Tom Jones is brought in. He goes to the bath. The familiar feeling of luxury comes over him once more. He is clothed in fine linen, and has a gold ring placed on his finger, the past seems an evil dream. Then the fatted calf is killed. The banquet is spread and there is festivity, music, and dancing-girls.
But suddenly, in the midst of his delight, some trouble passes over the old man’s face; his eldest son is not in his place, and they bring him word that he is without and refuses to come in. Some perception of a neglected truth passes through the father’s mind, and he rises and goes out. ‘Therefore came his father out and entreated him.’
The eldest son has been out all day working in the vineyards; all his life had been one long performance of duty, taken for granted, and therefore unpraised and unrecognized. In how many households will silent witness be borne that this is real life—the gentle and obedient service overlooked—nay, more than this, the cross word or hasty temper where there is no fear that it will be returned.
‘All these years have I served thee * * * and yet thou never gavest me a kid that I might make merry with my friends.’ I am a man like others, gayety and feasting are pleasant to me, as to them.
A look of perplexed, but growing insight comes into the father’s face. ‘Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.’
This is all very well, still he is conscious that there is something to be said for the eldest son, too. But his lost son—his wayward, and therefore loved son, is come again.
‘It is meet that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother was dead and is alive again.’ We can see the pitiful, pleading look in the old man’s eyes,—‘thy brother was dead.’
Yes, Addison must be right. Nature and humor cannot be far apart. The source and spring of humor is human life. Its charm consists, not merely in laughter or even in joy, but in the stirring of those sympathies and associations which exist invariably in the race; for we inherit a world-life and a religion, the earth-springs of whose realities lie, perchance, too deep for laughter, but not, Heaven be praised, too deep for tears.”
Surely the examples given suggest an eye for the humorous in him who saw and described them. These illustrations were, indeed, used to convey moral truths, but they show how wide was the acquaintance of Jesus with all sorts of characters, and how he loved to use such as were out of the ordinary; such as, to-day, we should at least call “peculiar.” A recognition of this fact will help us better to appreciate and more thoroughly to enjoy those simple, yet wonderful parables, out of which the heavy hand of a severely literal criticism would crush all “touches of nature.”