HUU 
 
 HB1 wasmmfiBm im 
 

 mSs 
 
 
 kSBw 
 
 
 
 
 k&: 
 
 
 Kl 
 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 (ffijptp Snjnjrig^i !ftt._. 
 
 Shelf.,.:........ 
 
 i.W^' 
 
 ate 
 
f -;<■.: 
 
£> 
 
THK 
 
 Prodigal Son 
 
 A MONOGRAPH. 
 
 EXCURSUS 
 
 ON 
 
 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER, 
 
 O. B. WILLCOX, 
 
 STONE PROFESSOR OF PASTORAL THEOLOGY AND SPECIAL 
 STUDIES IN CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL^ 
 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 
 
 No. 150 Nassau Street, 
 
 New York. 
 
 \% c 10i 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 1S90, 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 The Parable 7 
 
 Luke's Eeasons for Inserting It, ....... 9 
 
 Parties Ee presented by the Two Sons, ... 10 
 
 Attitude of Jesus Toward the People, 11 
 
 Use of Miracles, .13 
 
 Changed Attitude of the Pharisees Toward Jesus, . . 14 
 
 The Three Parables of the Trilogy 17 
 
 A Chief Object of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, . 18 
 
 Commencement of the Parable 19 
 
 Motives of the Younger Son, 20 
 
 Gradual Growth of Evil in Him, 24 
 
 What " Substance" He Wastes, .... 27 
 
 Momentum in Souls, . 28 
 
 Who Was the " Citizen" ? 31 
 
 '•• Filled" —not " Fed," 33 
 
 Coming to Himself, 36 
 
 Nothing Moral in His First Utterance, ..... 37 
 
 Our Lord's Object in That, ..... 38 
 
 Unsound Views of God's Attitude Toward the Guilty, . 42 
 
 Important Omission by the Prodigal, 44 
 
 True Character of the Elder Son, 49 
 
 Character of the Pharisees, „ 50 
 
 Christ's Opinion of Them, . . ... . 51 
 
 Why the Elder Son Eemained, . 52 
 
 Dramatic Skill in Picturing the Servant, 54 
 
 Elder Son Has No Use for " Father," 58 
 
 Elder Son a True Pharisee 59 
 
 His Spirit Toward His Brother, 01 
 
 Jesus a Vigorous Hater, t>5 
 
CONTEXTS. 
 
 EXCURSUS. 
 
 1. Christ Taught as One Having Authority, , . 70 
 
 2. He Pressed the Truth with Uncompromising Force. 73 
 
 3. How He Taught Doctrines 75 
 
 4. How He Taught by Silence 79 
 
 5. How He Taught by Acts, 85 
 
 The Conversation at the Well, 86 
 
 6. His Use of the Old Testament 88 
 
 7. Lessons from His Miracles 89 
 
 8. His Use of Paradox and Solecism, 93 
 
 9. His Skill in Exhibiting Character, 94 
 
 10. His Word Pictures, 97 
 
 11. His Style in Other Eespects, 99 
 
 12. His Illustrations from Familiar Objects, . , . 101 
 
 13. His Use of the Parable 102 
 
 14. How He Draws Out His Hearers 106 
 
 ILLUSTRATION. 
 
 For Explanation, 107 
 
 For Impressing Truth, . . . . 108 
 
 For Awakening Sympathy, 109 
 
 Christ the Grand Illustration, Ill 
 
 All the Messianic Prophecies Blend in Him, . . . 112 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The parable of the Prodigal Son has long been a favor- 
 ite study with the author. It is therefore now impossi- 
 ble to recall and duly credit the source of every sugges- 
 tion here used. Not a few fruitful hints of the story, 
 which had occurred, in the author's studies, to himself, 
 were subsequently found in various commentaries. These 
 it was not thought necessary to acknowledge. In all 
 instances, however, in which suggestions could be traced 
 to those to whom they were due, credit has been given. 
 Thanks are especially due to Eev. Dr. W. H. Willcox, 
 of Maiden. Mass.. for very much and most valuable aid. 
 
 CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, 
 January, 1890. 
 
THE PARABLE. 
 
 Luke xv : 11-32. 
 
 And he said, A certain man had two sons : And the 
 younger of them said to his father. Father, give me 
 the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided 
 unto them his living. And not many days after the 
 younger son gathered all together, and took his jour- 
 ney into a far country, and there wasted his substance 
 with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there 
 arose a mighty famine in that land ; and he began to be 
 in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen 
 of that country ; and he sent him into his fields to feed 
 swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with 
 the husks that the swine did eat : and no man gave unto 
 him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many 
 hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to 
 spare, and I perish with hunger. I will arise and go to 
 my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned 
 against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy 
 to be called thy son : make me as one of thy hired ser- 
 vants. And he arose, and came to his father. 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. And the son said unto him, Father. I have sinned 
 against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy 
 to be called thy son. Bat the father said to his servants. 
 Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him : and put a 
 
viii THE PARABLE. 
 
 ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet : and bring hither 
 the fatted calf, and kill it ; and let us eat. and be merry : 
 for this my son was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, 
 and is found. And they began to be merry. Now his 
 elder son was in the field : and as he came and drew nigh 
 to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called 
 one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. 
 And he said unto him, Thy brother is come ; and thy fa- 
 ther hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received 
 him safe and sound. And he was angry, and would not 
 go in : therefore came his father out, and entreated 
 him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these 
 many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any 
 time thy commandment ; and yet thou never gavest me a 
 kid, that I might make merry with my friends : but as 
 soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy 
 living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted 
 calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me. 
 and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should 
 make merry, and be glad : for this thy brother was dead, 
 and is alive again ; and was lost, and is found. 
 
Yhe Prodigal §on. 
 
 In the common judgment of Biblical schol- 
 ars this parable is the gem of the whole se- 
 ries uttered by our Lord. While its rich truths 
 have fed the mind of the world, the pathos of 
 the story has melted its way into the heart. 
 Had the Great Teacher long been elaborating 
 it, or did it fall, at the moment, from his 
 lips, perfect as a dewdrop in its beauty ? The 
 query can only be added to the multitude of 
 others revolved by John Foster. "I go through 
 life," he said, "treasuring up questions to be 
 answered in heaven." 
 
 It seems to have been for two reasons that 
 the "beloved physician," Luke, to whom alone 
 we owe the report of the parable, stored it 
 among the materials for his work. 
 
 First, this is the gospel of contrasts. 1 And 
 
 1 These are, in truth, so mimerous in the biography by Luke 
 as to lead us through a ceaseless succession of lights and shades. 
 Most of them are preserved only by him. See the doubts of Zacha- 
 rias (1 :18), and the faith of Mary (1 :38), the child Jesus and the 
 doctors in the temple (2 :41— 46), the Baptist's contrast of himself 
 
10 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 what more natural than that lie should seize 
 with eagerness a parable which so exquis- 
 itely contrasts the broken-hearted swineherd 
 with the immaculate elder brother? 
 
 But, for a second reason, Luke would gladly 
 avail himself of this parable. Matthew photo- 
 graphs the Master as the Royal Lawgiver, 
 Mark as the Mighty Worker of miracles, John 
 as the Son of God. Luke pictures Him as the 
 Friend of Man. 1 From the angels' song of peace 
 and good will at Bethlehem, to the ascension, 
 in which (as no other evangelist has recorded), 
 "while He blessed them, He was parted from 
 them and carried up into heaven/' it is as the 
 benignant Human Friend that He looks out 
 on us in the third gospel. And where, more 
 
 with Christ (3 : 16), Christ and Satan on the mount (4 : 1-12), Naa- 
 man and the woman of Sarepta, and the lepers and widows of Is- 
 rael (4 : 25-28), the Baptist's disciples fast, Christ's not, (5 : 33). 
 new wine and old wine-shins (5 :37), woes added to blessings (6 :24- 
 26), the beam and mote in the eye (6:4:2), the two foundations 
 (6:47), the Baptist an ascetic, Jesus not (7:34), Simon and the 
 woman who was a sinner (7 :39), Jesus amidst the hired mourners 
 (8 :53), Chorazin and Capernaum (10 :13), Mary and Martha (10 :39- 
 42), Ninevites and Jews (11 :31), faithful and faithless servants 
 (12 :47), the hundred sheep, one lost (15 :3), the ten pieces of money, 
 one lost (15 :8), the prodigal and his brother (15 :li), the rich man 
 and Lazarus (16:19-31), the thankful and thankless lepers (17:18), 
 the Pharisee and publican (18 :P— 14), the servants with the pounds 
 (19 : 12), the tears and hosannas on Olivet (19 : 37), the rich and the 
 poor widow at the treasury (21:1), the good Samaritan and the 
 priest and Levite (10:30-37), the penitent and blaspheming 
 malefactors (23:39). 
 
 These vivid chiar-oscuro contrasts, lighting up the narrative 
 with their Correggio-like effects, seem almost to lend color to the 
 legend (drawn bv Ap. York, as quoted in Smith's Bible Diction- 
 ary, from Nicephorus. ami from the Menology of the emperor Basil), 
 that Luke was an artist as well as physician. One of these word- 
 pictures, that of the hired mourners scoffing: at Jesus, is an ad- 
 mirable scene for a painter. The mercenary performers, sud- 
 denlv checking their groans and wails to strike attitudes and 
 make grimaces at the calm, majestic Stranger, remind one of Ma- 
 caulav's picture, from "Comus," of Milton's genius surrounded by 
 the buffoons of the Restoration. "Amidst these that fair muse 
 was placed, like the chaste ladv of the Masque, lofty, spotless and 
 serene, to be chattered at and pointed at and grinned at by the 
 whole rout of satvrs and goblins." 
 
 1 Bernhardt "Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament. 5 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. H 
 
 beautifully thau iu the sceue of the father 
 falling on the neck of the returning prodigal, 
 is our Lord shadowed forth to us as the Friend 
 of Man? 
 
 Do the two sons in the parable represent 
 the Jews and the Gentiles? The true answer 
 to this question, much debated, would seem 
 to be that the elder brother and the prodigal 
 stand for any persons, anywhere, who share 
 in their spirit. 1 Like a geologic specimen 
 broken from the seam at which two different 
 strata unite, the story epitomizes two vast sec- 
 tions of human life and character. So far 
 forth as the Jeiv on the one side and the Gen- 
 tile on the other fell into these sections, they 
 find their types in the prodigal and his brother. 2 
 
 But to study the geologic specimen most in- 
 telligently we must see it "in situ" — in con- 
 nection with the bed-rock from which it was 
 broken. And, to discover the first and most 
 natural aim of Jesus in this parable, we must 
 
 1 "Who is this elder son?" The question was once asked in an 
 assembly of ministers at Elberfeldt, and Daniel Krummacher 
 made answer, "I know him very well. I met him only yester- 
 day." "Who is he?" they asked eagerly, and he replied solemnly, 
 "Myself." He then explained that on the previous day. hearing 
 that a very gracious visitation of God's goodness had been received 
 by a very ill-conditioned man, he had felt not a little envy and 
 irritation. 
 
 2 But, if the parable represents Jews and Gentiles, it must be 
 only by indirect suggestion. It is a maxim in science to assume 
 no more causes than your phenomena require. The parable is a 
 most natural and admirable reply to the cavil of the scribes and 
 Pharisees. In rebuking them it finds its sufficient occasion. The 
 elder son is so true a Pharisee, and the younger so true a publican, 
 that no farther solution seems required. Alford, too fin loco), well 
 says that the admission of Gentiles into Christ's church (as of 
 the returning prodigal into the home) was not yet so disclosed that 
 our Lord would represent them as of one family with the Jews. 
 He adds that the Gentile should be the elder, the Jew not being 
 constituted in his superiority till 2,000 years after the creation. 
 
12 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 return it to the occasion on which it was uttered. 
 
 As He was slowly journeying and teaching 
 in Perea, on his way to Jerusalem and the 
 cross, the publicans and sinners, outcast and 
 despised, whom no other rabbi would allow r 
 to approach him, gathered about the Master. 1 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, now as aforetime, the 
 common people heard Him gladly. Simple 
 souls as they were, they loved Him for what 
 was really the profoundness of his view T of 
 humanity. Shallow rabbis and scribes were 
 intent on the incidentals of mankind, on office, 
 wealth, and reputation. But Jesus, with Divine 
 insight, looking through to the imperishable 
 worth and essential dignity of man as man, 
 apart from his accidents, led the poorest and 
 guiltiest of his countrymen to feel that "one 
 touch of nature makes the whole world kin." 2 
 They felt that He "found" them, that He came 
 home to their inmost life. 
 
