The very tenderness shown to him at home may add to his besetting weakness, by encouraging habits of self-indulgence. In fact, the parable itself allows room for the surmise, that the younger son, from having less care put upon him than the elder, was less schooled in self-reliance, and because every thing was done for him as the pet of the family, he was in danger of doing too little for himself. Certainly indulgence may be as dangerous an extreme as sternness, and as many youths are spoiled by over fondness as are made desperate by unkindness. Sometimes both extremes unite in the same fitful temper, and children, now petted and now cursed, learn indolence and rebellion in the same perverse domestic school. Rare is the wisdom that can adjust the discipline to each temperament, and encourage without over-indulgence, and correct without harshness. Not always, however, is the fault of the child to be traced to error in the parent, for every child has powers and responsibilities of his own, and besides his own perverse will, there is a third party that frequently comes in to make mischief.
At home or abroad this tempter may come, and in forms as many as are the shapes of folly and sin. The son may not have erred simply in desiring to go from home to seek his fortunes. He may have intended to use his portion of the inheritance in a more profitable way than at home, and perhaps return to the quiet old farm-house, rich in treasure and experience, a benefactor to the whole family. Youth is full of dreams, and of not ignoble dreams, and of the thousands of young men who every month go out into the world to seek their fortune, few, if any, mean to throw their hopes away in dissipation. Young blood is ever sanguine, and fair indeed would this earth be, if it could take the hue and shape of the youthful visions that have brooded upon its future. The very fact that a man hopes much, may throw him into a despair as intense as his hope, and the sanguine dreamer may degenerate under disappointment into the reckless prodigal. The portion of the inheritance which was to swell into affluence, being broken by some mischance, seems good for nothing but a brief round of pleasure, and is squandered in riotous living. Or the wanderer may start with the idea that expensive habits will secure to him friends and position, until he finds that these habits are his masters, and these friends go away when his money is gone. Let any sober-minded man who has consistently tried to use well his means and opportunity, remember the perils that have lurked in his own path, and he will make some due allowance for the temptations that now beset young men. We are not called to lower in the least our standard of virtue, but we are to enlarge our views to measure the extent of the danger, and to relax our severity to win the erring to repentance and amendment. Make the ease our own, and as we look upon the many forms of youthful vice and folly around us, see our own youth thus come back to us, and read the sad lessons as so many chapters in the book of our own possible destiny. Such considerations, instead of making us more lax in principle, will make us more strict, by making us feel more deeply the curse of that transgression, which we thus bring home to our own thoughts. Combine all the various sources of temptation, bear in mind the portions that may come severally from the youth, his guardians and the world, and it will not appear proof of utter depravity that there should be some prodigals on earth.
The emphasis of the parable turns not upon the fall, but upon the recovery of the erring one, and the portraiture of the various steps in the recovery is so drawn to the life, as to answer with due change of manners and costume for any age. Mark its progress, in the mind of the youth and the parent, and in the final reconciliation of the two.
Mark the change in the feelings of the son. In a short time what a transition in the lot of this reckless roaming boy. His dream of fortune and pleasure has been most rudely broken, and the spendthrift is the penniless outcast. A season of famine, or what in our more commercial age would be called hard times, came on, and the pressure that bears upon all drives him to the very verge of starvation. Where are the gay mansions now that opened their doors so eagerly to the young stranger, so lavish with his wealth? Where are the boon companions that borrowed his money, and rode his horses, and drunk his wine? Where such friends are very likely to be in time of need; ready to cut the acquaintance of the wretch upon whose prosperity they have fattened and fawned. He is in a sad plight, and might have been driven to some desperate crime—to murder or to suicide, did he not learn one of the blessed lessons of God’s Providence, and use misery as a stern, yet judicious schoolmaster, to lead him to remorse and penitence.
Suffering wakens him from his vain dream, and he sees things now as they are,—takes upon his shoulders the burden of his griefs,—confesses that he has abused the very generosity of his father, and is no longer worthy to be called his son. Remorse, no proof of depravity past redemption, but proof rather that conscience still lives, and is vindicating her holy law, exalted the poor outcast, even in humbling him to the dust, and lifts the wretch into the penitent, with those words, “I will arise, and go to my father.”
This penitence crowns the new experience of the prodigal, and brings him into a new sphere of thought and action. He feels the power of a love that he had slighted, and which now pleads with his soul in an eloquence all the mightier from its tone of expostulation and pity. His childhood reappears to him in all its innocence and privilege,—the old homestead, with its familiar walls and trees, haunts him not as a dream, but as the one reality, and seems to eye his wretchedness with wonder and compassion. He is a changed man now, and turns his face upon the long journey homeward, not merely as an outcast hungry and miserable, but as a penitent seeking forgiveness of the kindness which he had outraged, and asking to do a servant’s work on the estate whose income he had wasted.
Look to the other side of the picture, and think of what has been going on in the father’s heart. No particulars are given of his feeling during the season of separation, but his heart is a chapter in the book, that life is ever laying open, and what is told of him at the crisis, indicates well his temper during the interval. He had but two boys, and his whole hope and love must have centred in them and their destiny. They may have been dearer to him from being all the memorial left to him of the mother long since taken from the world. The younger may have been the pet of his leisure hours, whilst the elder was busy with the cares of the farm; for there is likely to be a pet child in every family. But the plain facts are enough without laying any tax upon the imagination. He had the common heart of good men, and had shown his willingness to make sacrifices for his children. Many a time in lonely hours he must have thought of the wanderer, and wondered if the boy whom he never forgot, could forget him. The prosperity of his business, the plenty of his crops, the number of his flocks and herds, could not satisfy him; even the sight of the son now with him, but reminded him how broken was his family and how divided his heart. Touches of compassion would mingle with his lonely regrets, and remembering the common weakness of our humanity, he would consider the amount of temptation in wait for every novice, and have misgivings at allowing him to go out alone into the world. Many a time his wistful gaze would rest upon the road taken by the departing wanderer, and he would ask himself if the youth would ever return, and in what condition. One day as he looked, that lonely road had for him a startling apparition. Far in the distance appears a tired, tattered wayfarer, a mere vagrant to the common gaze; but one of the many who seem heir of misery, and for whom compassion itself has little reasonable hope. But no; the eye of affection is ever sharpsighted, and the father sees under that beggar’s garb the step and air of his long-lost son; and one look tells to him the whole story of his fortunes. He is a poor and broken-down creature, and comes home penitent, to ask mercy of the love that he had so offended. All is told in those simple words of welcome “But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”
This was the meeting—such was the reconciliation! Full as it is of absorbing feeling, its moral element is not to be forgotten. Read its lessons, and we note first of all forgiveness of the offence in view of the penitence of the offender; secondly, restoration to favor on the ground of amendment; thirdly, justice to all parties and no injustice to the rights of the elder son, who had not wasted his patrimony, yet, who was moved to look with a jealous eye at the feasting in honor of his prodigal brother’s return. Mercy is triumphant, yet justice is not slighted, and whilst the prodigal is restored to his place in his father’s heart and household, all the consequences of his transgression do not cease; his portion of the substance is not as if he had wasted nothing, and he is not exempt from a long course of self-discipline and correction. Forgiveness does not end discipline, but rather begins its just action, by bringing the offender into the sphere of moral and spiritual allegiance.
Such is the story of the Prodigal Son in his fall and his recovery—a rich lesson of earthly experience and of heavenly faith. What family is there that is not called at some time, and in some measure, to apply its point to themselves?