with his father, henceforth the sole heir and virtual proprietor of the estate. The younger brother, after a few days' delay, collected all his possessions, sold whatever he could not carry away, left his family and his native place, and went and settled in a distant country.

Here he soon fell into an abandoned life, and wasted all he had. To increase his misery, when all was gone, a great famine rose in the country. But for this he might well have gained a subsistence, but as it was he began to suffer actual hunger. Driven to the utmost straits, at last he entered the service of a citizen of the place, who sent him into his fields to feed his pigs, the most degrading occupation which a Jew could imagine. And even then he could not satisfy his hunger; but when he drove home the pigs in the evening, and the men came with their food, and he saw how greedily they swallowed it, he could not suppress a hungry longing to have his fill even of that! But of course there was none for him. The brutes were of value, and must be well attended to in such a time of scarcity; but who could spare a thought for the swineherd? At last his overwhelming sense of misery brought him to repentance. "How many of my father's laborers," he said to himself," how many of his hired laborers, who are not even his own men, — have abundance of sweet food, while I am here dying of hunger! I will rise up and go to my father, and say to him, Father! I have sinned against heaven, and have grieved your very soul. I am not worthy of the name of son. But drive me not away; let me stay with you as a hireling!'" His resolution was made; and he turned his face homewards.

...

What a long and miserable journey! What conflicting thoughts chased each other through his heart! How would his father receive him? . . . At last he saw his old home in the distance, and soon perceived that some one was hurrying to meet him. It was his father himself, from whose thoughts he had never for a moment been absent. His anxious parent had seen him from afar; had recognized him instantly in spite of his miserable condition, and now fell upon his neck with pity that no words could utter, and kissed him tenderly. Deeply moved, the young man disengaged himself from his embrace, fell down upon the ground, and cried: "Father' I have sinned against heaven, and have grieved your very soul. I am not worthy of the name of son" he could not say the rest after the reception his father had given him. Not a single word of reproach was uttered by the parent, but

as soon as they reached the house he cried to some of the servants who came running out to welcome the wanderer on his return: "Bring him a cloak-the best we have-and take away these things. Get a bath ready, and dress him, and put a gold ring on his finger and sandals on his feet, that he may look like a free-born man and take his place with others once again. And do you," he added, turning to other servants, "get ready a great feast this very night. Kill the fatted calf, and see that singers and all else are provided. We may well rejoice and make merry; for my son here was dead, - dead to heaven and to me, and now he is alive again; he was lost, and is found!" His commands were joyfully and quickly obeyed; and by evening the full tide of festivity had set in.

Meanwhile the elder son was superintending the work at a distant field, so that no one had gone to fetch him. When the day's work was over, and he returned to the house, he could not imagine what had happened. All was commotion; and the sound of the music and dancing, and the flare of the torches greeted his ears and eyes while he was still at a distance. For a time he stood outside the house lost in amazement, till one of the attendants happened to come out, perhaps to fetch something. He called him and asked him what it was all about. "Why, your brother has come back." said he, "and your father has killed the fatted calf [the most important event of the day, perhaps, in the servant's eyes] because he has returned safe and sound." That was it, indeed? The elder brother turned away in wrath, and refused to go into the house. But the father heard of it, and came and pressed him kindly to come in. But he replied: "Think how many years I have been serving you, without ever once disobeying your commands, and yet you never rewarded my fidelity and diligence by giving me so much as a kid to make a feast for my friends. But now that this son of yours, who wasted your possessions with harlots, has come back again, you have killed the fatted calf for him!" "Son," said the father gently, "what is this that you have said? You have always stayed with me; and all that I have is yours, for you are my only heir. But how could we help rejoicing and making merry, - for this your brother was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found?"

This is the best known of all the parables of Jesus; and it deserves to be so, for it is the profoundest and most beautiful.

How true it is! We recognize at once the publican

who has left his Father's house, left the service of God and communion with him, but has now returned in penitence. And in contrast with him stands the Pharisee, still represented in the most favorable light, strictly religious and irreproachably moral, but yet serving God as if for hire, more like a slave than a son, proud of his own virtue, without love and without generosity. But though this application is obvious enough, and was certainly intended by Jesus, yet the parable had also a wider scope. Luke, in recording it, thought especially of the relations in which heathen and Jew stood to each other and to God, and represents Jesus as condemning the contemptuous pride and exclusiveness of the Jews. That distant foreign land he takes to mean the outside world that knows not God, the world of heathendom, of which the swine are also a symbol. The two sons represent mankind as the children of God: and the elder son is Israel, the heir of the promise of salvation. It is impossible to say whether Luke (or his authority) modified the parable to suit this special interpretation, and, if so, how far the alterations went. But even this application limits the scope of the parable unduly. Jesus tells us a history that is as old as humanity itself, and yet is ever new,- the history of the sinner who, though a child of the heavenly Father, does violence to his divine nature, and thirsting for a fancied liberty tears himself away from God; nor does God lay fetters on his freedom. He dashes on in self-delusion until the sense of his misery brings him to reflection and repentance. Then his deep sense of guilt and his true penitence strengthen him to come in deep humility and childlike trust and throw himself at the Father's feet. And the Father's love comes forth to meet him and welcome him, and to restore him to the honor he had lost. So long as sin and penitence fill so great a space in the history of human lives, so long will this parable, the gospel of God's grace, shine upon our souls like the morning star!