 He dealt plainly with their sins. But, as a 
 friend who could be trusted, a teacher who 
 brought down to their understanding a world 
 of such truth as had never dawned before on 
 their vision, He won their deepest love. In 
 reaching them He came closer to the core of 
 humanity than in dealing with classes of men 
 more deeply enmeshed in the conventionali- 
 
 1 De Wette (Handbuch zum N. T.) renders the imperfect, r\<rav 
 Zyyl£,ovTe<;. es pflegten sich zu nahcrn. 
 
 2 Though this word " touch" (Troilus and Cressida, Act III., 
 Sc. 3.) probably means blemish (Old English tache). the common 
 meaning given it is no serious perversion. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 13 
 
 ties of the time. The austerity of Shammai 
 and the liberality of Hillel were alike nothing 
 to them. The Pharisaic slave to tradition, 
 the scoffing Sadducee, the time-serving Hero- 
 dian, looked on them from afar. The lowly 
 range and narrow vision of their minds kept 
 them nearer the heart of things than the sect, 
 proud of its learning, which scorned them as 
 knowing not the law (John 7:49). They knew 
 that, as guilty, they needed a salvation. They 
 felt that, as helpless, they needed a friend. They 
 were steel to the magnetism of Jesus. 
 
 And that He sought and found them was 
 the crowning glory of Him and his Economy. 
 His reply to the Baptist's question (Matt. 11:5) 
 as to his Messiahship has seemed, to many, 
 a strange anti-climax. Why, after pointing 
 John's messengers up the sublime ascent of 
 his miraculous wonders, the gift of sight to 
 the blind, of speed to the lame, of health to the 
 leper, of hearing to the deaf, yes, even to the 
 sheeted dead of power to arise and go forth in 
 the vigor of life, does He drop to so easy and 
 commonplace a matter as the preaching of the 
 gospel to the poor? Could not any one do that? 
 But in this was the very pinnacle of the climax. 
 
 "Miracles," says John Foster, "were the great 
 bell of the universe, rung to call attention to 
 the sermon that was to follow." The bell was 
 soon to cease. Its echoes would soon die to 
 silence. But the gospel it introduced would 
 
11 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 sound on forever. And, after centuries of aris- 
 tocratic exclusiveness and pride and contempt 
 of untitled humanity, that the poor should be 
 invited into the brotherhood of God's great 
 family was a monumental proof of the Messiah- 
 ship of Jesus to which all miracles were but 
 pedestal. This invitation opened the golden 
 gate of a new era to the world. 
 
 Little the " lords, high captains, chief estates 
 of Galilee," the Roman statesmen, or the phil- 
 osophers of Greece, imagined that in the 
 preaching of this Friend of publicans and sin- 
 ners was the germ of intelligence and power 
 for the people, of free government for the ages 
 to come. The broadest, grandest, most benefi- 
 cent civilization of our century is the forest 
 from that single seed. There was a power in 
 the preaching of Jesus which, like the geologic 
 forces that upheave the continents, is slowly 
 raising the millions to-day into the political 
 enfranchisement that is but a single incident 
 of "the liberty of the glory of the children of 
 God." 
 
 "And both the Pharisees and the scribes mur- 
 mured, saying, This man receiveth sinners and 
 eateth with them." Upon this word "eateth" 
 falls a heavy emphasis. We must bear in mind 
 the oriental practice of reclining at meals. To 
 lie side by side with a man from whom a rabbi 
 would have shrunk as from the touch of fire, to 
 allow his head, perhaps, to fall on one's bosom, 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 15 
 
 as did that of the beloved disciple at the Sup- 
 per, was a different matter from sitting, in our 
 fashion, next him at the table. 1 
 
 The Pharisees and scribes seem not to snspect 
 the moral weakness they show in their fear of 
 contamination from the "sinners." In Benja- 
 min West's painting of "Christ Healing the 
 Sick," Peter stands with his hand on his nos- 
 trils, dreading infection from the diseased 
 around him. A true type, so far forth, of the 
 Pharisee. But Jesus, in the foreground, with 
 outstretched hand in healing, is as fearless of 
 taking in contagion as is the morning sun of 
 being darkened by the shadows of night. More 
 than that, He is consciously as rich in power to 
 breathe out purity as is the sun to drive gloom 
 from before it. "Be not overcome of evil, but 
 overcome evil with good." 
 
 But the scribes and Pharisees had, in their 
 cavil, a second and more malicious object. In 
 the outset of our Lord's public ministry they 
 seem to have looked on Him rather with indif- 
 ference than with hate. They were eager for 
 a Messiah who could deliver them from Roman 
 tyranny. In the pretenders on whom, hitherto, 
 
 1 On another occasion, at Levi's feast in Capernaum (Luke 5 :30), 
 the scribes and Pharisees made the same complaint. Von Ger- 
 lach's comment on Lazarus in Abraham's bosom (Evang. St. Lucae 
 16: 22) is suggestive. '-'Lap, or rather breast, means the bulging 
 front of the garment, which is occasioned by wrapping about the 
 breast. Jesus here presents the blessedness of eternal life as in 
 chap. 13 : 25-29, Matt. 8 : 11, 26 : 29, under the image of a feast 
 with the patriarchs, as the most intimate, joyous communion of 
 life with them. At this banquet the favorite of the father of the 
 family (here the father of believers, Abraham,) after the fashion of 
 the ancients, lies on the couch in such position that, when out- 
 stretched, he leans on his breast." 
 
16 THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
 they had set their hopes, they had found only 
 disappointment and confusion. But now had 
 appeared one under whom possibly they might 
 sweep out, with the besom of destruction, the 
 oppressors who had fattened on the spoil of 
 the land. More than the ancient glory of David 
 and Solomon might return to the children of 
 Abraham. In the golden splendor which the 
 prophets had seen from afar, the chosen people 
 of God might find their recompense for centu- 
 ries of hardship and shame. There was at least 
 enough in his favor to suggest such a hope. 
 
 Accordingly, for more than the first year of 
 the public ministry of Jesus the Pharisees looked 
 on Him less inimically than later. Indeed, up 
 to the feeding of the four thousand, some two 
 years after his baptism, the tide of his popu- 
 larity among his countrymen seems to have 
 run toward the flood. They would have taken 
 Him by force and made Him a king. But at 
 that point was high-water mark. He would 
 play no such role as that which the Jewish 
 managers had assigned Him. They turned 
 from Him with disgust and contempt. And 
 since to this blight on their hopes He had 
 added the exposure of their moral hollowness, 
 when He pricked the bubble of their self- 
 righteousness and their sacred name before 
 the people, disgust and contempt gave way to 
 the rage that sought his life. 
 
 Gladly they would have blackened his repu- 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 17 
 
 tation. Unblushingly, and doubtless with con- 
 scious mendacity, they ascribed his miracles 
 to the Evil One. Could a point for the adhe- 
 sion of a calumny have been found on his 
 purity, they would have besmeared it with the 
 dripping feculence of their scandal. But it 
 was something to say that He had his associa- 
 tions among the dregs of society. It was some- 
 thing to intimate that a man is known by the 
 company he keeps. More than a year before 
 this (Matt. 11:19) they had called Him a glut- 
 tonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of 
 publicans and sinners. It is evidently with a 
 second thrust of the same envenomed weapon 
 that they now add the sarcasm, "This man 
 receiveth sinners and eateth with them." 
 
 In reply, our Lord pronounces three parables. 
 They are those of the Lost Sheep, the Lost 
 Piece of Money, and the Prodigal Son. It can 
 hardly be regarded as an accident that in 
 the first of the three the loss is that of only 
 one hundredth of the whole, in the second of 
 one tenth, and in the third of one half. In 
 this advance Jesus must have meant to empha- 
 size the loss of these outcast countrymen of 
 the Pharisees whom He would fain have won 
 to himself and his Father. 
 
 Nor is it without significance that in the 
 
 first two parables of the trilogy the loss is that 
 
 of an animal or a coin, while in the third it is 
 
 that of a man and a beloved son. The first two, 
 
 2 
 
18 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 "preluding some great tragedy,'' are as the 
 propylaeum conducting us to the grandest 
 structure of all the thirty parables, in which 
 every "stone cries out of the wall, and the 
 beam out of the timber answers it " with some 
 rich and fruitful spiritual lesson. 1 
 
 In the story of the sheep, and that of the 
 coin, the interest is focused on the loss and 
 restoration. We feel with the shepherd and 
 the woman in their distress. We go with them 
 in their anxious search through the wilds of 
 the mountains and the rooms of the house. 
 We are glad, too, in the recovery. Far away 
 in our western homes and our later times, we 
 are among the friends whom they call together 
 to share their joy. 
 
 There is no alien, like the elder brother, com- 
 ing in from the field to glower jealously on the 
 joy of either shepherd or housekeeper. All 
 three parables, it is true, have part in our 
 Lord's reply to the fling of his enemies as to 
 his intimacy with the publicans. The first two, 
 with their beautiful intimation, like an index- 
 finger pointing heavenward, of the angels' joy 
 over the lost soul recovered, carry their rebuke 
 to the Pharisees. But the main object of those 
 two is to hold forth the love of God to the 
 wanderer. The main point of the third para- 
 ble is not a repetition of those two, but the 
 
 1 Godet remarks (in loco) that, while the first parable shadows 
 forth to us the compassion of God for the lest soul, t lie second con- 
 fers his sense of its value. We may add that the third includes 
 both. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 19 
 
 Pharisees' sanctimonious scorn of those who 
 were their countrymen and their brethren. 
 
 Jesus, here, turning more directly on his 
 critics, " holds the mirror up to nature." First 
 brightening the background of the picture with 
 the love of the father embracing the prodigal, 
 He sets out, in dark contrast, the figure of the 
 elder son. The portrait, as we shall see, is a 
 " composite photograph," in which the harsh 
 features of many Pharisees meet and blend. 
 But, on his way to this object, our Lord in 
 his word-picture so exquisitely paints the de- 
 parture and return of the younger brother, 
 with such touching pathos He describes the 
 father's welcome, that the heart of the church 
 universal has been drawn to the prodigal. To 
 the parable, which might as well have been 
 known as that of "The Jealous Brother," the 
 prodigal has given a name. 
 
 11. u A certain man had two sons." A painter 
 is careful not only of the grouping of his 
 figures, but of the number that he admits on 
 his canvas. Too many of them, by overcroAvd- 
 ing, would break the unity of the effect. There 
 was no room in this parable for more than two 
 sons. Two characters only were to be set in 
 contrast, each with the other and both with 
 the father. 
 
 12. "And the younger of them." De Wette 1 
 claims, without giving reasons, that the younger 
 
 1 Handbuch (in loco). 
 
20 THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
 son is not a direct representative of the pub- 
 licans. But why not? The parable is to be 
 judged by its setting, by the circumstances 
 that occasioned it. Our Lord's intimacy with 
 
 publicans is the charge to which He is reply- 
 ing. The scribes and Pharisees bring the charg 
 To whom else than publicans on the one side, 
 
 and scribes and Pharisees on the other, should 
 his answer refer? 
 
 For the dramatic consistency of the parable 
 
 the younger son is selected as the prodigal. 
 With no previous taste of any bitter vicissi- 
 tudes, with his heart incessantly singing, "To- 
 morrow shall be as this day and much more 
 abundant." with eyes eager for adventures, and 
 without a doubt of his capacity to rake the 
 helm of his life for himself, he will embark with 
 all sails set to the nattering breeze. 
 
 "Father, give me the portion of substance that 
 falleth to me." That the younger son i unlike 
 the elder i is never allowed in the narrative to 
 lose sight of this dear word father, is full of 
 significance. Clearly it intimates to the Phar- 
 isees that, equally with themselves, the pub- 
 licans and sinners are children of the one Great 
 Parent of us all. By nature they were that. 
 "Forasmuch as we are also his offspring." (Acts 
 17: 2S.i John's strong language as to the wicked, 
 "children of the devil " il. John. 3: 10), refers not 
 to the nature or being, but to the moral charac- 
 ter. By overlooking this distinction many have 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 21 
 
 been led to the false and harsh tenet that "God 
 is a father to none but the elect." 
 
 Why the authors of the Kevision should 
 have substituted "thy goods " for "the goods " 
 as it stands in King James' version, does not 
 appear. 1 There is nothing in the Greek to 
 require the change. But the objection to it 
 lies deeper. The heart of this son is already 
 beginning to cool toward his father. The dis- 
 ease which will presently show its symptoms 
 without, is already beginning to infect him 
 within. He is leaning away toward a self- 
 sufficient independence. He has not indeed for- 
 gotten the word "father,'* but he is more in 
 the mood of demanding the inheritance as a 
 right than of filially seeking it as a gift. 
 In that mood he would, of course, evade recog- 
 nition of the father's right to the estate. Eather 
 "the" than "thy" substance would accord with 
 his feeling. 
 
