of the whole, and the exquisite beauty of the parts. The sower is the
only one that can be compared with it in comprehensive completeness of
outline and articulate distinctness of detail. These two greatest
parables, however, are thoroughly diverse in kind. The two chief
elements which generally go into the composition of a parable are the
processes of nature and the actions of living men--parables, in short,
as to their constituents, are composed of history and natural history.
In the tares, for example, both these elements are combined in nearly
equal proportions. In the malicious sowing of the darnel, the zealous
proposal of the servants, and the cautious decision of the master, you
have threads of human motive and action running through the whole; but
in the growth of the darnel, its likeness to the wheat in spring, and
the decisive difference between them in the harvest, you have the
processes of nature profusely intertwined. A parable is ordinarily woven
of human action and the unconscious development of nature, as warp and
woof. In the two greatest parables those twin ingredients are in a great
measure separated: the sower is almost wholly composed of processes in
nature, the prodigal almost wholly of human motive and act.
This parable reveals one of the brightest glimpses of God's character
and way that men in the body can obtain. There are greater and less
among the parts of God's word as well as among the parts of his
creation. Taking the discourses of the Lord Jesus, as the little child
took the stars, for "gimlet-holes in heaven to let the glory shine
through," we find in the prodigal the largest of them all. It differs
from other stars in the same firmament by its bulk and its brightness.
Never man spake like this man; and nowhere else has even this man spoken
more fully or more winsomely of man's need and God's mercy. Both the
departure and the return--both the fall and the rising again, are
depicted here. The lesson sweeps the whole horizon of time from the
unfallen state at first to the glory that shall at last be revealed. The
way is laid open with marvellous precision from the lowest state of sin
and misery to a heavenly Father's heart and home. Here a gate is opened
by the Mediator's hand, and no man can shut it, until the angel shall
proclaim that time shall be no more. Here resounds a voice clear, human,
memorable--a voice that all the hum of the world cannot drown,
proclaiming to the lowest, furthest outcasts, and to the latest
generations, "Whosoever will, let him come."[82]
[82] A curious illustration of the bondage to which an indurated
Erastianism has reduced many of the Protestant Churches of the
Continent, is incidentally afforded in a remark made by Stier
regarding the peculiar fulness and preciousness of this
parable:--"That this parable, which Lange beautifully terms a gospel
within a gospel, this universal text for preaching about the lost
and recovered sons of our heavenly Father (and the hopelessly lost
first-born to the rich possessions of the house), should be wanting
in the pericopæ of the Sunday Kalendar, is an omission which is
utterly unjustifiable on any ground whatever, which is not
compensated by the insertion of the previous similitudes, and which
of itself is ample reason for that reformation of the Kalendar which
Palmer desires."--_Words of the Lord Jesus, in loc_. The successors
of Luther must, it seems, tread the mill from year to year on the
same limited curriculum of texts which their Kalendar contains; and
those of them who are weary of the restraint long in vain for an
opportunity to preach on such a subject as the prodigal, for it is
not set down in the bond. That Church surely is greatly defective
both in godliness and manliness, that cannot or will not throw open
all the Word of God alike, at all times, to its ministers and
congregations in their Sabbath solemnities.
It is not necessary in this case to submit a sketch of the material
frame-work: there it lies, and the simplest may see it for himself. The
least learned may go round without a guide, and not miss any essential
feature of the scene. In this case the bare reading of the story from
the Bible leaves the image sharply outlined, and permanently impressed
upon the reader's mind. Assuming that the body of the lesson may be
easily seen, let us proceed at once to seek for its soul in the
spiritual meaning, which the picture covers and yet reveals.
