A MOTHER’S AFFECTION.
Well, this mother began to write and plead to the boy to write to his father first, and his father would forgive him; but the boy said, “I will never go home till father asks me.” She pleaded with the father, but the father said, “No, I will never ask him.”
At last the mother was brought down to her sickbed, broken-hearted, and when she was given up by the physicians to die, the husband, anxious to gratify her last wish, wanted to know if there was not anything he could do for her before she died. The mother gave him a look; he well knew what it meant. Then she said, “Yes, there is one thing you can do, you can send for my boy. That is the only wish on earth you can gratify. If you do not pity him and love him when I am dead and gone, who will?” “Well,” said the father, “I will send word to him that you want to see him.” “No,” she says, “you know he will not come for me. If ever I see him you must send for him.” At last the father went to his office and wrote a despatch in his own name, asking the boy to come home. As soon as he got the invitation from his father, he started off to see his dying mother. When he opened the door to go in he found his mother dying and his father by the bedside. The father heard the door open, and saw the boy, but instead of going to meet him he went to another part of the room, and refused to speak to him. His mother seized his hand—how she had longed to press it! She kissed him, and then said, “Now, my son, just speak to your father. You speak first, and it will all be over.” But the boy said, “No, mother, I will not speak to him until he speaks to me.” She took her husband’s hand in one hand and the boy’s in the other, and spent her dying moments and strength in trying to bring about a reconciliation. Just as she was expiring she could not speak, so she put the hand of the wayward boy into the hand of the father, and passed away. The boy looked at the mother, and the father at the wife; and at last the father’s heart broke, and he opened his arms, and took that boy to his bosom, and by that body they were reconciled. Sinner, that is only a faint type, a poor illustration, because God is not angry with you. God gives you Christ, and I bring you to-night to the dead body of Christ. I ask you to look at the wounds in His hands and feet, and the wound in His side. My friends, gaze upon His five wounds. And I ask you, “Will you not be reconciled?” When He left heaven, He went clear down to the manger that He might get hold of the vilest sinner, and put the hand of the wayward prodigal into that of the Father, and He died that you and I might be reconciled. If you take my advice, you will not go out of this hall to-night until you are reconciled. “Be ye reconciled.” Oh, this gospel of reconciliation! My friends, come home to-night. Your Father wants you to come. Say as the prodigal did of old, “I will arise and go to my father,” and there will be joy in heaven.
[THE WAY OF SALVATION]
Read Acts xvi. 23, 40
I shall not preach a sermon; I have just one thought, and that is, to tell every anxious soul what they must do “to be saved.” That is the first question of every one who is honestly and really inquiring “the way of salvation,” and, God helping me, I will try to-night to make it plain to all.