 This son is falling out of the sphere of mutual 
 love and community of interest with his father. 
 We have no evidence that, in the life above, 
 any one of the redeemed will own or care to own 
 
 1 T6 enLfiaWov fj.epos rrje ovaiag. De Wette renders it "das mir zuial 
 lende Theil des Vermogens." 
 
 Says Edersheim (2 : 259) and on Deut. 21 : 17, " The demand whicl 
 he makes for the portion of the property falling to him is founded 
 on the Jewish law of inheritance. The elder would receive two 
 thirds, the younger one third, of all movable property." Indeed 
 it is one of the finest points in the parable, which interpreters have 
 left far too much under shadow, that these few words of the young- 
 er son so skilfully steer clear of any recognition of obligation to the 
 father. The son not only demands a portion of '• the " rather than 
 "thy" goods, but the ivip&kkov, rendered "falleth to me," is 
 adroitly chosen. It means substantially (see Thayer's lexicon) 
 "belongeth to me." It descends to him, as he claims, by the duo 
 course of things, by hereditary gravitation, with which the father's 
 will has no concern. 
 
22 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 a particle of substance. Our jealous distinc- 
 tions of "mine" and "thine" they have probably 
 left behind forever. Each and every one is 
 heir of the universe. His enjoyment of the 
 universe is as full and intense as if he owned 
 it alone. But from any such atmosphere of sub- 
 lime unselfishness this younger son is descend- 
 ing to the level of jealous rights and titles and 
 fee-simples. The more complete, in that sense, 
 his ownership, the less will he, in the true sense, 
 own anything whatever. 
 
 This son is tired of depending on daily gifts 
 from the father. "Give us this day our daily 
 bread," says the Master. It is that gifts re- 
 ceived and thanks returned may be as shut- 
 tles weaving us into close union with God. 
 It is that the points of contact and of freshly 
 imparted life may be multiplied. And it is that 
 the soul may find its strength and safety in 
 closely clinging at every moment to the Al- 
 mighty. By the same gale through which an 
 ivy clings inseparably to the wall a grape vine 
 is torn from its trellis and hurled to the ground. 
 The vine sends out its tendrils at long inter- 
 vals — the ivy at every quarter-inch on the path- 
 way of its growth. 
 
 But this son would have, like the Rich Fool, 
 instead of daily bread much food laid up for 
 many years, that he may eat, drink, and bo 
 merry. He would hang more loosely, if at all, 
 on the father. He would have an "independent 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 23 
 
 fortune.'' He does not see that, the more he 
 gains of such substance without, the more mea- 
 ger and hollow he becomes within. Like a 
 youth among us, looking eagerly to a brilliant 
 career of "success," he forgets that he will 
 rise as a rocket rises, only by burning out its 
 own intestines as it goes, till it bursts and 
 falls, the empty and charred shell of what 
 it was. 
 
 By Jewish law a man might, if he chose, dur- 
 ing his life-time, bestow his whole property 
 on strangers. 1 Neither the elder nor the younger 
 son had in this case, therefore, any absolute 
 right to the estate. Though the younger son 
 is too self-sufficient to ask the property as a 
 gratuity, it is only as a gratuity that he can 
 receive it. But, notwithstanding, the father 
 " divided unto them his living." Unto them — 
 then to the elder his two-thirds 2 as well as to 
 the younger his one. The elder, however, 
 receives his portion not till the death of his 
 father. 
 
 In the father's ready assent to the demand 
 of the younger son Jesus points us to the tre- 
 mendous and perilous fact of moral liberty. 
 "Each poorest day," says Emerson, "is the 
 confluence of two eternities." Yes, and it 
 may be also the point from which two eter- 
 nities diverge with their immeasurable des- 
 tinies. 
 
 1 Ederskeim 2-259. 
 
 2 Edersheira, &.2S9. 
 
24 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 " Men think it is an awful sight 
 
 To see a soul just set adrift 
 On that drear voyage from whose night 
 
 The ominous shadows never lift. 
 But 'tis more awful to behold 
 
 A helpless infant, newly born, 
 Whose little hands unconscious hold 
 
 The keys of darkness and of morn." 1 
 
 Said Samuel J. Mills, when, in the hour of 
 conviction and trembling, "the powers of the 
 world to come " were borne in upon him, with 
 the choice of destinies that they forced into 
 his hand, "Would to God I were a dog!" 
 
 A common view of the younger son's subse- 
 quent course has been that it was the unfolding 
 of a plan formed before asking for his share of 
 the goods. But this misses a chief lesson of the 
 whole story. "Xemo repente fit turpLSsamus." 
 One object of the parable, as we conceive it, 
 is to outline, first, the gradual lapse of a soul into 
 sin, and its no less gradual recovery. The dis- 
 ease works slowly within before the symptoms 
 begin to appear. The fire that has smouldered 
 at the center of the heap finds its way to the 
 surface. This young man, when his love begins 
 to swerve from his father and he asks for a 
 separate ownership, has no suspicion of the 
 issue. As his joy in the communion of hearts 
 is gone, he tires of the community of goods. 
 He woidd say no longer "our," but "my." He 
 would hold whatever he holds at all under the 
 dictate of his sole, irresponsible will. 
 
 He is now relieved from the daily prayer for 
 
 1 J. R. Lowell, "Extreme ruction." 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 25 
 
 daily bread. And in the relief is the begin- 
 ning of ruin. Faster and faster advances the 
 inward alienation. Now, too, the silent rebuke 
 of his father's contrasted example begins to be 
 more than he can bear. In a certain Christian 
 college a young lady resigned a position to which 
 she had been appointed. "Is the work too hard 
 for yon?" she was asked. "No, not at all," was 
 her answer. "Is the salary, then, insufficient?" 
 "No." "Why, then, do you resign?" "Well, 
 to be frank, I find that the atmosphere aronnd 
 me here is such that, if I remain, I must become 
 a Christian. And that I am determined not 
 to do." The atmosphere of the prodigal's home 
 is such as, with a character like his, he can no 
 longer endure. 
 
 13. "And not many days after." The parable 
 is the picture of a life-time. Within a few verses 
 it covers years. It is like the fan that the fairy 
 Paribanou, in the "Arabian Nights," gave to 
 Prince Ahmed. When closed, it was a toy for 
 a lady's hand. When spread, an army could 
 rest under its shade. The "not many days," 
 therefore, allow ample time for the growth of 
 selfishness in the soul of the prodigal. And 
 steadily it has grown till his whole inner life 
 is saturated with it throughout. The aliena- 
 tion from his home is complete. 
 
 " The younger son gathered all together. " The 
 glory of a man is to be a fount of blessing. Like 
 a steam fire-engine, working with its tremen- 
 
26 THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
 dous energy before a burning building, and 
 crying, as it were, to the hydrant "give," and 
 to the building "take," he is to receive the gifts 
 of Providence only that he may become the 
 larger benefactor to men. The talons and claws 
 of birds and beasts of prey turn inward. The 
 human hand is made to open vide. Each is an 
 object lesson. The younger son now bends him- 
 self as abjectly as the miser to clutch and rake 
 together for his own greed. He has lost al- 
 ready much of the natural generosity of his 
 youth. 
 
 Matthew Henry is apt in his suggestion here, 
 that they who depart from God venture and 
 risk their all. Every farthing of his gather- 
 ings this young man sets afloat on the wild ex- 
 cesses .in which they will soon all sink together. 
 
 When "he took his journey into a far country " 
 he was not, like the wandering sheep, uncon- 
 sciously straying. 1 It was a deliberate act of 
 self-will. He was resolved to level down and 
 dissolve by distance the sharp contrast between 
 his father's spirit and his own. The "far coun- 
 try " which a godless soul of our day puts 
 between the Father and himself is the diver- 
 sions and distractions of the world. Like the 
 ostrich with her head in the bush, he thrusts the 
 God who is "oat of sight " also "out of mind." 
 
 The self-deception cannot last forever. A 
 prisoner in the French Ba stile, who had re- 
 
 1 Edersheim, 2: -2bS. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 27 
 
 signed himself to Ms lot, was startled by the 
 sight of a human eye intently watching him 
 through a little aperture in the ceiling of his 
 cell. In no corner was there any escape from 
 it. He looked forward to evening for relief. 
 But at sunset the dungeon was lighted, and 
 all night long, as through the day, an eye was 
 there, intent, unmoving, relentless, seeming 
 to pierce his inmost life. He pined away under 
 it as a torture. Yet there was no indignation 
 in the eye — nothing to carry remorse to the 
 heart of the prisoner. Let the world's distrac- 
 tions be swept from around a godless soul, let 
 him find himself, with no escape, under an eye 
 aglow with the just indignation of abused and 
 outraged love, and how must it rankle within 
 him! 
 
 "And there wasted his substance with riotous 
 living." In the outer framework of the story, 
 substance, of course, can mean nothing but the 
 wealth he had received from his father. Wast- 
 ing can mean nothing but wild prodigality 
 in expending it. But the parable is not so shal- 
 low as to reach only that. It is not so narrow 
 in application as to touch only the spendthrift 
 and the debauchee. There is included, also, 
 the inner substance of the spiritual being, that 
 capacity for conviction, affection, desire, resolve, 
 aspiration, with which the soul, as an immor- 
 tal creature, is endowed, and which, by god- 
 lessness, may be wasted and ruined. The "ca- 
 
28 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 pacity for religion" ma}- be "extirpated by dis- 
 use." 1 The soul may be caged in a bondage 
 to the senses till it loses the use of its pinions. 
 It may be dismantled and paralyzed till it falls 
 prone in impotence, with its moral elasticity 
 hopelessly lost. 
 
 All this may be done without scandal in the 
 outward life. It is a disease which has vice 
 or crime as a mere symptom of one of its 
 forms. In self-will and self-righteousness and 
 covet ousness and pride it works within. Like 
 ants in the East Indies, that pulverize the fiber 
 of the timbers of a house, leaving the surface 
 sound and smooth, it saps the soul's moral 
 vitality and 
 
 " Spreads a poison through the frame 
 Without a deed that men can blame/' 
 
 14. "And when he had spent all." We should 
 think it quite needless, after mentioning that 
 a man had fallen from a house, to add that he 
 had struck the ground That follows as a thing 
 of course. So our Lord does not pause to say 
 that the prodigal did spend all — that this waste- 
 ful career ended in exhaustion. But, none the 
 less, there is a pregnant lesson in it. 
 
 As in bodies, so in souls, there is an awful 
 momentum. Once under headway, they hold 
 on, especially in a downward career. lender 
 the fearful gravitation in evil a man gathers 
 force as he descends. In Chicago, not long since, 
 
 1 Dr. Horace Bushnell. Sermons for the New Life, p. 1C5. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 29 
 
 a ponderous iron tank, which had been hoisted 
 to the top of a twelve-story building, broke 
 through the floor. Plunging down through 
 one story after another, it carried not only its 
 own momentum, but that of the ruins it tore 
 from every floor through which it passed, till 
 with a tremendous crash it reached the ground. 
 So does a man, plunging down through one 
 restraint and warning after another, carry 
 from them, each and all, an added and resist- 
 less force. 
 
 "There arose a mighty famine in that coun- 
 try." At the crisis at which the soul discovers 
 its emptiness the world most utterly fails. 
 The famine was only "in that country." There 
 was none of it in the prodigal's native land. 
 There is in the world, as to any spiritual sup- 
 plies, always a famine. The unhappy youth 
 now only becomes aware of that which existed 
 before. 
 
 "And he began to be in want." As we have 
 already seen (on v. 13), the parable is the 
 picture of a life-time. As such it shows the 
 gradual lapse of a soul to the depths of sin and 
 woe. In this beginning to be in want we have 
 another slip in the long, dark descent. The 
 prodigal has not yet drunk to the dregs the 
 bitter cup. He is in arrears as to his desires 
 only. He will soon be so as to his necessities. 
 He is taking only his first taste of misery. Up 
 to this day he has reveled under sunny skies; 
 
30 THE PEODIGAL SON. 
 
 but now the clouds begin to lower. He looks 
 with a shudder down the dark vista opening 
 before him. 
 
 But the ease is not yet quite desperate. 
 There is a recourse left. His pride, therefore, 
 is unbroken. It stands against a humble return 
 to his home, still stiff and strong. Pride is, 
 in truth, the spinal column of a godless char- 
 acter. It upholds whatever faculty begins 
 to weaken and incline to righteousness. Or 
 it is the stem that bears the weight of the 
 whole evil growth. Though all be lost, pride 
 still remains. In the winter of the soul, when 
 the foliage of wealth and pleasure has been 
 stript away, and harsh winds of adversity sweep 
 through the branches, pride stands as the trunk 
 in its lone desolation, unbending and defiant. 
 