"A certain man had two sons:" one of the greatest difficulties meets us
in the first line. It is evident that God, as specially manifested in
the Gospel, is represented by the father; but who are represented by the
two sons,--the elder, who remained at home, and the younger, who went
away? On this point three distinct interpretations have been suggested:
the two brothers of the parable may represent angels and men, Jews and
Gentiles, or Pharisees and publicans. I do not think it is a profitable
method to send these three into the field to fight until two are
destroyed, and one is left in undisputed possession. I am convinced that
we shall more fully and more correctly ascertain the mind of the Lord by
employing them all than by selecting one.
In representing the human figure, an artist may proceed upon either of
two distinct principles, according to the object which, for the time, he
may have in view. He may, on the one hand, delineate the likeness of an
individual, producing a copy of his particular features, with all their
beauties and all their blemishes alike: or he may, on the other hand,
conceive and execute an ideal picture of man, the portrait of no person
in particular, with features selected from many specimens of the race,
and combined in one complete figure. The parable of the prodigal is a
picture of the latter kind. It is not out and out the picture of any
man; but it is, to a certain extent, the picture of every man. This
prophecy of Scripture is not of private construction; and therefore it
is not of private interpretation. As the ideal portrait is in one
feature the likeness of this man, and in another the likeness of that
man, while it is not throughout the likeness of any; so the elder and
younger sons of this parable find at one point their closest counterpart
in angels and men, at another in Jews and Gentiles, at a third in
Pharisees and publicans, and indefinitely in as many pairs of
corresponding characters as have been, or may yet be, found in the
world.
In the first act of the drama,--the departure of the younger son, the
case of angels and men, presents by far the most exact counterpart to
the case of the two brothers. Man is the youngest child of God's
intelligent family. Elder and younger remained together in the house
awhile. You may observe sometimes in human families that the children
who have reached the years of understanding at the birth of the youngest
rejoice over the infant with a fondness second only to that of the
mother. Thus the elder brother angels of our Father's house,--the
morning stars of creation, sang together over the advent of man. But the
younger son did not remain in the house: having become alienated in
heart from the Father, he was uneasy in his presence, and sought relief
by going out of sight.
In the description of the younger son's conduct, we find a picture both
of the first fall and of the actual apostasy of each separate sinner.
"The younger said to his father, Father give me the portion," &c. Only
his words are preserved in the record; but we know that thoughts unseen
in his soul were the seeds whence these words sprang. He desired to
please himself, and therefore grew unhappy under the restraints of home.
Bent on enjoying the pleasures of sin, he determined to avoid the
presence of his father: alienated in heart, he becomes vicious in life.
The same two elements go to constitute the character and condition of
the sinful before he is reconciled to God. There is a lower and a higher
link in the chain that binds the slave. There is a body of this death,
and a soul: there is a spiritual wickedness in high places, and a bodily
wickedness in low places. The one is guilt, the other sin: the heart is
at enmity, and the life is disobedient.
The younger son did not humbly sue for a gift from his father's bounty:
he claimed a share of the property as of right. The terms are
significant; "Give me the portion of goods that _falleth_ ([Greek: to
epiballon meros]) to me." The phrase faithfully depicts the atheism of
an unbelieving human heart; the fool hath said in his heart, "No God."
He has become brutish: as swine gather the acorns from the ground,
heedless of the oak from which they fell; alienated men snatch God's
gifts for the gratification of their appetites, and forget the giving
God. This seeing eye, and this hearing ear, and these cunning hands, the
irreverent son counts his own, and determines to employ them in
ministering to his own pleasure.
The father might justly have refused to comply with his son's demand:
although a certain part of the property might by law "fall" to the
younger son at the death of the father, there was no law or custom that
gave the youth a right to any of it during his father's life. In this
case, however, the father saw meet to let the young man have his own
way; he threw the reins loose upon the neck of the prodigal. Although
the father of his flesh could not see the end from the beginning, the
Father of his spirit, in permitting his departure, already planned the
glad return.
