thy distrust- 
 ful estrangement with bounty the most 
 lavish, and invitations most cordial and en- 
 dearing, and adjurations most solemn and 
 importunate. Wisdom wrote for thee the 
 scriptures, and indited for thee the parable, 
 and urges on thy heart the promises. 
 
 How needful, amid the trials of this 
 earthly life, and how blessed is it to look 
 off from the low plane and past the near 
 horizon of Earth and Time, to the higher, 
 wider Heavens, with their juster standards, 
 and clearer lights, and unsetting glories, 
 that thus we may learn to judge aright of 
 the events around us, and of the influences 
 that are passing over us. Earthly trial, 
 however sharp and however long, is not 
 
88 THE LOST SON. 
 
 hopeless, or endless, or even aimless, if ac- 
 cepted as the appointment of a parental 
 Providence, and as training and meetening 
 us for rest in Jesus. And earthly splendors 
 and lures grow tame and despicable, when, 
 from the side-lights of scripture, we learn 
 to acknowledge what baits they often are 
 and what fates they often work out. Who 
 would envy the pomp and girding flatterers 
 of Herod, as the worm is seen already com- 
 missioned to smite the deified orator? Who 
 would yearn to change lots with the daugh- 
 ter of Herodias, in her grace and her 
 princely home, when the prophet's head is 
 seen as the price of her fascinations, and the 
 ghastly trophy of youth, beauty and rank ? 
 Who would adopt, and iterate as their own, 
 the wail of Jacob or of the afflicted Job 
 over all things as against them, whilst see- 
 ing, in scripture, "the end of the Lord" 
 in the trials thus deplored and despaired 
 over ? 
 
 Blessed, indeed, is his lot, however ob- 
 scure and unfriendly as to man it may seem, 
 
THE LOST SON. 89 
 
 over whom, regenerate, loving and grateful, 
 is heard the Father's assurance : All things 
 are yours. All things shall work together 
 for thy good. Nothing shall be able to 
 separate thee from the love of God which 
 is in Christ Jesus. The earth, with all its 
 adornments, treasures and privileges, may 
 well be dear, as thy Father's work, and as 
 one of the outlying fields to His heavenly 
 home. But in addition to a share of His 
 bounties here, there awaits thee a better 
 portion hereafter and in the world beyond 
 this. If even now, in those fields of light 
 and peace, there is joy over one penitent 
 yet trembling and tempted and imperfect 
 on the earth, what, as we may well believe, 
 shall not be the mounting stages of a higher 
 exultation over a human spirit fully enfran- 
 chised and finally glorified ? What must 
 be the greetings of the Church beyond the 
 judgment-day — the gratulations of the Zion 
 of God all complete in number and rich in 
 the mature and symmetrical grace that has 
 culminated in eternal glory. Beside the 
 
90 THE LOST SON. 
 
 River of Life, before the throne, beneath the 
 splendors of the celestial and endless Sabbath 
 in that city of God, whose residents go out 
 no more for ever. To such a rest the prodi- 
 gals of earth are bidden to aspire — the be- 
 liever is destined assuredly to ascend. The 
 sinners of this dark world, forlorn, self-im- 
 poverished, self-banished, are called to look 
 up from their remote exile, from the heaps 
 of unsatisfying husks littered around them, 
 to this upper scene of victory and gladness 
 and cloudless light — the true " Father's 
 house of many mansions." " A threefold 
 cord," said the wise man, "is not easily 
 broken." And when our days here are sad 
 and few, how blessed the touch, in faith, of 
 the cords of deliverance and pardon, of 
 hope and rescue, flung down into the dun- 
 geon from the throne of the Triune Je- 
 hovah. The Redeeming Son of God — 
 the Renewing, Illumining and Recovering 
 Spirit — and the Adopting and Forgiving 
 and Justifying Father have braided its 
 strands, that shall never part under any 
 
THE LOST SON. 9I 
 
 stress ; and which pledge a hope that maketh 
 not ashamed. Believe in God, and live for- 
 evermore. Know thy Maker; seek the eye, 
 and sink in filial trust on the heart of thy 
 Father on high. Once restored to His 
 favor, and at peace with Him, and then 
 shalt thou that be at peace with thyself; 
 and His wide universe shall, finally, be at 
 peace with thee, all things, loyally or per- 
 force, working together for the good of 
 them that love God and who are the called 
 according to His calling. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 In these Discourses, the tbree Parables of our Lord 
 are regarded as preseuting the work of the Son, of the 
 Spirit, and of the Father, in setting up "the kingdom 
 of God." It is the establishment of that kingdom in 
 the convert's heart ; singly, and apart from his fellow- 
 men. 
 