 15. "And he went and joined himself to 
 one of the citizens of that country." He 
 "went." Instead of returning on his footsteps 
 homeward, he kept on in the same ill-omened 
 direction in which he had traveled before. 
 His back was still toward home. 
 
 "And joined himself." The verb 1 means liter- 
 ally glued himself. He stuck to him from 
 whoni he sought bread. He was a drowning 
 man clutching a straw. It implies, moreover, a 
 cold reception. 
 
 1 eKoWrjdr). "It was," says Godet (in loco), "as the publi- 
 cans, whom the prodigal represents, adhered to their heathen 
 Roman masters." Also, u the unhappy wretch is a sort of appen- 
 dage to a strange personality.'' He adheres to him as murually 
 foreign substances are glued together- ••But," says Bengel, "he 
 did not himself become a citizen." 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 31 
 
 Tlie citizen would gladly have shaken him off. 
 How different, as he afterward turns his steps 
 homeward, is the reception he has from his 
 father! He meant only to "see life" for a 
 while in the strange land, and then return 
 home. He sees more of it than was in his plan. 
 The pitiless trap has sprung and caught him. 
 "His own iniquities shall take the wicked him- 
 self and he shall be holden with the cords of his 
 sins." (Proy. 5:22). 
 
 Who is this citizen? Trench 1 intimates, some 
 more inveterate sinner, and quotes Bengel as 
 suggesting Satan himself. At all events, he 
 is no stranger, but a permanent dweller in 
 the far land. He has no concern with the 
 father's house, no thought of ever seeing it. 
 So, as one drifts into evil, he drifts into asso- 
 ciations with those who were evil before him. 
 Like seeks like. The soul lets go above and 
 takes hold below. She makes fast to those 
 whose downward momentum is heavier and 
 swifter than her own. 
 
 The citizen who would be willing enough to 
 cast off the prodigal completely, in contemptu- 
 ous pity so far relents that 
 
 "He sent him into his fields to feed swine." 
 "Be off, vagrant," that is, "to the edge of my 
 lands! Make no show of your woe-begone face 
 at my table or about my house. Shift for your- 
 self amongst the swine." It is the sort of sym- 
 
 1 "On the Parables," p. 333. 
 
32 THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
 pa thy that the world, everywhere, out of Chris- 
 tendom, too often in it, has for the unfortu- 
 nate. If guilt has mingled with the ill-fortune, 
 adding to the misery of the case, and therefore, 
 one would think, pleading harder for compas- 
 sion, so much the more stony is the world's 
 face, the more heartless its tone. 1 
 
 This feeding swine was not only a deep and 
 harrowing humiliation. To a Jew, such as was, 
 presumably, the prodigal, it involved sin as 
 well. A curse rested on it. A prohibition, sup- 
 posed to have originated with the Maccabean 
 Sanhedrim, 2 rendered the ownership, and by im- 
 plication the feeding, of these animals unlaw- 
 ful for every Israelite. To a Jew no lower deg- 
 radation was easily conceivable. This brings 
 up to us another truth. Iniquity has grappling 
 hooks for the soul. A man half detected in 
 crime, in the desperate struggle to extricate him- 
 self adds a lie, a forgery, or a murder. Like one 
 floundering in a bog, by every effort at escape he 
 defiles himself more thoroughly with the mire. 
 
 16. "And he would fain have been filled with 
 the husks that the swine did eat." "Would fain" 
 gives but half the meaning of the Greek word. 3 
 
 1 An incident related by Mr. C. L. Brace, of the Children's Aid 
 Society, of New York, will serve as an illustration. Meeting a 
 poor girl who had wandered from her home in the country, and, 
 after a wild life, was in wane and distress, he wrote to her father, 
 informing him of her penitence and eagerness to return. The 
 reply was substantially—" Dear Sir, my daughter had as good a 
 home as child could wish. She left it, disgracing herself and 
 her friends, and shall never enter my house again/' 
 
 2 Edcrsheim, 2 : 2G0. 
 
 3 Zne&vnei. It isused of Lazarus (Luke 16 : 21) hungering after the 
 rich man's crumbs, and Luke 17 : 22, " Ye shall desire to see one 
 of the days of the Son of man.'' 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 33 
 
 He longed, in his famished condition, for any re- 
 lief from the pangs of starvation. It hints that 
 awful hunger of the soul, compared with which 
 the craving of the body is the weakest relish. 
 
 Various writers 1 have pointed to this word 
 "filled" as differing from "fed." Significantly the 
 Great Teacher chose the word. As little as the 
 pods of the carob tree, 2 the food of swine, with 
 some sweet savor, but little nutriment, can 
 feed the body, can the world's wealth or pleas- 
 ure feed the soul. Indeed, the world, or the 
 Evil One who acts through it, serves us a still 
 worse turn. When the anarchists of the Com- 
 mune had fired the buildings of Paris, the fire- 
 men, bribed by them, were detected in throw- 
 ing petroleum from their engines on the flames. 
 So Satan deals with the fires of passion and 
 remorse and despair that rage in a human soul. 
 
 And this thought of filling himself, cheating 
 himself into the idea of being fed, with the 
 husks, is a hint to us of the greatness of the being 
 of man. An animal is content with coarse food, 
 finds his pleasure in that, because he has no re- 
 serves of a higher life in his own nature which 
 such food fails to supply. He is down near the 
 level of inanimate things. We can pour happi- 
 ness into him and pour it out, as we do water 
 with a pitcher. Give him his fodder and he can 
 
 1 Stilla, Ambrose, Augustine, quoted by Trench, -Parables," 
 p. 325. 
 
 2 Keparla. These, says Lange, grew in Egypt and Syria to 
 the length of a foot. The pods were given to swine. The bean, 
 or kernel, was the smallest weight used by Jewish tradesmen, 
 
34 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 hardly be miserable. Take it away and he can 
 hardly be anything else. 1 So, too, with the ani- 
 mal part of onr own being. Keject all luxuries 
 for which the body never asks as food, all 
 costumes for which it will never thank us as rai- 
 ment, and the costly mansions, more than it 
 needs for shelter, come down to what for its 
 own sake alone it requires, and how easily we 
 could find wherewith to live ! 
 
 These all are supplies demanded by the vast, 
 deep, hungering soul. She attempts to crowd 
 herself down within the body, to feed upon the 
 food of that. The place is too narrow, the sup- 
 plies are too small, for her being. And so see 
 her struggling by unnatural appetites and ex- 
 travagant indulgences to expand it. We call 
 these the sins of the flesh. A groundless slan- 
 der on the flesh! It is not the body that wants 
 them. It is this- unseen, but gigantic, occupant 
 of the body, which, when the body is full to re- 
 pletion and nausea, insists upon more. One 
 Roman enrperor wished for the neck of a crane 
 that he might taste his delicacies the longer. 
 Another brought his jaded palate to the habit 
 of throwing off his food before digestion, that 
 he might enjoy many meals in a day. Still 
 others invented numberless and nameless forms 
 of vice. In our own day men go mad with drink 
 
 1 The English orator and wit, Sheridan, is said to have once 
 asked his friends at table. " Shall we drink like men now or like 
 beast-?"* Astonished and indignant, they answered. "Like men, 
 of course."' "Ah. well, then," -aid he, "we shall soon be all tipsy. 
 No beast will drink more than he needs.*' 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
 35 
 
 to drown their sorrows. What have we here hut 
 the soul, in her awful need, attempting to be 
 "'filled" with the body's beggarly elements? 
 
 "And no man gave unto him." This, it has 
 been claimed 1 in view of the famine in the land, 
 implies that he was denied even the husks. But 
 that seems overstrained. As the prodigal cer- 
 tainly fed the swine, and at a distance from their 
 owner, he could help himself from their food. 
 "No man gave unto him " food fit for a man. 
 
 In his fearful descent he has now touched 
 bottom. He is at the edge of starvation. Like 
 a man driven by a tornado to the brink of a cliff, 
 like one drifting out helplessly, on an ebb-tide 
 at midnight, into a howling ocean- storm, he 
 awakes to the full horror of the scene. The 
 gloom is absolute, his home is far away below 
 the horizon. No helper in earth or heaven ap- 
 pears. Only the pitiless powers of darkness 
 seem closing in around him. And conscience 
 whispers sternly from within that his own guilt 
 has brought its penalty. 
 
 "I, I only," he is forced to acknowledge, "am 
 author of it all!" 
 
 "I flung away 
 The keys that might have open set 
 The golden sluices of the day, 
 But clutch the keys of darkness yet. 
 
 I hear the reapers, singing, go 
 Into God's harvest. I that might 
 
 With them have chosen, here below 
 Grope, shuddering, at the gates of night !'* 
 
 1 De Wette. Handbuch (in loco). " Niemand gab ihm davon.*' 
 Von Gerlach says, "In dieser Zeit dor Notli. waivn seinem llemi 
 die Schweine wichtiger als der Hirt." 
 
36 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 What now shall he do? But one thing is pos- 
 sible. Let us, still remembering that the par- 
 able is the picture of a life-time, that the un- 
 happy youth has been perhaps years in his 
 descent, trace the slow course of recovery. 
 
 17. "But when he came to himself." This has 
 been often taken as implying a full return to a 
 right state of heart. "To come to one's self and 
 to come to God," says Trench, "are one and 
 the same thing." Xot so, as we apprehend, at 
 all. His first utterance, as we shall see, gives 
 no hint of that. 
 
 Coming to himself was simply coming to his 
 senses. He had been beside himself. He had 
 been perpetrating a slow suicide. He discovers 
 the fact. He begins to act like a rational being, 
 with an intelligent view to his own welfare. 
 
 "How many hired servants 1 of my father's 
 have bread 2 enough and to spare, and I perish 3 
 here 4 Avith hunger!" We have, in all this, 
 a hint of the Divine method in the arrest of 
 souls in sin. The misery which sin has brought 
 on the prodigal is made to work toward his 
 redemption from sin. It has been illustrated 
 from the ocean. Against the sea, charging with 
 
 1 MiWioi, hired, not SoSAoi, slaves. Their condition was like his own 
 
 Even such a servant as lie had, in his father's house, 
 bread and to spare. "The hired servants," says Dean Pluraptre, 
 '• are obviously those who serve God not in the spirit of filial love, 
 but from the hope of a reward." The prodigal has sunk too 
 low in his sensuous life, his spiritual vision is too much bleared, to 
 see the freedom and gladness of love. 
 
 2 Bread, not husks. God's poorest supplies are better than the 
 world's best. 
 
 3 \-6\\viJLai, middle voice, "am letting myself perish." 
 
 4 'nSrj in this wretchedness, so different from his home. This word 
 ie not in King James' version. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. ^< 
 
 the heavy shock of billow after billow, stands 
 the solid breastwork of the shore. But what 
 reared the sandy breastwork? Only the sea it- 
 self. With the surges that dash on the walls 
 of its prison it has built the walls higher and 
 higher. Guilty indulgences build barriers 
 against themselves. They waste a man's re- 
 sources. The} 7 break down the health with 
 which he has enjoyed them. If not with a soul 
 recovered, then with a body blighted, they com- 
 pel him to pause, perhaps to turn. 
 
 This arrest, too, brings a man to self -recogni- 
 tion. He has, before it, been dazzled by his 
 surroundings or his prospects. "Who will show 
 us any good?" has been his constant cry. Into 
 the depths of his own being he has never looked. 
 The tremendous question of his errand from his 
 Creator in the world is one that he has never 
 asked. When first he sets himself before the 
 mirror of his own reason, when he probes him- 
 self with the query, "Who and what am I, and 
 whither tending?" he returns at least to sanity. 1 
 But not at once, perhaps — not of necessity at 
 all — does he advance one step farther. 
 
 This first exclamation of the prodigal has not 
 a moral sentiment in it. There is no confession 
 of his sin, no sign of contrition, no plea for par- 
 don, no aspiration for a better life. It is only 
 
 1 Dr. N. W. Taylor, of New Haven, Ct., used sometimes to dis- 
 cuss the theological puzzle, " How does one make his first start 
 toward Christ? "As a sinner?— then it is not a start toward Christ. 
 As a Christian ?— then it is not his tirst start.'' His reply was that it 
 is as a man made in God's image, in the use of the native moral 
 powers that God gave him. 
 