We will say nothing of the impression which such a story must have made upon the hearers of Jesus, upon the publicans, and, above all, upon the Pharisees. We will only observe that this is another instance of the constantly recurring contrast between Pharisee and publican which runs through the Gospel. They are taken as portraits, or rather types, of two kinds of men; and, before we quit the subject of the of 1 Compare pp. 205-207.

fence which Jesus gave to his pious countrymen by his intercourse with sinners, we will give one more sketch which throws off, in a few bold lines, a life-like presentation of these two types of pride and humility. We may note in advance that our custom of kneeling down, closing the eyes, and folding the hands in prayer, was unknown to the Jews:

Two men went up to the temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, the other a publican. The Pharisee stood up and prayed thus with himself: "O God! I thank thee that I am not

like other men, extortioners, deceivers, adulterers; or even like this publican here. I fast twice in the week, give tithes of all my income." And the publican stood at the entrance of the forecourt, and dare not so much as raise his eyes to heaven; but, forgetting every thing around him, smote his breast in penitence, and cried, "O God! be merciful to me, sinner that I am!" "As those two men," said Jesus, "went down the steps of the temple, and each returned to his home, I tell you, the publican was justified in the sight of God rather than the Pharisee."

The picture is drawn from the life, and without a touch of exaggeration. Can we not see those two men, accidentally entering the temple-gate together at one of the hours of prayer? The one, whose piety is proclaimed by his four great tassels and the broad phylacteries (or prayer-bands) on his forehead and his arm,' turns his steps to the temple, because it is more satisfactory to perform religious duties in the sanctuary than elsewhere; the other, because he can bear his sinul life no longer, and, in the agony of his soul, knows not where to turn but to the Lord. No falsehoods are put upon the lips of the Pharisee, nor is the honor due to him withheld. The duties on the performance of which he felicitates himself are not the ordinary ones which every respectable Jew observed, but the special ones peculiar to him and the other members of his school. Moreover, he is thankful to God for his virtue. But what are we to say to the selfsatisfaction of one who can enumerate his merits in his very prayers; can look down with contempt on the world in general, and even on the poor penitent who is praying there beside him!

We see at once that the concluding words of the parable are but a modification of that other saying: "There is more

1 Compare Matthew xxiii. 5: Numbers xv. 37 ff.; Deuteronomy vi. 8.

2 Compare Matthew ix. 14, xxiii. 23.

joy in heaven over one sinner that repents than over ninetynine just men that need no repentance." Why so? you may ask. Because in the heart of that one penitent there is the germ of a higher righteousness, of which those devout observers of the Law, with their unimpeachable life and character, have not even a conception! Finally, Luke tells us truly enough that this story was aimed not so much at the Pharisees themselves as at those among the disciples of Jesus, or among the Jews, who were satisfied with themselves and despised others. At the close he repeats the warning: "He who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted."

Let us now return for a moment to the attitude assumed by the Pharisees towards Jesus. We have already seen that from an early period of his ministry they had had a more serious cause of offence, and a heavier charge against him, than that he associated with sinners. It was that in case of need, or when summoned to a deed of love, he did not shrink from violating the Sabbath. We need not dwell on this at present, especially as all the utterances of Jesus on the Law and the tradition, which we shall have to consider in the sequel, were occasioned by the rebukes or the wily questions of the Pharisees. We can well understand that the freedom of Jesus with regard to the Sabbath must have deepened and widened the gulf between him and the Pharisees. Their aversion and distress rose still higher, and at length passed into definite hostility and positive hatred, when they began to suspect, and more than suspect, that he was not only aiming at a goal very different from theirs, but cherished purposes and principles diametrically opposed to the whole spirit of the Jewish religion. Then they began to abominate him from the bottom of their souls as a false prophet, a blasphemer, who did not even shrink from putting himself in the place of the Lord and offering forgiveness to sinners! But still they continued to observe the forms of politeness and respect towards him, even when he on his side had declared open war, and was striving with all his might to counteract their influence and expose their inward corruption in all its nakedness.

But things were far from having reached this point at the time of which we are now speaking. Pharisees who really thought well of Jesus were not yet, as they subsequently became, a rare exception. And Jesus on his side was still

1 See pp. 214-218