But the splendour of human
nature--do not suppose any heresy here; it is Bible truth, the very
gospel--is shown in the father as well as in the son.
"When he was yet a great way off." We are as good as told then,
that day after day the father had been watching. How small were the
probabilities that at any particular hour the son would return, and
yet every hour the father's eyes were on that long, dusty road!
When at last he saw what he was dying to see, what did he say? Was
there a word of rebuke? He stopped his boy's mouth with kisses and
cried for the best robe and the ring and the shoes, and proclaimed a
feast--the ring, mark you, a sign of honour!
"Say nothing of pardon; the darkness hath gone:
Shall pardon be asked for the night by the sun?
No word of the past; of the future no fear:
'Tis enough, my beloved, to know thou art here."
"Oh, my friends," said the preacher, "just consider that it is this
upon which Jesus, the Son of God, has put His stamp, not the
lecture, not chastisement, not expiation, but an instant
unquestioning embrace, no matter what the wrong may have been. If
you say this is dangerous doctrine, I say it is HERE. What other
meaning can you give to it? At the same time I am astonished to
find it here, astonished that priestcraft and the enemy of souls
should not have erased it. Sacred truth! Is it not moving to think
of all the millions of men who for eighteen hundred years have read
this parable, philosophers and peasants, in every climate, and now
are we reading it to-day! Is it not moving--nay, awful--to think of
all the good it has done, of the sweet stream of tenderness, broad
and deep, which has flowed down from it through all history?
History would all have been different if this parable had never been
told.
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