38 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 the lioarse, IioIIoav cry of his human nature in 
 her anguish. He is starving. He remembers 
 where food can be had. For the present it is 
 nothing more. If we see in the whole story the 
 picture of a life-time, Are may well allow an am- 
 ple period for the advance from the 17th to the 
 18th yerse. By taking these verses as both 
 uttered at the same moment, we lose sight of 
 the ascent of the prodigal from one spiritual 
 plane to another. That ascent is as gradual as 
 we saw (v. 13) his lapse into evil to be. 
 
 By making him start at so low a point as the 
 wants of his animal nature, our Lord beautifully 
 teaches how low He gladly stoops to recover a 
 lost soul. So soon as any feeling of even want 
 or suffering arises, He reaches down to lay hold 
 on that. And, responding to it, by the contrast 
 with his own perfections He awakens the soul 
 to a sense of sin and need of pardon. u Now 
 mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself 
 and repent in dust and ashes."(Job 12 : 6). 
 
 In all his shame and gloom he has still kept in 
 memory this dear word "father." Without the 
 use of it he never speaks either to him or of him. 
 Our Lord, by constantly putting it into his lips 
 through the story, is steadily reminding the 
 Pharisees, to whose scoff (v. 2) He is replying, 
 that the publicans and sinners were from the 
 same Father with themselves. But the word is, 
 though in a good sense, Janus-faced. It looks 
 not only toward the Pharisees, but toward the 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 39 
 
 prodigal himself. His own use of it — ah! what 
 a flood of bitter memories it brings rushing in 
 upon him! His innocent boyhood, his happy 
 home, the love of his father, his base return for 
 it, his rich desert of all he has suffered, the place 
 he must be content to take if he shows his dis- 
 honored face again among the friends of his 
 youth — how they roll as billows over him! Yet 
 not to submerge him in despair. Presently 
 they lift him rather, as a ground-swell, toward 
 a higher life. 
 
 18. "I will arise and go to my father, 
 and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned 
 against heaven and in thy sight." "I will 
 arise," from among the swine. He seems aware 
 that that alone will be no easy or insignificant 
 act. "And go unto my father" — my father, 
 who is everything to me. "And will say unto 
 him, Father." I will begin with the word that 
 shall itself plead for me. It shall remind him of 
 the dear tie that all my sin and shame have not 
 severed. "For Thou art our Father, though 
 Abraham knoweth us not, and Israel doth not 
 acknowledge us." (Is. 63 : 16). "I have sinned." 
 The prodigal has already advanced to a higher 
 spiritual level. The pangs of conscience, too, 
 have, as a counter-irritant, dulled those of hun- 
 ger. "Against heaven." He had learned (as 
 had the Psalmist, "Against Thee, Thee only, 
 have I sinned," Ps. 51: 4), that a sin against God 
 is immeasurably worse than a crime against men. 
 
±0 THE PJRODIGAL SON. 
 
 "And in thy sight," openly, flagrantly. 1 liave 
 abused thee to thy face. 
 
 19. "I am no more 1 worthy to be called thy 
 son. Make me as one of thy hired servants. " 
 Though I am thy son, I am no longer fit to bear 
 the title. 2 As Godet says, he is like the publican 
 in the temple, who "stood afar off and woidd 
 not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven." 
 (Luke 18:13). "Make me as one of thy hired 
 servants." Among such types of selfishness 
 as the fair-weather friends who fled when 
 his wealth was spent, and this citizen who 
 has sent him to the swine, it is hard for him 
 to conceive of a magnanimity like that of his 
 father. 
 
 This poor notion of his father, moreover, 
 seems thrown in by our Lord as a hint of the 
 weakness of the prodigal's faith. It is like the 
 eyes of the new-born babe that cannot yet bear 
 the light. He does not see that, as says Godet, 
 "pardon implies complete, instantaneous resto- 
 ration." He expects that, even if his father shall 
 receive him at all, he will show some sternness 3 
 of look, some bitterness of tone. Though the 
 
 1 Ovkc'tl, no longer. 
 
 2 As he has squandered, his own share of the estate, he can ex- 
 pect no more of that. 
 
 3 The writer, in conducting a mission-school some years ago, 
 asked a young Irish boy, who had, seen nothing bur neglect or 
 abuse at home, and was specially intractable, if he could think 
 of anv motive, except the hope of doing good, which would have 
 brought the teachers to that work. •• Well," he answered, after 
 thinking a moment, "the praste don't want ye here!" He was 
 told that the teachers were not aiming to proselyte— that they were 
 willing, if the children would follow ( hrist, that they should remain 
 Catholics. After thinking again, he answered briskly, as if he 
 hid Kiiessod the secret. "Well, anvhow, the city pays ye for it!' 
 lie seemed sceptical of the possibility of a disinterested motive. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 41 
 
 prodigal is arising from spiritual death, the 
 grave-clothes still hang round him. 
 
 But while his faith is slow, he has, at another 
 point, already made good progress. His only 
 idea, when the first thought of the hired ser- 
 vants occurred to him, was that they had abun- 
 dance of food — " enough and to spare." It was 
 better in quality, too, than his OAvn — not husks, 
 but bread. And he is now as earnest as theD to 
 be one of their number. But it is for a very 
 different reason. It was starvation then. It is 
 humility now. It is contrition for his sin. It 
 is a harrowing sense of his ill-desert. The body 
 demanded it before; the soul pleads for it now. 
 So it is that, as motives rise, their heavenly al- 
 chemy changes the same outward act or utter- 
 ance from base metal into gold. 
 
 20. "And he arose and came to his father." 
 Not to, but rather toward. 1 Quite a journey in- 
 tervened. 
 
 "But while he was yet afar off, his father 
 saw him, and was moved with compas- 
 sion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed 
 him." How is it that the aged man, presum- 
 ably with dim and failing sight, is the first of 
 all the household to discover him? Is not that 
 a beautiful touch on the word-picture? The 
 father alone was watching for the wanderer. 
 No one else about the premises cares for his 
 return. To them he is a wretched vagabond. 
 
 1 irpo?. "1st nicht das vollemlctc Kommen," says De Wette. 
 
42 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 His room they prefer to his company. But the 
 father we seem to see standing, with hand 
 shading his eyes, eagerly, tearfully looking to- 
 ward the last point on the horizon whence his 
 boy disappeared. Therefore it is that he, of all 
 in the home, first sees him. Our Lord is pictur- 
 ing here to the Pharisees his own solicitude, 
 the yearning and straining of his heart, toward 
 these outcast countrymen of theirs, the publi- 
 cans and sinners. And likewise, as we may 
 easily believe, He is lifting his eyes above and 
 beyond his immediate surroundings; He is pro- 
 claiming to all wanderers, sin-burdened, in every 
 land and age, how^ eagerly, travailing in soul for 
 them, He longs to draw them to Himself. 1 
 
 "And was moved with, compassion/' He 
 might, not unnaturally, have been moved with 
 indignation. He might have demanded satis- 
 faction for the past. But he is in no such mood. 
 
 1 Plain as the Master made all this two thousand years ago, 
 it would seem till recent times to have almost perished, like the 
 -lost arts," from the recognition of the church. Too often our 
 Lord was pictured as a sovereign, seated in his majesty, whom the 
 penitent must besiege and beseech, through a long agony of '• law- 
 work," before he could hope for mercy. The imagery of one of the 
 older hymns, for instance, is taken from Queen .Lstner, venturing, 
 with her life in her hand, before the merciless tyrant Ahasuerus, 
 the Xerxes of profane history. 
 
 " Perhaps He will admit my plea ; 
 
 Perhaps will hear my prayer; 
 But if 1 perish, I will pray 
 
 And perish only there." 
 
 A far better type than Aha>uerus, of the waiting Redeemer, we 
 have in the familiar story of the Scotch mother whose daughter 
 had wandered into a life of sin in London. The child, growing 
 penitent, resolved to return to her home. From fear of discovery 
 by old neighbors, she timed her arrival at night. As she caught 
 sight, from a hill-side, of her mothers cottage, she was surprised 
 to see a light at the window. Coming to the door, she was still 
 more surprised to find that unfastened. And when, after a warm 
 welcome, she asked what these things meant, the answer was, "My 
 child, that lipht has been set at the window, and that door left un- 
 fastened, every night since you went away." 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 43 
 
 The foundations of the great deep of sympathy, 
 affection, joy, in him, have been broken up. 
 This is their hour and the power of love. 
 
 " And ran and fell on his neck," in all his rags 
 and dirt, as the prodigal is, from among the 
 swine. Observe that this is an oriental father 
 of the early ages. In what dignity the head of 
 the household ruled his little realm! How the 
 children stood uncovered before him, and rev- 
 erently deferred to his commands ! But the love 
 of this father, like a bursting freshet, has swept 
 his dignity along its current. He can wait for 
 no ceremony. His heart will have its way. 
 
 " And kissed him." Or, as the Greek 1 implies, 
 kissed him again and again, in a passion of love 
 that could find no utterance. "What warmer 
 reception," exclaims Bengel, " could the prodi- 
 gal have had coming back from a faithful life?" 
 A fine practical comment is all this on James 
 4:8, "Draw nigh to God, and He will draw 
 nigh to you." 
 
 Observe that the embrace and the kiss go 
 before the opening of the prodigal's lips. 2 
 Enough for the father that it is his long-lost 
 
 1 Ka.T<t>»i\ricrev. In the tender and tearful scene of Paul's de 
 parture on the shore at Miletus (Acts 20 : 37) we have the same 
 word. 
 
 2 "Trench on the Parables," p. 332. Edersheim (1,507) says: 
 "As regards the sinner, all other systems (than the Christian sys- 
 tem) know of no welcome to him till, by some means, inward or 
 outward, he has ceased to be a sinner and become a penitent. 
 They would first make him a penitent and then bid him welcome 
 to God. Christ first welcomes him to God and so makes him a 
 nenitent." He calls attention to the fact that the words " to re- 
 pentance " (Matt. 9 : 13 ; Mark 2 : 17), which are excluded from the 
 Revision, are spurious. But nothing of all this, of course, implies 
 that one who should continue impenitent would continue to be wel- 
 come. 
 
44 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 son returning-. If any coldness is still left in Lis 
 heart, the father will not keep him at a distance 
 till the frigid reception has frozen him dead. 
 Rather, with the warmth of his generous wel- 
 come he will melt the coldness out. If any 
 low motive still lingers in him, the father, with 
 his own higher life, will raise it. 
 
 21. "And the son said unto him, Father, I 
 have sinned against heaven, and in thy 
 sight; I am no more worthy to be called thy 
 son." His resolution has persisted, his peni- 
 tence has held out, through all the long journey 
 from the far land. 1 
 
 But the striking fact in these words of the 
 prodigal, which has been often noticed, is that 
 he entirely omits the request to be made one of 
 the hired servants. 2 Has he forgotten it ? That 
 is incredible. Has his pride rallied against it? 
 His humble confession of sin forbids that ex- 
 planation. Two solutions have been offered. 
 One is that his father's magnanimous welcome 
 shames him out of the thought of that humili- 
 ation. He shrinks from it, as a reflection on 
 his father's sincerity. It would seem like class- 
 ing his father with the citizen who had sent him 
 to the swine. He has been living so long 
 amidst selfishness and heartlessness that this 
 
 1 " Beweist die Ernstlichkeit unci Xachhaltigkeit seiner Rene." 
 De Wettc. 
 
 2 This request, which the Revision repeats here, but only in the 
 margin, is inserted (in brackets) in the Greek text by Westcott and 
 Hort. It wa^. however, so evidently thrust in by some superser- 
 viceable copyist, who supposed Luke had forgotten it, as to be be- 
 yond question spurious. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 45 
 
 flood of disinterested love bewilders him. Coin- 
 ing out of darkness, lie is dazzled by so mnch 
 light. Deterred from saying what he had in- 
 tended, he knows not what to say. 
 
 Another, and perhaps better, interpretation 
 of our Lord's thought, in suppressing these 
 words of the prodigal, is that the father inter- 
 rupts him. It is he who prevents the proposi- 
 tion. He has seen enough, in the son's whole 
 manner and tearful confession, to show that he 
 has returned a changed man. Before this con- 
 fession and these words of deep contrition he 
 could only embrace him with a father's kiss. 
 But now he sees him ripe for the old honors of 
 his sonship. The moment the prodigal speaks 
 of his un worthiness, therefore, the father, antici- 
 pating what may follow, seems to silence him 
 with tender pereinptoriness, saying, as it were, 
 "No, no, my son! Away with all that! It is 
 out of the question!" 
 
 But another beautiful feature of the story is 
 that the father's reply is made, not to the son, 
 but to the servants. 
 
 22, 23. "But the father said to his serv- 
 ants, Bring forth quickly the best robe and 
 put it on him, and put a ring on his hand 
 and shoes on his feet, and bring the fatted 
 calf and kill it, and let us eat and make 
 merry." 
 
