may be. Recollecting the loving and generous character of his father, he ventures to hope that he will not be repelled. In reference to this point the Saviour beautifully puts into his lips the expression, "my father:"

"Not worthy to be called Thy son,

Yet will I Thee my Father own."

This resolve is in itself a ground of encouragement. It is no less a characteristic of all genuine repentance that it is accompanied by some gleams of hope in the Father's love, a result of the repentance itself being produced by the Father's grace. We are not to see in this "I will arise and go to my father any indication of mere natural ability in man to return to God independently of the aid of the Holy Spirit. The illustration of spiritual things by those which are natural is necessarily defective; but that defect is easily supplied from other portions of Scripture. When the sinner comes to himself he will not only think of himself, but is quite sure also to think of God. It is He against whom he has sinned; and it is to His mercy that he looks. Hence the first hopeful cry of his soul.

He makes the fullest confession of his sin,-"I will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee.” The sincerity of the repentance is evidenced by the absence of all attempt to extenuate the guilt of the wrong-doing. There is no insinuation that much or little of his sin may be laid to the charge of others, who countenanced him in his evil career. He emphatically says, "I have sinned;" the guilt is all his own. "I have sinned;" his rebellion, and ingratitude, and profligacy, are all confessed in that one comprehensive term. It is impossible for him to enumerate his sins in detail; but he declares his conviction of their aggravated character: "I have sinned against heaven, and before thee." In this he says, "My sin has been committed against God Himself, while it has been openly displayed in thy presence. Verily, in sinning against thee, I have been defiantly sinning against the benevolent right and order of heaven itself." Though he has power to remember that he is a son, he acknowledges that he has forfeited all claim to be regarded and treated as such; "I am no more worthy to be called thy son." If any position be assigned him at home, it will be by an act of grace. For this reason he will not venture to say more than, "Make me as one of thy hired servants." Perhaps there is here the undertone, that he, a "son," can never become a mere "servant," though he may be made "as" one. But it is going beyond the teaching of the parable to discover in this the evidence of even a scarcely conscious intention to merit and win back the rights of a "son" by

sedulous devotion to such servile work as may be appointed him; and thus also to see a leaven of self-righteousness behind the most fully expressed repentance, a self-righteousness which finds its counterpart in the depths of every repentant sinner's heart.

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"And he arose, and came to his father." There is no time to waste. Hesitation may be fatal. He came as he was, in the very rags and squalor of his poverty and wretchedness. He did not say, Before my return, I must make myself fit to appear in the presence of my father." Could he have done that, would he ever have returned? We must not lose sight of the fact that there is a wide difference, in the case of the sinner, between saying, "I will," I must, "rise and go," and the actual coming. In how many cases is there a long interval between the two! What irresolution, what vacillation, what purposing to come and not coming, are too frequently found! But the sinner must really come; and come as he is-in all his spiritual nakedness and helplessness. He will then find that God is a "Father" gracious and merciful, not only beyond his hopes, but to the extent of fully restoring to him the rights, and honours, and blessedness of exalted sonship.

We are now led to the gracious reception of the returning prodigal. "But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him." We must take the picture as the Saviour has drawn it; and need not call in the aid of imagination to make it effective. The father is brought before us, not in the privacy of his chamber, nor in the midst of his household, but in the open field. What so likely to occupy his thoughts as the too long lost one, whose absence is ever more and more painfully felt? In the distance, an object is seen approaching. What is it? Who is it? The "elder son" would certainly have said, It is not my brother; he bears no resemblance to him. The servants of the household would not have recognized him in his present misery. But the look of a father is more far-reaching and true: the love of his heart gives clearness to his vision. It is verily the wanderer that is returning. The fatherly "compassion" overrides every other consideration. He does not stand upon his dignity, and await his approach, and hear what the offender has to say, that he may best judge of the treatment he should receive. His very presence tells of his extremity, and of the humiliation of his once rebellious spirit. What effect any hesitancy to welcome him might have had, who can tell? It might have blighted the hope of the penitent, and have driven him in despair again into the "far country," never to return. The father's hurried advance gave him encouragement to cast himself on his "compassion;" for he "ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." He hastens to embrace the recovered

one, notwithstanding his miserable appearance, and to relieve his pent-up emotion by tokens of forgiveness and peace. This does not prevent or supersede the exclamation of the penitent. It rather intensifies his conviction of the greatness of the wrong he has done; the fountains of his heart are opened in his free confession, a confession which only half discloses the depth of his grief and shame. His wonderful reception, so much beyond all he has dared to anticipate, does not admit of his intended entreaty to be made as a hired servant." 66 The expression of such a desire now would have been a slight to the love that has welcomed him, would have given reason for the supposition of that latent self-righteousness which some have thought they could discern in his former wish to be "hired." All occasion for fear of a harsh reception has been graciously dissipated; he receives into his heart the surprising assurance that he is forgiven.