"Not many days after:" weary of paternal restraint, he made off as soon
as possible. He gathered all; for he needed all as a price in his hand
to pay for his pleasure. He went into a far country, and there wasted
his substance with riotous living. Even a large substance may in this
manner soon be consumed; money and health waste away quickly when they
are employed as fuel to feed the flame of lust. An interesting parallel
to this portion of the parable occurs in Luke xii. 45. A servant to
whom much had been intrusted thought his master was at a great distance,
and would remain a long time away; then and therefore he began "to beat
the men-servants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken."
It is when a man is, or imagines himself to be, far from God that he
dares to indulge freely his vicious propensities: and conversely, those
who are secretly bent upon a life of sin, put God far from their
thoughts, in order that they may not be interrupted in their pleasures.
The crisis came. The "season" of pleasure did not last long; and the man
who had "sowed to the flesh" was compelled to fill his bosom with an
early harvest of misery. The hunger, nakedness, and shame that
accumulated on the head of this wayward youth aptly represent the bitter
fruits which sin, even in this life, bears as an earnest of the full
wages in the second death, which it promises to pay its servants.
His sufferings did not in the first instance turn him from his sin:
human sorrow is not all or always godly sorrow. Although the prodigal
was in want, he did not return to his father. Convictions and terrors in
the conscience seldom bring the wanderer at once to the door of mercy:
he generally tries in succession several other methods in order to
obtain relief. As the prodigal attempted to keep body and soul together
by the most desperate and loathsome expedients, rather than throw
himself on his father's compassion; so an alienated human soul,
conscious of having wantonly offended a good God, and therefore hating
deeply the Holy One, will bear and do the will of the wicked one
to the utmost extremity of misery rather than come home a beggar,
and be indebted for all to a father's love. The picture, although drawn
by the Master's own hand, is necessarily drawn in the colours of
external nature, and therefore it comes far short of the original, which
is a spiritual wickedness. The cherished son of an affluent and
honourable house in Israel has become the swineherd of a stranger in a
famine-stricken land: the transition is as great as could be displayed
on the limited stage of the present world; but when he who was made in
God's image and treated as God's child is bound by the chain of his own
passions, and indentured as a slave in the devil's service, the fall is
greater, as heaven is higher than the earth, and the world of spirit
deeper than the world of flesh. "No man gave unto him:" when a son
deserts the Father of lights, from whom every good gift comes down, his
soul cannot be satisfied from other sources: the world's breasts are
dry, or yield only poison to the eager drawing of the famished child.
There is a blank in the history here. The later stages of the prodigal's
misery are not exhibited in the light: fully exposed, they might have
been shocking rather than impressive. Every height has its opposite and
corresponding depth: as eye has not seen nor ear heard in all its
fulness the blessedness that God hath prepared for them that love him;
so neither can our faculties measure the miseries of sin, in their
foretastes here and their fulness hereafter. How the prodigal fared
under that veil, as his misery day by day increased to its climax, we
know not; but at length he suddenly emerges another man. "He came to
himself:" the wild foul stream that had sunk into the earth and flowed
for a space under ground, bursts to the surface again, agitated still
indeed, but now comparatively pure. We learn for the first time that the
man has been mad, by learning that his reason is restored. It is a
characteristic of the insane that they never know or confess their
insanity until it has passed away: it is when he has come to himself
that he first discovers he has been beside himself. The two beings to
whom a man living in sin is most a stranger are himself and God; when
the right mind returns, he becomes acquainted with both again. The first
act of the prodigal, when light dawned on his darkness, was to converse
with himself, and the second to return to his father.
A man can scarcely find a more profitable companion than himself. These
two should be well acquainted, and deal frankly with each other; in the
case of the prodigal how disastrous was the estrangement, how blessed
the reconciliation between them! The young man, during the period of his
exile, was as much a stranger to himself as to his father. His return to
himself became the crisis of his fate; from the interview sprang the
burning thought, "I will arise and go to my father," and the resolute
deed, "he arose and went."