 The meeting of the father and the prodigal 
 had been "afar off." The two have been return- 
 
46 THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
 ing to the house together. They are now in the 
 midst of the servants, who have gathered to the 
 spectacle of their master running in so strange 
 fashion. The sight of the prodigal, in his un- 
 kempt and soiled and ragged condition, moves 
 them to anything but reverence. Presumably, 
 both father and son perceive it. The father, 
 therefore, in one breath, with the same words, 
 replies to both the son and the servants. He 
 summons these menials to fall at once into their 
 old relations to the son. As aforetime they are 
 to serve him. The question whether he is 
 to become as one of them is promptly and effect- 
 ually answered. 
 
 " Bring forth quickly." The adverb (added 
 by the revisers) sIioavs his excitement in the ex- 
 cess of his joy. He must have his son instantly 
 honored. "The best robe " — a rich festal robe, in 
 honor both of the son and of the occasion. 1 "And 
 put a ring on his hand." From the most an- 
 cient times the ring was a token of special con- 
 fidence and distinction. 2 "And shoes on his 
 feet." The prodigal, after his long wandering 
 and miserable penury, may easily have been 
 barefoot. And this, among the ancients, was 
 
 1 Srox;?, from o-re/Uw, our English "stole," is any stately robe; 
 and Ions sweeping garments wotuld have eminently this stateli- 
 ness about them; always, or almost always, a garment reaching to 
 the feet. or. trainlike, sweeping the ground. Trench, "Synonyms 
 of the New Test.,'' p. 186. 
 
 2 Gen. 41:42, Esther 3:10. '-This right of wearing the 
 golden ring, which was subsequently called the "jus annuli aurei,' 
 or the ' jus annulorum,' remained, for several centuries at Rome the 
 exclusive privilege of senators, magistrates, and equites, while all 
 other persons continued to use iron rings."' Appian. quoted in 
 Anthon's Diet, of Gr. <fc Rom. Antiq. Art. Rings. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 47 
 
 commonly the condition of slaves. The shoes 
 would, like the robe and the ring, imply that the 
 son had, as before his departure from home, 
 the freedom of the house. " And bring forth the 
 fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and be 
 merry." 1 Let us, i. e. the whole household. It 
 is as in the two previous parables of the shep- 
 herd who recovers his sheep and the woman 
 who finds her coin; each cries, "Kejoice with 
 me." A generous joy is social and sympa- 
 thetic. It hates exclusiveness. It insists on 
 others sharing it. 
 
 The robe, the ring, the shoes, and the fatted 
 calf all point in the same direction with those 
 great words of the Apostle, "For all things are 
 yours" (I. Cor., 3:21). He who refuses Christ, 
 standing out in self-will againt Him, makes the 
 whole universe his enemy. He is like one who, by 
 leaping from a precipice, makes our beneficent 
 mother earth, which upholds and feeds us 
 from her bosom, his foe. She clutches him in 
 the terrible grip of her gravitation and dashes 
 him on the rocks below. But he who yields to 
 Christ makes the eternal laws of moral and 
 physical order his friends. The stars in their 
 courses fight for him. He is geared into the 
 machinery of the universe, runs in harmony 
 
 1 The spiritualizing process, by which the robe is made to mean 
 the imputation of Christ's righteousness, the ring the gift of the 
 Spirit, or the pledge of the betrothal of the soul to Christ, the shoes 
 " the preparation of the gospel of peace," and the fatted calf the 
 great Atoning Sacrifice, seems more ingenious than sound. It is 
 clearly not the intent of our Lord in the parable to teach a system 
 of dogmatic theology. 
 
4=8 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 with that, and has all its forces pledged to work 
 for his welfare. 1 
 
 "And let us eat and make merry." The king- 
 dom of God is often compared to a feast, never 
 to a funeral. 2 Outward pleasures, no less than 
 inward peace and joy, are the normal attend- 
 ants of righteousness. Man has put asunder 
 what God has joined together. Eighteousness 
 linked with suffering, iniquity with enjoyment, 
 are an exception, a parenthesis in the story of 
 the unfolding plan of God. Disturbed rela- 
 tions have their day and go by. Mutual affin- 
 ities, first or last, shall re-assert themselves. 
 That a righteous and omnipotent Ruler sways 
 the universe is our voucher for that. 
 
 24. "For this my son was dead and is alive 
 again; he was lost and is found." "My son" is 
 a re-announcement to both the son and the ser- 
 vants that he is fully restored to his old honors 
 in the house. "Was dead and is alive again." 
 He might have been that in the far country as 
 well as at home. The father would have neither 
 enjoyed nor seen the recovery. Therefore fol- 
 lows the clause, "Was lost and is found." The 
 wanderer is restored not only to spiritual life, 
 but to the father's house. 
 
 1 Godet explains to us why we have no reference ro any atone- 
 ment here before the father's reception of the prodigal. -The 
 absence of every figure iitted to represent the sacrifice of Christ 
 i> at once explained when we remember that we have here to do 
 with a parable, and that expiation has no place in the relations 
 between man and man.'' Very ingenious— and very needless. 
 It is quite considerate in the interpreters to looh with so much 
 care after the orthodoxy of our Lord. There was no need that this 
 parable, or any other, should cover the whole scheme of redemption. 
 
 2 Abbott's Commentary on Luke (in loco). 
 
THE PEODIGAL SON. 49 
 
 We now come to a chief, if not the chief, 
 object for which the parable was spoken. The 
 elder son brings in a contrast, broad and deep, 
 with the prodigal. 
 
 There has been, as to this brother, considera- 
 ble difference of opinion. Trench 1 sees in hiin, 
 or in those whom he represents, "a low, but not 
 altogether false, form of legal righteousness." 
 He pnts it to his credit that while his brother 
 had wandered he had remained at home. He 
 points to the father's allowing this son's boasts 
 of his own fidelity to go mi contradicted. Goebel, 2 
 on the contrary, offers no extenuation for him 
 whatever. This last was the view, as cited by 
 Trench, of Jerome, Theophylact, and others. 
 
 Our Lord's intent in picturing the elder son 
 is to be learned from the circumstances in which 
 He spoke. Beyond question, the three parables 
 of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Prodi- 
 gal Son were all uttered on the same occasion. 
 They were in reply to the complaint of the Phari- 
 sees and scribes, "this man receiveth sinners 
 and eateth with them." In the first two Jesus 
 portrays his eagerness to win these outcasts to 
 Himself. In the third He advances a step far- 
 ther. Turning more directly to his critics, He 
 makes the elder son pose as the true Pharisee. 
 
 Kitto (art. Pharisee) remarks that Paul, who 
 must have known of our Lord's denunciations 
 
 1 "Parables," p. 340. So De Wette, Hier spricht sich nun der 
 Tugendsioiz des sonst wirklich, unbesenoitiien gOi/eentes &olmes, &c. 
 
 2 "The Parables of Jesus," by Siegfried Goebel, trans, by Prof. 
 Banks, pp. 214, 215. 
 
50 THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
 of this sect, not only has not a word against it, 
 but boasts of having belonged to it. 1 Doubtless 
 there were Pharisees and Pharisees. Josephus 2 
 makes them to have been 6000 in number. Mco- 
 demus, one of them, and Joseph of Arimathea, 
 probably another, were certainly estimable men. 
 But, with two or three such exceptions, those 
 w r hom our Lord encountered, or of whom He 
 spoke, w^ere all that we mean by the word Phari- 
 see as used in our day. The disposition of 
 many modem writers to palliate their faults 
 gets no countenance from Him. Infallible as 
 He was in judging men, the very soul of impar- 
 tiality and charity as He was, He never, unless 
 possibly in a single slight particular, 3 lightens 
 by a shade the blackness of their character. 
 
 Take in succession the instances in which He 
 meets or refers to them. He warns his disci- 
 ples that, unless their righteousness shall ex- 
 ceed the righteousness of the scribes and Phari- 
 sees, they shall in no case enter into the king- 
 dom of heaven. 4 An ominous intimation as to 
 the future of the Pharisees themselves. He is 
 maligned by them in the base calumny that He 
 represents Satan on earth. 5 He bids his disci- 
 ples beware of their teaching. 6 They approach 
 Him with their crafty questions as to divorce. 7 
 He declares that they lay on men heavy burdens, 
 
 1 Acts 23 : G ; 26 : 5 ; Phil. 3 : 5. 
 
 2 Antiquities— Book 17, chap. 2. 
 
 3 Matt. 23 : 23, in regard to the tithes of mint, anise and cum- 
 min. " These ought ye to have done, and not to have left the 
 others undone." 
 
 4 Matt. 5 : 20. 5 Matt. 9 : 34. G Matt. 10 : 6. 7 Matt. 19 : 3 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 51 
 
 which they will not move with one of their own 
 fingers, 1 that they are hypocrites, 2 that they will 
 neither enter the kingdom, of heaven themselves 
 nor suffer others to enter, 3 that they make their 
 converts two-fold more the sons of hell than 
 themselves, 4 that they have cast off judgment, 
 mercy and faith, 5 that, while making an out- 
 ward show of cleanness, they are full within of 
 extortion and excess, 6 that they are like whited 
 sepulchres, 7 that they have the malice of them 
 who slew the prophets, 8 that they are a genera- 
 tion of vipers who can hardly escape the judg- 
 ment of hell, 9 that they love ostentation and 
 flattery; 10 aud we are told that they rejected 
 for themselves the counsel of God, 11 and were 
 lovers of money. 12 In one instance they endeavor 
 to drive him over from Perea into Judea, where 
 they would have had Him in their power, 13 
 as hunters drive their game into a corral. They 
 send officers to take Him, 14 and, by the questions 
 in regard to the woman taken in adultery, 15 and 
 about the tribute-money, 16 they lay snares for 
 his life. 
 
 This, then, being so clearly our Lord's opinion 
 of the Pharisees, we can look for no different 
 character in their representative, the elder son 
 
 1 Matt. 23 : 4. 2 Matt. 23 : 13. 3 Matt. 23 : 13. 4 Matt. 23 : 15 
 5 Matt. 23 : 23. 6 Matt. 23 : 25. 7 Matt. 23 : 27. S Matt. 23 : 31 
 9 Matt. 23 : 33. 10 Luke 11 : 43. 11 Luke 7 : 30. 12 Luke 16 : 14 
 
 13 This, as Trench holds, in '-'Studies in the New Testament."' 
 
 is the true explanation of Luke 13 : 31. 
 
 14 John 7 : 32. 
 
 15 John 8 : 1-11 (if we account this genuine). 
 1(> Matt. 22 : 15—17. 
 
o'Z THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 in the parable. When the hand of Jesus drew 
 a portrait it was a good likeness. 
 
 His object was neither resentful nor irrecon- 
 cilable. He would fain, by exhibiting them to 
 themselves, induce them to avert through re- 
 pentance their coming doom. 
 
 25. "Now his elder son was in the field. " And 
 how comes he there? Why has he not been 
 invited into the house? Why has he not been 
 called to share the rejoicing? Clearly enough, 
 because the father has already seen enough of 
 his spirit to know that he would decline. The 
 elder son has, doubtless, often expressed his opin- 
 ion of his brother — often thanked God that he 
 was not as other men, or even as this prodigal. 
 
 The father, when the younger son asked for 
 his share of the goods, divided unto them 
 his living. All that the younger son, when de- 
 parting, had left behind had, therefore, been 
 allotted to the elder. In reversion, if not in 
 actual possession, it was his. 1 His work in the 
 field is really, then, in his own interest. But, 
 in form at least, he is still in his father's ser- 
 vice. He is tithing mint, anise, and cummin. 
 Like a true Pharisee he keeps a fair exterior. 
 And, as we shall see, he makes the most of it. 
 
 The younger son, after the disease of selfish- 
 ness had begun to break out over him, found 
 the contrasted spirit of his father a sharper, 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 53 
 
 though silent, rebuke than he could bear. 
 Why is not the same effect wrought on his 
 brother? Why has not he too taken his depart- 
 ure? Because the same disease in him has 
 struck in. Showing fewer eruptions, it is only 
 so much the deeper and more deadly. A model, 
 he imagines himself, of self-sacrificing, filial 
 fidelity. The notion of any serious contrast 
 between his father and himself has not oc- 
 curred to him. Or if there be a contrast — so much 
 the worse for his father. 
 
 "And as he came and drew nigh to the house he 
 heard music and dancing." Had he then had any- 
 thing of the spirit of the true son, how promptly 
 would he hasten into the house! How eager 
 would be his cry, "What has happened? What 
 is the good news?" With what glad heart- 
 throbs, too, would he fall on the prodigal's neck 
 and take up the refrain, "For this my brother 
 was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is 
 found!" That he can possibly abstain from all 
 this is itself, before a word from his lips, proof 
 enough that his heart is unsound. He will soon 
 give us proof more than enough. 
 