Such is the Divine method of receiving the returning sinner. We must pass beyond the limits of the parable, and say, the Father in heaven has beheld the wanderer in all his waywardness and disobedience, and has yearned over him with a constant and bound. less "compassion." He has employed means to awaken within him a just sense of his guilt, and a desire for salvation; and the moment the prodigal says, "I will arise," and does "arise, and go," God goes forth with the speed of infinite love to seal upon his heart the pledge of pardon and acceptance. It is not the Divine method to withhold the intimation of forgiveness in order to make the repentance of the offender doubly sure. The returning sinner is not, however, the less a penitent confessor of his sin in consequence of his consciousness of the mercy of God. It rather reveals to him the depth of his ingratitude and iniquity, as he did not realize it in his unrenewed state. He exclaims,

"Remember, Lord, my sins no more,

That them I may no more forget;

But sunk in guiltless shame adore
With speechless wonder at Thy feet."

The provision for the restored son is in perfect accordance with the freeness and fulness of his forgiveness. Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet,"-robe and adorn him in a manner suitable to a son of such a father. The idea of the parable clearly is, Make him look like my son, for he verily is such. All this has its spiritual counterpart in the case of the pardoned sinner. The kiss of love indicates the act of Divine forgiveness: at once the alien and wanderer is admitted into the family of God, and is invested by the Spirit of the Father with the "robe" of renewal and

sanctity, the true ornaments of a son of God. The "shoes on his feet" tell us of the Christian's equipment for a life of willing, filial obedience to Him whose "boundless love no thought can reach, no tongue declare." These are all the spontaneous and varied gifts of the infinite Love. "The converted son receives all at once, under the condition, unexpressed in the first superabounding assurance, that he will now from henceforth sustain these honours aright, and fully meet their obligations."

The return and restoration of the prodigal are the occasion of abounding joy :—" Bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it." We pass by the fanciful and valueless interpretations which have been given to this and the immediately previous expressions. The killing of "the fatted calf" is not so much to appease the hunger of the restored one, as to furnish the provision for the festival to which the whole household is invited. As the shepherd and the woman invited their "friends and neighbours" to "rejoice " with them, so here the gladdened father calls upon every member of his household to do honour to the occasion, and to participate in his joy. The essentials of a feast are, therefore, provided. In the fulness of his heart he makes known to his "servants" the reason of this act, that they may intelligently sympathize with him: "This my son was dead,"-dead to himself and his best interests," and is alive again; he was lost,"-lost to me as a son, "and is found." They are not wanting in respect for their lord and master. "They began to be merry." As a "son" is of so much more value than a "sheep" or a "piece of money," so the joy of this father exceeds that of the "shepherd" or the "woman." "This is the joy of God over one of His sinful creatures -the full declaration of that supreme love in the Son's loftiest announcement, following and transcending the indefinite expressions, in heaven,' and 'in the presence of the angels of God!"

If any inquire for the indications of the mediatorship of Christ in this beautiful exhibition of Divine love to the penitent sinner, we answer, they will not find it in the person of this "father," nor in "the fatted calf" which is killed; but "His place is rather to be sought in His thus authoritatively testifying of His Father's mercy." He had the right to testify of it, as He perfectly understood both its nature, and the ground of its manifestation, though the time had not yet come for the full declaration of that ground. The full truth will come when He shall have offered up Himself as the one atoning "propitiation for the sins of the whole world;" and when the Spirit shall have revealed Him as "the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world," and the eternal "Mediator between God and men." EGIDIUS.

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NO. IV.

THERE is no part of our Hymn-Book possessing so large an amount of beauty and sublimity, or displaying so much grandeur and magnificence, as those portions of it which are intended to describe the "Quatuor Novissima," or "Four Last Things,"-death, judgment, heaven, and hell. The hymns "Describing Death seem always to possess a peculiar charm. The sentiment inspired while meditating in this department of the volume is not unlike what one feels when taking a walk through a cemetery, or lingering under the arches and among the pillars of Westminster Abbey, and gazing on its monuments; which, while they speak of death, and remind us of the noble and illustrious whose dust is sleeping below, breathe hope and consolation. And when we think of the purpose to which the mighty minster which enshrines these remains is consecrated, and then look up through the sunlit choir to the lofty roof, we feel rapt and elevated with the thought of a blessed immortality. Even so these hymns, while they direct our contemplation to "the house appointed for all living," enable us to anticipate, with joyful hope, the "house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

As, when we take our seats within some hallowed pile, at the funeral of a friend, the first sounds which greet us from the desk are those of Psalm xc.: "Lord, Thou hast been our Refuge in all generations," etc., so the division of our Hymn-Book devoted to these mementos of mortality, commences with a beautiful paraphrase of the same funeral psalm, by Dr. Watts:

"O God! our Help in ages past," etc.

(Hymn 41.)

We well remember the feeling with which, in childhood, we heard and mused on the words of this hymn; especially verse 5:—

"The busy tribes of flesh and blood,

With all their cares and fears,

Are carried downward by the flood,

And lost in following years."

And, since the time when the reflection suggested by these lines first rose, how many of our friends and associates, elders, coevals, and juniors, have been borne away by that river, more swift than rapid Severn, or the arrowy Rhone, and engulfed in the ocean to which all are tending!

"We're now embark'd upon that stormy flood
Where all the wise and brave are gone before us,
E'er since the birth of Time, to meet Eternity."

("The Earl of Essex." By H. Jones.) An old writer says, "On this moment depends eternity; on the weakest wyer hangs the greatest weight;" and, in the solemn hymn of Dr. Watts, "Thee we adore, eternal Name !" etc.,

we have the words,

(Hymn 42.)

"Great God! on what a slender thread

Hang everlasting things," etc.

(Verse 5.)