THE KING’S BUSINESS
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tifully out. To these servants the father had never told his grief; but now the prod igal is come back, and his heart is burst ing with joy, he tells them of it. He can not conceal it; he does not' seek to conceal it. He says, “let us eat and be merry—I am so happy myself, I wish all others to be happy. Banish all care; drop your toils; let the shepherd come irom the hill, the ploughman from the furrow, the herd from the pastures, the meanest servant come; and all wearing smiles and joining in the song, hold holiday with my heart. My son that was dead is alive again; that was lost, is -found.” And this happiest of fath ers, rejoicing over the returned prodigal, blotting out of memory all his offenses, dot ing on him, drawing him to his side, clasp ing him in his arms, ever and anon bend ing on him looks of deepest love, pleading his cause with, his unamiable brother, say ing, “It was meet that we should be merry,” is Christ’s picture of His Father! So He rejoices over every repenting, returning sinner. LOVE NEVER FREEZES The sun that shines on you shall set, and summer streams shall freeze, and deepest wells go dry—but not His love. His -love is a' stream" that never freezes, a fountain that never fails; a sun that never sets in night, a shield that never breaks in fight; whom He loveth, He loveth to the end. Are any alarmed lest such a picture of God as we have attempted to draw from this parable should lead penitents to think lightly of sin? There is no ground for alarm. God forgives offenses; but the forgiven never forget them. Does the
prodigal forget his sins so soon as they are forgiven—freely, readily, kindly forgiven? No. On the contrary, though now, as sured of his father’s love, he drops out all mention of a -servant’s place; he con fesses and deplores his sins—does that when he knows them to be forgiven. A sense of God’s kindness is the spring of deepest sorrow; and the repentance that succeeds forgiveness is truer and deeper than any which precedes it. Therefore when God says, “I will establish with thee an everlasting covenant,” he adds, “then shalt thou remember thy ways, and be ashamed.” It was when Jesus, whom Peter had de nied, turned a look of love and pity on him, that Simon, pierced to the heart, went out to weep bitterly. The repentance that need- eth not to be repented of, has its truest emblem in the rivers that, lending flowers and emerald verdure to their banks, wind through the valleys of the Alps. It is not when stern winter howls, but in spring and the sweet summertime, when birds are singing and flowers are breathing odors, and the sun, from azure skies, pours down his beams on the icy bosoms of the moun tains, that the rivers, fed by. melted snows, rising and overflowing all their banks, roll their mightiest torrents to the lakes. And so it is when a sense of God’s love, and peace, and forgiveness is poured into our hearts, that they thaw, and soften, and melt into streams of fullest sorrow. “They shall look on Him whom they have pierced; and mourn as one mourneth for an only son, and be in bitterness, as one is in bit terness for a first-born.” -
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