 26. "And he called to him one of the servants 
 and inquired what these things might be." He 
 does not, says Godet, feel at home in the house. 
 ^N T o one within the doors has come up to 
 his own level of zeal and labor for the house. 
 He is shocked by their levity while there is so 
 much to be done. The cruel necessity, therefore, 
 
54 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 is laid on liini of turning to one of the menials 
 about the premises. In other words, not to 
 put too fine a point upon it, he has already in 
 spirit become "as one of the hired servants." 
 He has sunk in soul to the plane of them with 
 whom, in outward condition, he would scorn 
 to he graded. He would rather consort with 
 one of them than with his father. 
 
 "And inquired what these things might be." 
 There is an imperiousness in the very cast of 
 the words — an insolent calling of the whole 
 household to account. He will have an explana- 
 tion of all this ado to which he has not been in- 
 vited. Possibly he half suspects the cause of it. 
 If so, that adds only more gall to his bitterness. 
 
 27. "And he said to him, Thy brother is come, 
 and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, be- 
 cause he hath received him safe and sound." 
 With what singular dramatic fitness this low 
 menial is made to speak — how exactly like him- 
 self ! Not a clause, hardly a word, fails to betray 
 the man that he is. Let us see. 
 
 The father's announcement of the return 
 of the prodigal glows with a tremulous joy. 
 We seem to see a new light in the dim eyes, 
 a light in which the glad tears glisten as he 
 speaks. We seem to hear a voice broken with 
 excess of feeling in his exulting cry, "'For this 
 my son was dead and is alive again!" and then, 
 repeating as for emphasis, "was lost and is 
 found!" Kecovery, restoration, redemption, is 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 55 
 
 the thought that thrills him. But what is the 
 servant's announcement of the same fact? 
 How the glory and the beauty fade out of it. 
 How clean gone is the festal charm! How 
 meager and miserable a platitude is left! a Thy 
 brother is come/' — has passed from one locality 
 yonder to another here — "only that, and noth- 
 ing more." The servant can appreciate nothing 
 more. The father's words are to his what 
 pyrotechnics are to the sticks that remain, 
 what an overture of Beethoven is to the rosin 
 and the strings. 
 
 But again. "And thy father hath killed the 
 fatted calf." Nothing has the servant to say 
 of the robe, the ring, or the shoes. They are all 
 nothing to him. They lie beyond his range 
 of interest. But one thing he can appreciate 
 — this fatted and petted calf. It fills his whole 
 horizon. Probably he has fed and tended it. 
 He has given his whole mind to it. He may have 
 seen this swineherd returning in his rags from 
 the far country. And it is for him that the 
 master has ordered killed the servant's pet! 
 He who has been feeding swine must now feed 
 upon the fatted calf! With the wary diffi- 
 dence of a true menial, he dares not give vent 
 to his feeling. But his meaning is easily read 
 between the lines. 
 
 Once more, in the analysis of the servant's 
 answer. Why, according to him, has the best 
 of all the herd been sacrificed? Because the 
 
56 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 father has recovered his child from wretch- 
 edness and disgrace? Because a soul has been 
 won to a noble life? Nothing of all that. But 
 " because he hath received him safe and sound." 
 He has returned with a whole skin. No bones 
 are broken. In this the servant's notions cul- 
 minate. They rise no higher. The soul, with 
 its interests, is nothing. The body is all in 
 all. "The natural man receiveth not the things 
 of the Spirit of God, * * * and he cannot 
 know them, because they are spiritually dis- 
 cerned." 
 
 And now we return to the elder brother. 
 
 28. "But he was angry and would not go in." 
 He is not the man to consort with a vagabond. 
 If his father in his weakness "receiveth sinners 
 and eateth with them," so much the more must 
 some one in the family retain his self-respect. 
 
 "And his father came out and entreated him." 
 The natural and just reply of the father to the 
 announcement from the son that he would not 
 go in, would have been, "Then let him stay with- 
 out! If he has no more than this of the 
 spirit of a true son or brother, let him remain 
 till he comes to a better mind, where he is." 
 But no. With the same impartial love with 
 which he ran to embrace the prodigal, the father 
 goes out to his brother. He does more than 
 invite. There is no room here for the embrace 
 or the kiss. Though the youth n^eds both, 
 he would welcome neither. And so, as if de- 
 
THE PEODIGAL SON. 57 
 
 pendent on him, as if his presence in the honse 
 were a necessity, the father stoops to entreat 
 him to be reconciled. 
 
 . As to the character of the Pharisees, Eders- 
 heim 1 falls in with the judgment of our Lord. 
 And this elder son, who represents them, now 
 proceeds to show us how accurate is the por- 
 traiture. 
 
 29. "But he answered and said to his father." 
 Why these two w^ords, "his father " ? To des- 
 ignate the person meant they are certainly not 
 needed. There are but two parties to this inter- 
 view. It could be no one else but his father that 
 he answered. In the father's rejoinder (v. 31) we 
 have (not, he said unto his son, but) "he said 
 unto him." 2 Is it not designedly that our Lord, 
 introducing the son's insolent reply, brings in 
 these words? It was to his father, who at the 
 moment was entreating him, that he answered 
 in this arrogant style. So lost he w^as to all 
 sense or thought of the reverence due from a 
 son. 
 
 And now another point must be noted. The 
 younger son, as we have seen, nowhere loses 
 sight of the dear word "father." Low as he 
 
 1 1 : 312, 313. "Indeed," he says, "some of the sayings of the 
 rabbis, in regard to Pharisaism and the professional Pharisee, are 
 more withering than any in the New Testament." "Their asser- 
 tions of .purity were sometimes conjoined with Epicurean maxims 
 betokening a very different state of mind;" as, "Make haste to eat 
 and drink, for the world, which we quit, resembles a wedding- 
 feast;" or this, "My son, if thou possess anything, enjoy thyself, 
 for there is no pleasure in Hades, and death grants no respite." 
 Maxims these to which also too many of their recorded stories 
 and deeds form a painful commentary. 
 2 Likewise (v. 27) the servant "said unto him." 
 
58 THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
 falls, he never sinks beyond sight of that. 
 When he asks for his share of the goods, when 
 among the swine he remembers his home, when 
 he resolves to return, when he meets the em- 
 brace and the kisses of welcome, that word 
 comes again and again to his lips. Fearfully 
 as he had strained the tie to the forsaken par- 
 ent, he had never completely parted it. 
 
 But this word is one for which his brother 
 has no nse. He prefers not to recognize the 
 relation. He has wandered a greater distance 
 from his father in his heart than his brother 
 had wandered with his feet. 
 
 "Lo!" 1 the first word, which should be 
 " father, " is more like a blow in the face. Sub- 
 stantially it is, "See here! look you to this! how 
 true and faithful a son you have been neglect- 
 ing here at home! " And in view of the rever- 
 ence expected from a son among the orientals 
 of old towards a father, the affront seems still 
 more gross. 
 
 "These many years do I serve thee." Here leers 
 on us again the face of the genuine Pharisee. 
 We encounter him a little later in Luke's gos- 
 pel. He is always as true to his character, 
 in his utterances, as we have seen the hired 
 servant to be to his own. "I fast twice in the 
 week; I give tithes of all that I get." 2 The 
 
 1 "I&ov, defined in Thayer's lexicon as "a demonstrative particle 
 * * * giving a peculiar vivacity to the style by bidding * * * the 
 hearer attend to what is said." We should think it did, in this 
 case, add a very peculiar vivacity to the style. 
 2 Luke 18 : 12. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 59 
 
 Pharisee at the temple has drawn the Lord, as 
 he imagines, far into his debt. He has done 
 more than the law required. While an annual 
 fast was prescribed 1 he had fasted twice in the 
 week. While tithes of the increase of only the 
 field and the cattle 2 were demanded, he had 
 tithed all he acquired. So with this elder son. 
 For these many years he has been heaping up 
 merit. And, as the word 3 he uses intimates, it 
 has been by a slavish drudgery, hard to bear. In 
 this marvelous, disinterested, unrequited fidelity 
 of his he has shrunk from nothing that could 
 promote his father's interest. 
 
 "And I never transgressed a command- 
 ment of thine." Here again is the same type 
 of Pharisee with him at the temple. "God," 
 he cried, "I thank thee that I am not as the rest 
 of men, extortioners," etc. How keen the irony 
 of our Lord's putting this word, above all 
 others, into his lips! He belongs to the class 
 of worthies "which devour widows' houses," 4 
 "and are full of extortion and excess." 5 It is 
 as if one of our modern Shylocks, who make 
 "corners " in beef and grain and pork, were to 
 thank the Lord for inspiring him with so tender 
 an interest in the poor. But this elder son is 
 like-minded. Boasting that he has never trans- 
 gressed a commandment of his father, he is 
 doing it at this identical moment. His father 
 is entreating him, and he is insolently refusing, 
 
 1 Lev. 16 : 29-30. 2 Lev. 27 : 30-33. 3 SovAevw. 
 
 4 Luke 20 : 47. 5 Matt. 23 : 25. 
 
M THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 to go into the house. The perfection of his 
 hypocrisy is exquisite. 
 
 And now, haying established his own right- 
 eousness, the way is open to exhibit the in- 
 iquities of his father. 
 
 "And yet/' notwithstanding ail I haye done 
 for thee, "thou neyer gayest me a kid." In the 
 Greek 1 he thrusts himself much more conspic- 
 uously forward. "And to me," it reads, "thou 
 neyer gayest." So before yet mentioning his 
 brother he puts himself, in sharp contrast, 
 beside him. 
 
 And here, too, he shows how completely he 
 is diyorced in feeling from his father. "Thou 
 neyer gayest me" shows the same spirit as that 
 of his brother in his "Give me the portion of 
 the substance that ialleth to me" — the spirit 2 
 of which his brother had bitterly repented. 
 And the elder son is putting everything down 
 on the cold, legal ground of work and reward. 3 
 Love for his father has leaked out of his heart, 
 and left it, like the bones in Ezekiel's vision, 
 exceedingly dry. 
 
 "Thou never gavest me a kid," the smallest of 
 all possible creatures in the herd, "that I might 
 make merry with my friends." How sharp the 
 contrast here with the magnanimous sympa- 
 thy, the all-embracing joy, of the father ! " That 
 I might make merry with my friends," says 
 the son. "Let us eat and be merry," says the 
 
 1 Kai e/ioi oiSeirore, 2 Alford (in loco). 3 Edersheim 2 : 26Q, 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 61 
 
 father. An electric charge can as well trav- 
 erse half a net-work of steel, and no more, as 
 the joy of a generous man can confine itself 
 within him alone. 
 
 The analogy between the sons is much closer 
 than the elder imagines. The one had wished 
 something set apart to him that he might feast 
 separately in the far land. The other wishes 
 something set apart that he may feast sepa- 
 rately at home. The alienation from the 
 father is in the two cases equally complete. 
 The elder, showing the same spirit of which 
 his brother had repented, is like the Pharisee 
 in the temple, disgraced by the very extortion 
 which was his chief charge against the pub- 
 lican he so despised. 
 
 But now, having opened the vials of his wrath 
 on his father, he turns part of their contents 
 on his brother. 
 
 30. " But when this thy son came." As a bee's 
 cell is made to contain the most possible honey 
 under a given surface, so do these words seem 
 shaped to contain the utmost amount of gall. 
 "This thy son" — as an angry brother among 
 us would clearly enough indicate to his father 
 his feeling with, "That boy of yours." But 
 it is not clearly enough for this elder brother 
 Something more explicit is to come. 
 
 "Thy son," as many interpreters have noted, 
 are words chosen to disclaim all relationship 
 of his brother to himself. As he began with evad- 
 
62 THE PRODIGAL SOX. 
 
 ing the word "father," lie continues with eva- 
 sion of "brother." The father alone must be 
 responsible for the new-comer. 
 
 "Came." So the elder son, too, has gone 
 down to the level of the hired servant, Xo 
 more than the servant can he appreciate the 
 glory of the father's view of it — "dead and alive 
 again; lost and found." He has become in soul 
 (what his brother had thought to do only in 
 outward condition) "as one of the hired serv- 
 ants." 
 
