I. These words contain consolation. It is the prodigalwho speaks them. None can say, "By some course of thought or action of mine, I have excluded myself from the right to use them." It is the prodigal son who speaks them. None can say, "I must make myself a son; I must establish my relationship to God before I claim the full sense and virtue of them."
II. These words contain every satisfaction which those want whose minds have been staggered with doubts as to whether the world is not left to the mercy of the power of evil. In the last century the Lisbon earthquake led Rousseau to write his letters on Optimism. He was nearly mad already. It would have driven him actually mad not to think that all things were somehow tending to good; that even the worst calamities befalling the innocent did not prove that theory to be false. The philosopher of Ferney answered him in the story of Candide. The notion "everything is for the best," applied to particulars, was exhibited as utterly ridiculous. Madame de Stael may have been right in describing this story as the grinning of an ape at the miseries of humanity. But there was much in it which the understandings, even the consciences, of men felt to be true. A general maxim or theory of the universe does not meet individual cases. It breaks down the moment the particular instance occurs to which we need that it should be applied. Whence comes our horror of such evils, our consciousness of something directly, absolutely, opposed to them? Did civilisation give these ideas? Do they constitute civilisation? Is not civilisation apart from them a name and a fiction, or else a synonym for the habits that weaken and impair manliness, courage, the reverence for women, sincerity, justice? Whence, then, are these? Is there not, must there not be a Father of spirits from whom they issue forth, in whom they dwell perfectly, absolutely? There is no experience so individual as that of moral evil; when we feel that we need such a God as Jesus Christ has revealed to us to be a Deliverer from that, we know that what is most blessed for the world is most blessed also for us.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 235.
Christian Repentance.
I. Observe that the prodigal son said, "I am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants." We know that God's service is perfect freedom, not a servitude; but this is in the case of those who have long served Him; at first it isa kind of servitude, it is a task till our likings and tastes come to be in unison with those which God has sanctioned. We must beginreligion with what looks like a form. Our fault will be, not in beginning it as a form, but in continuing it as a form; for it is our duty to be ever striving and praying to enter into the real spirit of our services; and in proportion as we understand them and love them they will cease to be a form and a task, and will be the real expression of our minds. Thus shall we gradually be changed in heart from servants to sons of Almighty God.
II. Consider the motives which actuate the repentant sinner in his endeavours to serve God. One of the most natural, and among the first that arise in the mind, is that of propitiating Him. When we are conscious to ourselves of having offended another, and wish to be forgiven, of course we look about for some meansof setting ourselves right with Him. And this holds good when applied to the case of sinners desiring forgiveness from God. The marks of His mercy all around us are strong enough to inspire us with some general hope. Under these circumstances it is naturalthat the conscience-striken sinner should look round him for some atonement with which to meet his God. But now, turning to the parable of the prodigal son, we find nothing of this kind in it. The truth is, that our Saviour has shown us in all things a more perfect way than was ever before shown to man. The most noble repentance, the most decorous conduct in a conscious sinner, is an unconditional surrender of himself to God; not a bargaining, not a scheming to be received back again, but an instant surrender of himself in the first instance. God indeed meets us on the way with the tokens of His favour, and so He bears up human faith, which else would sink under the apprehension of meeting the Most High God; still, for our repentance to be Christian, there must be in it that generous temper of self-surrender, the acknowledgment that we are unworthy to be called any more His sons, the abstinence from all ambitious hopes of sitting on His right hand or His left, and the willingness to bear the heavy yoke of bond-servants, if He should put it upon us.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. iii., p. 90.
References: Luke 15:18. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iii., No. 113; Ibid., Evening by Evening,p. 49; J. Kennedy, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 288; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 86; J. Vaughan, Sermons,13th series, p. 29; Ibid.,9th series, p. 173.Luke 15:18; Luke 15:19. G. Moberly, Parochial Sermons,p. 73; R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions,p. 212.