prayer, and taken your place amongst the people of God; but you are not ordinarily to be found here, you scarcely know why you are here now. Perhaps it is that in early childhood you remember the sweet sound of the name of Jesus; it meant something to you then-how much you did not know until you had been in a far country. There came one day when you went forth to see life, as you called it-seeing the life that is only a synonym oftentimes for seeing hell-you went forth to the great city to push your way, and in doing it you forfeited your innocence, you sinned against God and society, and the former punished you through the latter. Society has closed its doors upon you, and everybody knows you have been punished for your transgression. You cannot go back to the place that you have forfeited; you cannot be as though you had never sinned; and, what is more, you cannot feel as though you had never sinned. You think to yourself, as you stand in the far country feeding upon husks, Glad would I have been if I could have the old home back again! Now, everybody would say it is fitting and right that I should preach to that prodigal whom everybody knows to be a prodigal in the words of my text: "I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called a son; make me a servant"; but then the antiphony comes-sound of grace and sweetness and mercy!" Bring forth the best robe and put it on him." You are wanted up there, and there is a place for you.

But there is a second order of experience, not quite so obvious, in which the words of my text are equally applicable. Here sits a man whom people do not

know to be a prodigal. He has done well in the world; he has obtained place and power and high repute; he is a great subscriber to things philanthropic and religious. People bow to him and speak good of his name. He says very little concerning the inner man; but if you could get there and hear his own story-years ago you purchased your success by a foul and filthy lie, you did a mean and shameful thing, you trampled upon somebody weaker than yourself, you sold your soul for gold. You have got what you aimed at; you have succeeded in everything for which you tried; what you lived for and strove for has come to you. Do you want it? In that far country are you, and feeding upon husks, though you sit in the corner pew in the church. And on the other sidewhat a revulsion there comes! It was not worth doing wrong for-nothing ever is in this world, as said George Eliot. If we could stand again on the other side of sin there is no man but would say that to gain something, to get the very thing you sought is punishment. A man would rather be without the fruits of his iniquity once he has experienced them. These prodigals that men do not know to be prodigal, these men in a far country feeding upon the husks-do they not want the Gospel? and is not the ring of the Gospel which I preach the very thing they want? You think that by sin you are committed to the custody of sin; you are compelled to stay in the place in which you put yourself; you cannot retrace that path back to the Father's home that you left so many years ago; no, you cannot take that journey unless somebody comes to the far country to you. That is it! Every figure fails somewhere, and even our Lord's illustra

tion of the Prodigal Son cannot teach everything that He wanted to teach, and which is contained within His own Gospel. From that far country the prodigal has a long journey back to the Father; but the truth is, that in the far country is the Good Shepherd who has come to find His sheep. You would not be troubled about your sin but that God is already thinking about you; and you might say to yourself as I trust you do-in the words of a great saint, "Thou wouldst not seek Him if Thou hadst not already found Him." The son said: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son; make me a servant." The Father says: "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him. This my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found."

But there is a third order of experience, in which we are all included. Every man and woman who has found his or her way into a place of worship must be conscious, or has been conscious to a greater or less extent, of a great dissatisfaction with things as they are, and you wish that the world had not such a hold upon you as it has. But a few minutes ago we were in the streets of the great city, amid the roar of the traffic, taking our part in the battle of life; and it cannot be but that we have been to some extent influenced by the traffic with which we have engaged, and we want to get free, and we say:

“Oh, for a man to arise in me that the man I am might cease to be!"

There is none of us who, when he comes to himself, could say other than this: "Father, I have sinned. against heaven and before Thee, and am no more

worthy to be called Thy son; make me a servant." We ask for nothing but to get to God, to hold the hand of Christ; nothing but to rescue our manhood, and re-make it in the Spirit of our Lord, who died for us.

What is to be done? Thank God for the promise! We have not been left to ourselves. Out in that far country the Good Shepherd has been looking for His sheep; we are just God's little ones, away from home, as it seems, and He alone can bring us back. The Shepherd has come to find His sheep. Now let us come hand in hand to the Throne of Grace, and we will repeat the word of the prodigal for such are we, whether the world knows it or not-" Father, I have sinned against heaven and in Thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called a son; make me a servant.” And then-O, mystery of Love Divine!-there comes in the accents of the Elder Brother: Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet. Let us rejoice and be glad in the presence of the angels of God; for this my son," saith the Father-" my brother," saith the Saviour" was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found."

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XVIII

THE DAYSPRING

The dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.—Luke i. 78–79.

I

'N this beautiful Advent song we have a fitting expression for our thoughts this Christmas morn

ing, and a happy motto for the great Christian festival which we meet to celebrate. There is a slight, but not unimportant, difference in phrasing between the text as it appears in the older and in the Revised Version of the New Testament respectively; the former reads thus: "The dayspring from on high hath visited us," and the latter reads, probably more accurately, "The dayspring from on high shall visit us." There is no contradiction; each version is needed to complete the other. Zacharias, looking forward upon the Birth which was to come, would say: "The dayspring from on high shall visit us," but he might as fittingly have said, "The dayspring from on high hath visited us," and we still more fitly can say this morning, looking back past Calvary to the cradle at Bethlehem: "The dayspring from on high hath visited us"; the world can never again be as though Christ had not come; and, looking forward upon the age that has not dawned, we can say: "The dayspring