With the Children on Sundays / Through Eye-Gate and Ear-Gate into the City of Child-Soul - Sylvanus Stall

When the money had been counted out, the son gathered it all up, bade his father and brother and all his friends good-bye, telling them what a happy time he was going to have, and started out for a far country.

This same desire to see something of the world has induced many boys to run away from home. Many years ago, when there were numerous ships that went out on long voyages to catch whales, oftentimes boys who had run away from home went away to sea with these ships. Now, however, restless and discontented boys, who have read worthless and deceptive books, sometimes go to live a wild life on the plains in the West. Sometimes boys even become tramps. Scores and sometimes hundreds of them can be met any week by going to the Breakfast Association, in Philadelphia; or some of the Rescue Homes, in New York, where poor, wandering boys and tramps are given a free meal on Sunday morning or Sunday evening. Prodigals now, as in the time when Christ lived, have a very hard time of it. They start out with high hopes, sometimes with money in their pockets, with fine clothing and bright anticipations, expecting to have a good time in the far country which they are seeking. But their experience is always the same.

When this prodigal came to the far country, for a few weeks, or possibly a few months, he had plenty of money. He thought his money would always last. Bad men and women gathered around him, for they all wanted to enjoy what his money would secure for them. But it didn't take long; his money was soon spent, and when his money was gone his pretended friends were gone also. He soon found himself penniless, friendless and hungered. He had to go out and seek for work. Perhaps he had been too much indulged at home. He had never learned a trade, and possibly had never learned to do work of any kind, and so there was nothing for him to do but to accept the humblest and meanest kind of labor. He was a Jew, and for a Jew to tend swine or hogs was one of the meanest things in all the world. And yet he was willing because of his poverty and his want, to do even this most degrading service. This boy who wanted to be his own master, now became the most menial of slaves, even to the tending of swine. He wanted gay company, but he had only pigs for his companions. He wanted wine and feasting, but now no one even offered him husks to eat. He left his home to seek happiness, but he found only misery.

The Disappointed, Hungry Prodigal Tending Swine.

These husks which I showed you, which some boys call "Johnny bread," are exactly what this wayward, disappointed, disheartened, hungry boy was given to feed to the swine which he was hired to tend. He was so hungry that he would have been glad to eat these husks with the pigs, but no one gave him any to eat.

When this wayward boy was thus brought down to poverty and hunger in that far-off country, while he was tending the swine, he began to think. If he had only stopped to think before he left his home, he would never have started away. He would surely have known that he was better off at home than anywhere else. But now that misery and want had come to him, we are told that "he came to himself." That is, he came to his senses. It was sentiment which led him from his home. It was sense that brought him back. The trouble with boys and girls, and with older people too, is that they do not stop to think. They follow their fancies and sentiments, and they are led astray in this way.

God wants us to stop and think, and He says, "Come, let us reason together." God does not ask any unreasonable thing of us. He simply wants to treat us as thoughtful beings, but we want to follow our own inclination and our own desire. God treats us very kindly. He gives us every needed comfort and every daily blessing, and yet oftentimes people are discontented and dissatisfied with God; they complain and think they have a hard time of it. Instead of being faithful and true to God, they turn away from him. They desire to forsake God and serve Satan. They desire to accept what Satan says, and so turn away from God and all that is good. But they have the same experience over and over again that this young man had. He went out with fine clothes and plenty of money, and with high hopes; but he returned home in rags, without a penny in his pocket, disappointed, penitent and ashamed.