Bride’s soft eyes swam in tears. She was rather unhinged by her own intensity of thought. The motherly words almost broke her down. Mrs. St. Aubyn took her hand and caressed it gently. The clergyman, after a moment of silence, spoke, in his thoughtful tender fashion—
“Yes, we have so much cause for hope, even for those who have gone far, far astray. We must not think of them as sundered from the love of the Father, for we know that He does not so regard them, even though His heart may be full of pain at the thought of their transgressions and neglect. We have such beautiful lessons set before us by our Lord, who knew the heart of the Father as none of us can know it. Let us think, just for one minute, of that wonderful story of the prodigal son.”
Bride raised her face quickly.
“He repented,” she said softly.
“Yes,” said Mr. St. Aubyn, “he had been full of self-will and folly. He had gone very far from the father’s house, and the place which was his there by the father’s wish. He was in a far country. He had squandered the gifts of a loving father—the talents, the faculties, the opportunities—upon unworthy and sinful objects. He had followed the dictates of his own heart, and had not heeded his father’s loving counsel and admonitions; and at the last he was reduced to husks, those unsubstantial and empty husks which are in the end all that is left to us of a life of worldly pleasure, take what form it will at the outset. Only the husks remained, and the hunger of the soul set in, which is the worst hunger of all to bear. When that stage has been reached, the backward glance to the father’s house becomes inevitable. The young man in the far country felt it; and I think there was much more than the mere craving for physical comforts in the resolve which was embodied in the words, ‘I will arise and go to my father.’ There is much more than that in those words of penitence, followed up by the resolve to ask, ‘Make me as one of thy hired servants.’ That was what the son set out to say—‘make me as one of thy hired servants;’ but when he reached his father he could not say it. Why not?”
Bride was silent. The tears were still in her eyes. Mr. St. Aubyn looked at her, looked at his wife, and then went on softly—
“He could not say it because he was ashamed to say it—because the love of his father, the love which was watching for him after all these years of absence, which went out to meet him whilst he was yet a great way off, which wrapped him round in its embrace in that mysterious fulness of fatherhood, shamed him into silence. He could confess his sins and his unworthiness; perhaps at no moment had he ever felt so utterly humiliated, yet he could not say ‘make me as one of thy hired servants’—the father’s love had taught him his place as a son; the father’s love had broken down the last barrier of reserve. Unworthy, humbled to the dust, broken down by his emotion, he yet knew that it was as a son he was received back; and the deep unchanging love of the father shamed him, I say, from trying to seek the lower place. When God gives us the right to call ourselves sons, is it for us to say, ‘Nay, Lord, but let me be as a hired servant?’ Is that the humility that the Lord asks of us? Is that the truest faith?”
Still Bride was silent, and as if in answer to her unspoken thought, Mr. St. Aubyn continued—
“Thank God it is given to some of us to remain ever in the Father’s house. We have not been tempted to stray from it. We live in His love, and seek every day to do Him service. But there is always the peril to us of looking abroad at our brothers who have wandered away, and of asking ourselves, sometimes in tender anxiety, sometimes with a sense of compassionate disfavour, sometimes perhaps in something too nearly approaching scorn, whether for them there can ever be a return to the Father’s house, whether they will ever be worthy to be received there once more, even if they do return; and there are not lacking those amongst us, I fear, who would sometimes, consciously or unconsciously, deny them their place in the home, judging them to have lost it for ever through disobedience and rebellion.”
Bride clasped her hands together, her soft eyes shining.