 The Apostolic Benediction, used so generally for all 
 centuries since Christ's ascension, refers to that king- 
 dom on another side, and not so much in a solitary 
 worshipper, but as seen in the collective body of con- 
 verts. It is a prayer to each person of the Divine 
 Trinity for the maintenance and expansion of that 
 sway of Christ over the nations, by means of Christ's 
 churches. " The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, 
 be with you all. Amen."* Here, too, as in the para- 
 bles, the work of the Atoner stands first; butthejiarental 
 love of the Divine Father now follows in the second 
 place, and to the third place is assigned the energy of 
 the Divine Spirit, as maintaining the unity and bro- 
 therhood of the Church, cementing and assimilating 
 the body of Christ; and rendering it aggressive and 
 victorious in its influence over the world, by a power 
 of transmutation and assimilation shed forth upon 
 them. The reign, or " kiugdom of God " is, in the 
 lonely disciple, a recovery to God, the enlistment of a 
 
 * 2 Corinthians xiii. 14. 
 (9^) 
 
NOTE. 93 
 
 solitary recruit. In the assen.bly of Clirist's disciples, 
 that " kingdom " becomes a camp of such recruits, dis- 
 ciplined and summoned to aid in recovering all others 
 -within their reach. The spirit of restored fellowship 
 or " communion " tcitli Ood is, in its own bounds, a 
 pledge of higher, closer fraternity with all fellow-citi- 
 zens, enhancing tlieir accord and " communion." And 
 it is as much also a sjiirit of loving compassion for 
 those yet estrayed and prodigal., and as yet beyond its 
 bounds, endeavoring to bring over the sharers of a 
 common revolt into the fellowship of a c(mimon hope 
 in Christ and into full heirship in a paradise which the 
 Elder Brother has opened for converts out of all lands 
 and all kindreds. The Spirit of God, taking by Christ's 
 appointment the place of Witness on the removal of 
 Christ's human and visible body from the earth, stands 
 last, when the Apostle is describing the hopes and 
 duties of the earthly church collectively. The great 
 Agency, magnified in the scenes of Pentecost, is to be 
 invoked and to be relied upon by the peoj^le of God for 
 the expected glories of the Millennium. That the Second 
 Adam may rally and restore the race which the First 
 Adam betrayed and divided, the Paraclete must be 
 sought, as the principle of life and the bond of union 
 and the giver of conquest. 
 
 But, in the baptismal form pronounced over each in- 
 dividual convert, and enunciated afresh in each new 
 admission to the earthly church, the names of the 
 Divine Trinity ajipear in another order. In the mys- 
 terious economy of the Divine Nature, the Son, as the 
 sent of the Father, and the Spirit, as sent forth of the 
 Father and the Son, take the second and third place, 
 and the Father's is the first. 
 
94 NOTE. 
 
 If these views be just, the form of the titles of the 
 (lodhead used in baptism presents God as He is, abso- 
 hitoly and ajjart from the Avork of man's salvation. It 
 is the Kinp^'s titles, as He iiroclaims them and His sub- 
 jects avouch them. The parables, in this chapter of 
 the evangelist Luke, present that same Divine Nature, 
 as manifested for the restoration of man, the banished 
 and lost, in the experience of the individual soul. "With- 
 out the shedding of blood, no remission of sins — and 
 the Shepherd laying down life for the sheep; without 
 the new birth or regeneration, no capacity for the favor 
 of God — and the Almighty Sjiirit brooding over the 
 moral chaos for a new creation ; and the Fatherly love 
 of God, first devising that atonement and providing 
 that regeneration, and then applying such device and 
 such i^rovision to accomplish the adoption and restora- 
 tion of the self-banished prodigal. An Effectual Call- 
 ing based on a prerequisite Propitiation and a prece- 
 dent or coincident Renewal. And the Apostolical Bene- 
 diction, sounded in so many t<mgues of the earth and 
 through so many centuries, over such myriads on my- 
 riads of assembled Christians, reminds the whole sacra- 
 mental host in whose name it is that they set up 
 their banners ; and bids them ever, in their plans and 
 supplications, to remember that, as they are bought in 
 One Blood, and are the called of One Father, they need 
 to receive, and cherish, and imjjlore One Spirit. By 
 Him shall ultimately all earth's discords be hushed. 
 To " grieve " that Spirit of Holiness and Love, is to 
 rend Christ's mystic body. To " quench " that Spirit 
 of Light, Truth and Life, is to instal Falsehood in the 
 chair of Verity, to bequeath despair to the world, and 
 to work suicide as against the Church. 
 
NOTE. 95 
 
 The Trinity is not, tlien, in the Bible a mere specu- 
 lative mystery, too recondite to be practical. As a doc- 
 trine, each disciple avouches it on the church threshold. 
 As an experience, it underlies the conversion of the 
 individual. As a life, it pervades the collective churches 
 through all lands and all ages. It is at once, badge, 
 history and banner. A badge, in baptism ; a history, 
 as to the ransom, regeneration, and filial adoption of 
 each separate disciple ; and a banner, as to the array 
 and prospects of Christ's collected disciples, moving 
 forward as churches to subdue the world to the obe- 
 dience of the faith. The Zion of God welcomes each 
 neophyte into her fellowship under this Triune Name, 
 and speeds forth each dispersing assembly that quits 
 her courts, with the same significant invocation. She 
 greets the coming, she bids farewell to the parting 
 guest, in the name of the Trinity, 
 
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