washing, but only to wash their feet; to repent of and amend their daily mistakes and shortcomings. But he who is represented by the 'lost sheep' is one who is gone quite away from God, and needs to turn round, and entirely change his course, before he can get into the way that leadeth to life.

"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 ?" She would be unreasonably careless and wasteful if she spared any trouble to find the lost coin; and proportioned to the trouble and anxiety of her search is her joy at success. "When she hath found it, she calleth her friends and neighbours together, saying, 'Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost." Just as one of us might do if we had lost a sovereign, and at last, after much and almost hopeless searching, had found it. "Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."

The prominent lessons of these parables seem to be: The great price which Christ sets upon the individual human soul. No matter how many are safely housed, if one is straying. He is not satisfied till everything has been tried to reclaim even this one. What a blessed truth is this! How little do we believe it! How apt are we to think of God as caring little for outcast sinners, or caring for them only in the mass, not discriminating individual cases! But it is not so. He goeth after the lost sheep till He finds it; He seeks the lost coin till He discovers it.

And as a consequence and result of this great value set on the soul, is the holy joy and exultation which every conversion excites. "There is joy over one sinner that repenteth." Not merely over nations, large bodies of men, persons of weight, talent, and influence. No; but over the poor drunkard who has reeled home to his squalid lodging, but is at last reclaimed; over the wretched girl who has flaunted it in the streets, but is now safely lodged in a Home of Refuge; over the ignorant lad who spent half his time in the gaol, till the Ragged School teacher found him out. Every one of these, and others yet more despised than they, is followed with anxious, pitying eyes whilst in sin, and hailed with angelic joy when at last brought home. And so far as we have the spirit of Christ, we shall feel the value of every human being, we shall be anxious and painstaking to get at all who are out of the way, and we shall rejoice and sympathize with any who are brought back. May God give us more of this Divine charity!

A

SECTION XXVI.

THE PRODIGAL SON,

LUKE XV. II-32.

ND He said, 'A certain man had two sons.""

So great was the importance of this subject, the welcome that ought to be given to returning sinners, that our Lord saw fit to enforce it by another and a most beautiful and highly finished parable.

"A certain man had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.' And he divided unto them his living,"-gave them a share of his property-his capital. There was not anything necessarily wrong in the young man wishing to have at once what he was entitled to receive out of his father's estate. He might have intended to invest it in some profitable employment. And so the father is not represented as making any objection to his request. But he soon showed what he wanted to do with it. "And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living." That was what he had in view, to get away from home and its restraints, and to have. his fill of wild and mad dissipation. Are there no such things in our days? Alas! many a letter with a foreign or colonial postmark can testify that there are. Often do we meet with a parent having a promising son, educated with costly care, who has flung aside every advantage for the sake of an unsettled, if not a vicious, life.

"And when he had spent all"-run through everything, as we say "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." No doubt this humble occupation did him good, was to him just the discipline that he needed; and so it is in the case of many a one now who goes forth from a home replete with comfort, and flings

himself into the rough companionship of those, may be, who are digging for gold.

"And he would fain

have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat and no man gave unto him." Friendless, degraded, half-famished, the poor young man began to turn his longing eyes to the home he had left. "And when he came to himself". -a remarkable expression, giving the idea that to live in sin is to be beside oneself-when he awaked out of this long dream of fancied pleasure-" he said, 'How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger"—and then was suddenly formed the happy purpose-"I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son make me as one of thy hired servants."" With the thought of that distant home and that good father, there rushes into his heart the feeling of his own ingratitude. He feels that he has disgraced himself, that he has forfeited the position of a son; but he is willing to accept this, the rightful punishment of his sin; he heeds it not, any place so that he may but be at home again. A most true and beautiful description of true penitence !

"And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion"-that the father should know him at once, and at a distance, proves how much he had been in his thoughts-" and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." Not a question, not a reproach, not even a grave look, but the fullest,

warmest welcome. Perhaps we might have thought it better if he had received him coolly, or, at least, taken the opportunity of pointing out to him the evil of his past conduct, and the wretchedness in which it had resulted. But He who painted this picture knew the human heart better than this. "And the son said unto him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." The father's loving embrace did not make the son feel at all less unworthy; a harsh reproof, such as no doubt the elder brother would have administered, would probably have frozen back the tears of penitence, and set him upon thinking of some excuse. Let us remember this in our dealings with the young. "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'"-he was impatient to do away with the marks of his degradation; he wanted to see him look like himself again-" 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 is found.' And they began to be merry."

But there was another member of the family whose feelings were of a very different kind. "Now his elder son was in the field; and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing.* And he called one of the servants, and asked what

* We may note here that our Saviour's introduction of these features into the parable gives a sanction to such celebrations of festive occasions.