When he had determined to return, he returned at once, and returned as
he was. Emaciated by prolonged want,--naked, filthy, hungry, he came as
he was. He did not remain at a distance until by efforts of his own he
should make himself in some measure worthy to resume his original place
in the family; he came in want of all things, that out of his father's
fulness all his wants might be supplied. The signification of this
feature on the spiritual side is obvious; it exhibits a cardinal point
in the way of a sinner's return to God.
But while the repenting youth did not pretend to bring anything good to
his father's house, neither did he presume to bring thither anything
evil: his poverty and hunger were brought with him, but the companions
and instruments of his lusts were left behind. This is a distinctive
discriminating feature of true repentance. In the act of fleeing to his
father the prodigal leaves his associates, and his habits, and his
tastes behind: and conversely, as long as he clings to these he will
not--he cannot return to his father.
In the narrative it is made evident that a return to his father was the
son's last resort; he did not adopt it--he did not even entertain it,
until all others had failed. The grief which he must have known his
unnatural exile caused in the bosom of the family at home did not move
him: even want, when it came upon him like an armed man, failed to
overcome his stubborn spirit. He will be the servant of a stranger
rather than his father's son; he would live on swine's food, if it had
power to sustain a human life, rather than sit at his father's table. It
was not till death stared him in the face that he consented to return.
He encountered all extremities of privation rather than come home; no
thanks to him, then, for coming at last. Yet he was received with an
ardent welcome, and without upbraiding. The son's sullen, obdurate,
desperate resistance becomes a measure and a monument of the father's
forbearing, forgiving love. It is thus that sinful men return to God in
Christ to-day; and thus that God in Christ to-day receives sinful men.
Prodigals returning deserve nothing, and yet obtain all. Of even the
last rag of merit that the imagination can conjure up--the merit of
being willing to receive favour--they are utterly destitute. Though we
do not come back to our father until all other resources have
failed--although we come, as it were, only when we cannot help coming,
he receives us with open arms; he takes the sin away, and does not cast
it up.
"When he was yet a great way off his father saw him." He must have been
looking out. Often, doubtless every day, his eye turned and strained
wistfully in the direction of his son's retiring footsteps. While that
son was starving in a foreign land, his father was weeping at the
window, longing for his return; when at last the prodigal appeared, the
watchful father caught sight of his form in the distance, and ran to
meet him. Behold again in this glass another feature of redeeming love!
Jesus, looking down on Jerusalem, wept for sorrow, because its giddy
multitude would not turn and live; if they had with one accord come
forth to accept the pardon which he offered, he would have wept again
for joy. In his tears, as well as in his teaching he showed us the
Father.
The reconciliation is immediate and complete. The parable reveals an
extraordinary outburst of paternal tenderness. The son, melted, and in
some measure confused by the undeserved, unexpected warmth of his
reception, bethought of the speech which, at the turning point of his
repentance, he had resolved to address to his father, and began to
recite it as he had conned the words in exile:--"Father, I have sinned
against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy
son;" but there stopped short, omitting the portion about being content
with the position of a hired servant. Bengel suggests that the father
may have cut the prodigal's speech short by giving aloud an order to the
servants for the kind and honourable reception of his child; but another
thought, also suggested by the same acute and experimental expositor,
brings out, I think, more truly the deep significance of the
omission:--The son lying on the father's bosom, with the father's tears
falling warm on his upturned face, is some degrees further advanced in
the spirit of adoption than when he first planned repentance beside the
swine in his master's field. There and then the legal spirit of fear
because of guilt still lingered in his heart; he ventured to hope for
exemption from deserved punishment, but not for restoration to the place
of a beloved sen. Now the spirit of bondage has been conclusively cast
out by the experience of his father's love; the fragments of stone that
had hitherto remained even in a broken heart are utterly melted at last,
as if by fire from heaven. He could not now complete the speech which he
had prepared; its later words faltered and fell inarticulate. He could
not now ask for the place of a servant, for he was already in the place
of a son.[83]
[83] The paraphrase of this Scripture, in a selection employed in
most of the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, stumbles at this
point, and misses the meaning of the text. Overlooking the mighty
step of progress which the prodigal had made between the time when
his accumulating convictions turned the balance first in favour of
repentance, and the time when the last fragment of distrust melted
away in the flood of a full reconciliation, the hymn represents the
son as still pleading specifically to be sent away into the place of
a servant, after the embrace, and the kiss, and the tears of his
father had bestowed and triply sealed his sonship.
