Millais, Plate 103, illustrates the next parable, that of the lost coin. "If a woman lose a coin, does she not light a candle and search carefully until she finds it?" (Luke 15:8-10.)
If the first parable of the group teaches the compassion of the Son, and the second the solicitude of the Spirit, the third teaches the enduring love of God the Father.
Molitor, Plate 105, has designed an almost abstract father and son—a prodigal, perhaps, but not the prodigal—to match his panel of the lost sheep. The parable is but faintly echoed in this picture.
The man who has painted the parable as a whole is Dubufe, Plate 106. The central panel in the triptych shows the young man wasting his substance in riotous living. "He squandered his property by his dissolute life," says one version. His feasts were such as that described by Isaiah 5:11, 12. The panel at the left shows the young man in want, feeding swine, when "no man gave unto him." (Luke 15:16.) In that at the right, he has returned to his father's house.
Doré, Plate 104, is truer to the parable in the matter of the return, for "while he was yet a great way off his father saw him and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him." (Luke 15:20.)