"He ran and fell upon his neck,
Embraced and kissed his son:
The grieving prodigal bewailed
The follies he had done."
"No more, my father, can I hope
To find paternal grace;
My utmost wish is to obtain
A servant's humble place."
No; after the meeting the youth did indeed say that he was not
worthy to be called a son, but he did not say he had abandoned the
hope or the desire of being reinstated. Yet, notwithstanding this
and other errors that have crept into the collection, and the
superior character of many that are excluded from it, no vigorous
effort has been made to obtain a revision in order to exclude the
faulty and introduce better in their stead. Conservative inertia--an
instinct to keep unchanged what has descended to us from our
fathers--is a great and curious power in human nature, operating
both on Church and State. Although not creditable to the wisdom and
courage of men, it is doubtless overruled for good by the providence
of God.
The father's command regarding the son's reception represents the
complete reconciliation of the Gospel--the total oblivion of the
prodigal's past sins, and his admission into the favour and the family
of God, as a dear child. Even the details at this point have been framed
after the pattern of spiritual privileges as they are elsewhere
represented in the Scriptures; and they admit, consequently, of being
minutely examined and applied. The best Robe points to the Redeemer's
righteousness which the believer puts on, and wherein he is justified;
the Ring is the signet of a king, the seal of the Spirit in the
regeneration; the Shoes suggest that the sinner, forgiven and renewed,
shall walk with God in newness of life; the Feast indicates the joy of a
forgiving God over a forgiven man, and the joy of a forgiven man in a
forgiving God.
These two lessons Christ has tenderly and plainly taught in this
parable,--first, that God receives and forgives a sinner who comes back
repenting; and second, that he delights in the act of so forgiving
repentant sinners: on these points no ambiguity is left, and no room for
controversy. These features of our Father's character, if they were
fully perceived and frankly accepted, would soon change the face of the
world. Guilt makes the guilty suspicious and distrustful. For the chief
ailment of humanity the parable supplies a specific antidote: let the
aspect of God's character, which is here displayed, take possession of a
sinful heart, and it is forthwith won.
A young person is in want of employment; and a great man lives in the
neighbourhood who could give him both work and wages. To this man the
youth is advised in his distress to apply; but this is the man whom the
youth has injured and offended,--the man whose just resentment he
dreads. But it is known and reported that this possessor of great
wealth is kind, generous, forgiving; that he does not retain resentment
for injuries received; that he delights to bestow favour on those who
have offended him. Convinced by these representations, the youth
determines to venture, and accordingly sets out on his journey toward
the great man's house. As he approaches it, however, his limbs grow
feeble, his heart beats high, and he lacks courage to go near and knock.
He halts, and is about to turn back in despair. What would suffice to
encourage the trembler at that moment, and bear him through? If then and
there he could in any way be thoroughly convinced that the man whom he
formerly injured, and therefore now dreads, is not only in general
tender-hearted and open-handed, but is at that moment specifically
thinking of this individual transgressor, grieving over his impenitence,
watching from his window for his coming, yearning to receive his
confession, and enjoy the blessedness in his own heart of forgiving and
satisfying the penitent; this will be effectual; the youth will go
forward to the door now with a firm step.
It is such a conviction regarding the mind of God towards erring men
that is needed, in order to bring them in clouds to his mercy-seat, like
doves to their windows; and it is in order to work this conviction in
our hearts that Jesus, who has authority to declare the Father, has
given us the parable of the Prodigal Son. May the Spirit take this word,
and make it in us quick and powerful.