 "Which hath devoured 1 thy living with har- 
 lots." "Devoured thy living," which I, by serving 
 thee these many years, have toiled to keep and 
 increase. "Thy living," an insinuation thrown in 
 as a wedge of jealousy between the father and the 
 prodigal. The fact was that the latter had wasted 
 only his share of the estate. "With harlots" 
 comes, as a climax, with the deadliest thrust of 
 all. And it may be as false as it was malicious. 
 Wasting substance with riotous living would 
 not of necessity imply it. Even if it be true, 
 the elder brother, who has not yet seen the 
 prodigal, can hardly be supposed to have heard 
 of it. He is bent on putting the worst construc- 
 tion possible on the conduct of his brother. 2 
 Thou hast killed for him the fatted calf," while 
 
 1 'O KaTa<f>ayw, perhaps as strong and violent a word as could 
 have been found. 
 
 2 Trench seems to us quite in error when in a note on the 
 prodigal's wasting Ms substance (" Parables,-'' p. 322) he says, •• We 
 are not, in this early part of the parable, expressly told, but from 
 v. 30 we infer, that he consumed with' harlots the living which he 
 had gotten from his father." Matthew Henry, in his commentary, 
 comes much nearer the truth. 
 
THE PRODIGAL SON. 03 
 
 I could have not even a kid. Here again this 
 brother shows how far he has descended to- 
 ward the level of the servant. As completely as 
 the servant he is absorbed in the loss of the 
 calf. He is not ashamed to betray that his 
 whole heart was on the creature. 
 
 31. "And he said unto him, Son." How beau- 
 tiful the contrast of this with the son's arro- 
 gance! "Son!" — if thou, that is, wilt not even 
 recognize me as father, that shall not prevent 
 me from claiming thee. The word itself then, 
 before the appeal goes farther, is a tender re- 
 minder. The Greek word 1 it represents is not the 
 same with that for "son" just used by the elder 
 brother. It is "my child," in the most touch- 
 ing expostulation. 
 
 " Thou art ever with me." 2 I am thy exceeding 
 great reward. Why talk of kids and calves 
 and jealous lines of ownership? In heart and 
 in possessions let us be one ! 
 
 "All that is mine is thine." 8 Let us be done 
 with claims and rights, and fall into the union 
 of love. 
 
 It is a mistake in many writers, as it seems 
 to us, who infer from the loving words of the 
 father that he found something to approve in 
 the elder son. Those words show nothing but 
 
 1 Tewov, child, while the brother had used uios. "The word 
 (t4kvov) is used," says Thayer's lexicon, "in affectionate address, 
 such as patrons, helpers, teachers, and the like, employ.'' lie cites 
 Matt. 9 : 2, " Son, be of good cheer;" Mark 10 : 24, "Children, how 
 hard is it for them that trust in riches," etc. 
 
 2 Which is far better than your '-'friends," Bengal (in loco), 
 
 3 The younger son had already taken his share. 
 
64 THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
 parental anxiety to pour some sweetness into 
 the son's bitter spirit. Of complacency in his 
 character they give no hint. To learn what is 
 that character we have only to look to the words 
 and acts of the son himself. In them there 
 is no redeeming feature to be found. 
 
 32. "But it was meet to make merry and be 
 glad." The making merry is outward rejoicing. 
 The being glad is inward delight. "For this thy 
 brother" (whom the older of the two had coldly 
 called "thy son") "was dead and is alive again; 
 he was lost and is found." He had done more 
 than "come," as his brother, with no sense of 
 the greatness of the recovery, declared. 
 
 And so the marvelous story, like a string of 
 gems, with every word, almost, a brilliant, 
 rounds to its close. 
 
 The reader will perhaps complain that the 
 older son has, in these pages, been judged too 
 severely. But this son, as we have held, was 
 intended by our Lord to represent the Pharisees. 
 Several considerations prove this. Jesus was 
 now directly addressing Pharisees, in reply to 
 a cavil of theirs. The older brother treats the 
 prodigal precisely as the Pharisees treated their 
 outcast countrymen. This son has unmistak- 
 ably the same features with the Pharisee pray- 
 ing in the temple. 
 
 Holding therefore that the elder brother is a 
 Pharisee, and remembering our Lord's judg- 
 ment of them, we seem forced to the conclu- 
 
THE PKODIGAL SON. <>5 
 
 sion that he meant to give their character to 
 this brother. And if Ave look for his real spirit, 
 not in the words of his father, but his own, 
 we seem led to the same conclusion. 
 
 What but righteous indignation toward a 
 spirit like that of the Pharisees was possible, 
 to our Lord? What but a discredit would any- 
 thing else than indignation have been to Him? 
 
 It is essential to a perfect character that one 
 should be as good a hater as lover. Dr. Arnold, 
 of Kugby School, said he never felt sure of a 
 boy who only loved good. It was not till he 
 began to hate evil that he knew him to be safe. 
 Then he showed himself in earnest. Nor was it 
 enough for the inspired writer (Heb. 1:9) to de- 
 scribe our Lord as having "loved righteousness." 
 Something more must be added. "Thou hast 
 loved righteousness and hated iniquity; there- 
 fore God, even thy God, hath anointed Thee." 
 Jesus hated evil as intensely as he loved good. 
 From the same lips that tenderly invite the la- 
 boring and heavy laden fall those awful words, 
 "Fill ye up, then, the measure of your iniquities. 
 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can 
 ye escape the condemnation of hell?'' 
 
 The key to the mystery is not far away. "Ye 
 lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, 
 and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with 
 one of your fingers." "Ye devour widows' 
 houses, and for a pretense make long prayers." 
 They were saints in the synagogue and knaves 
 5 
 
66 THE PRODIGAL SON. 
 
 iii the market. And it was the sheer, pure love 
 to the outraged poor of the Friend of publi- 
 cans and sinners, who could weep with them 
 that weep, which thundered in those sentences. 
 It was the Good Shepherd turning against the 
 wolves because He loved the sheep. 
 
 The German artist, Maurice Eetzsch, has pic- 
 tured, with deep spiritual insight, a battle be- 
 tween angels and demons. The heavenly legions 
 mount no guns, discharge no musketry. Xo 
 sabre among them flashes in the air. They 
 sprinkle roses, only, over the hosts of hell. But 
 every rose, in falling, turns to flaming fire. It 
 burns its way into the very vitals of whomso- 
 ever it strikes, till he sinks and writhes in 
 anguish. So is it with the wrath (not of the 
 "lion of the tribe of Judah," but) of the Lamb, 
 from which the guilty multitudes entreat the 
 mountains to fall and hide them. 
 
 This indignation of Jesus, like all righteous 
 indignation, was at bottom pure benevolence. 
 In the character of the ingrate son, boasting of 
 his unrequited service, our Lord exhibits the 
 Pharisees to themselves only that He may, if 
 possible, even at the eleventh hour, draw them 
 to repentance and life. 
 
KXCURSIJS. 
 
Christ as a Public Ye^cher. 
 
 It niight be expected that a Divine Teacher 
 would be instructive not only in the truths he 
 would convey, but in his way of conveying 
 them. If our Lord was infallible, He showed 
 it no less in his methods and manner than in 
 his subject-matter. That a the common people 
 heard Him gladly" has been generally ascribed 
 to the beauty of his life and doctrine, the tender- 
 ness of his sympathy, the contrast, at every 
 point, with the teachers to whom they had been 
 accustomed. But He took care to be an effec- 
 tive speaker. He showed marvelous power 
 and skill in his use of occasions and object- 
 lessons and words. 
 
 How far the human in Him was aided by the 
 Divine will ever, on earth at least, remain a 
 mystery. What amount of study He gave to 
 his style of speech, how far it was spontaneous 
 and unconscious, will never be known. But, 
 whatever may have been the process, the results 
 remain as a charming and exhaustless theme for 
 study. 
 
 There has been, we are persuaded, a serious 
 error as to this matter. The external acts of 
 our Lord, in general, are by no means an 
 
70 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 invariable guide to us. They were largely modi- 
 fied by the usages of his life, land, and age. They 
 were foliage — not roots; shifting sands — not bed- 
 rock. We have naturally and rightly turned 
 to the great principles He unfolded, which no 
 conventionalities can reach, no changing cus- 
 toms touch. 
 
 So we have drifted under the impression that 
 his methods of speech and instruction, like Ms 
 costume and posture at meals, were peculiar to 
 his day and locality. We hare looked little to 
 them for suggestion and help in the great art of 
 holding the attention and reaching the hearts 
 of men. But this essay will fail of its purpose 
 if it does not show that many of these methods 
 were addressed, not to Jews of the first century, 
 as such, but to man as man, to human nature 
 and the human mind, working under laws that 
 never can 
 
 " Grow old or change or pass away." 
 From the teachings of Jesus there are hints 
 to be drawn as to practical tact in reaching and 
 leading men, as to the choice of words, the shap- 
 ing of sentences, the art of illustration, which 
 to any Christian teacher are invaluable helps. 
 I. "He taught them as one having author- 
 ity (Matt. 7:29), and not as the scribes." He 
 recognized the difference between moral and 
 mere scientific truth. The latter follows from 
 induction and ratiocination. It carries no self- 
 evidential power. It shines, like a planet, in 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 71 
 
 reflected light. But moral truth, as a sun, carries 
 a light of its own. It speaks with an impera- 
 tive to the moral sense. And, in clear recogni- 
 tion of all this, Jesus spoke. The scribes and 
 lawyers, with their casuistries and sophistries, 
 raised more doubts than they laid. Dialectics 
 were the atmosphere in which they lived and 
 breathed. In a mechanical way they skimmed 
 the surface of things. It was with them as if 
 one were to say of BaphaeFs Transfiguration, 
 "This painting is of the right proportions of 
 height to breadth. The pigments are laid on 
 with the proper thickness. The laws of per- 
 spective have been observed. Therefore it is a 
 fine painting." 
 
 Our Lord put the truth He taught, not only 
 in such "sweet reasonableness," but in such com- 
 manding power, that as the words fell from his 
 lips the mind of the hearer echoed its reverent 
 Amen! What occasion for argument there? It 
 would have been as crutches to Samson. And 
 in a Teacher who quietly and authoritatively 
 assumed the truth of what He said there dwelt 
 a power over the rough natures around Him 
 like that which a resolute man has over a wild 
 animal. 
 
 In all this there is a lesson for a preacher of 
 our time. He does not, indeed, speak like the 
 Master with personally Divine authority. But 
 that authority, if not in him, is behind him. The 
 day for argument to establish the great staple 
 
72 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 truths of our religion lias, in the main, gone by. 
 Christianity has not, for many centuries, stood 
 before the world as an experiment. It is no 
 mendicant, with hat in hand to beg favors. In 
 a Christian country the burden of proof, in any 
 discussion of its great truths, lies on the objec- 
 tor. These truths have often enough been 
 weighed in the balances and not found wanting. 
 The preacher who gratuitously puts them in 
 again throws away his advantage. He dis- 
 honors the word of his Master. "I am not in 
 the pulpit/- Dr. W. M. Taylor has said, "to 
 defend the Bible. The Bible is there to defend 
 me." 
 
 Life is too short, time is too precious, to be 
 wasted in incessantly laying foundations. There 
 is work enough to be done on the grand super- 
 structure that from age to age so steadily and 
 sublimely rises. 
 
 The minister of Christ, therefore, who stands 
 where he should, at the height of his vocation, 
 will do no timid apologizing for the instruc- 
 tions, invitations, and warnings he utters. 
 Neither will he nervously declare or affirm or 
 insist. We have no more occasion to re-enact 
 the moral law of God than the law of gravita- 
 tion. The wise preacher will take for granted 
 the basilar truths of Christianity. He will as- 
 sume them as the bed-plate on which the whole 
 machinery of his service is to run. In all meek- 
 ness, arrogating nothing to himself, yet remem- 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 73 
 
 bering in whose name lie stands, he will speak 
 "as one haying authority. 7 ' 
 
 II. Jesns pressed with uncompromising force 
 whatever truth He had in hand. "I came not 
 to send peace, but a sword. " "I am come to set 
 a man at variance against his father, and the 
 daughter against her mother." "Of him that 
 wonld borrow of thee turn not thou away." 
 "And he that hath none, let him sell his cloak 
 and buy a sword." Paradoxes and half-truths 
 had no terrors for Him. He knew that but half 
 a globe can be seen at once. He knew that, to 
 present a truth in all its broad relations, is often 
 to press the soul rather with a surface, easily 
 resisted, than with a point that pierces. A fully 
 rounded, carefully balanced statement of a truth 
 is an anodyne to the intellect. The work that 
 the intellect ought to be summoned to do has 
 been already done for it. "The truth, the whole 
 truth, and nothing but the truth," may indeed 
 have been presented. But what will a mind 
 receive of it that is too dormant to receive any- 
 thing ? The amount of profit to the hearer will be 
 in direct ratio to the activity stirred within him. 
 That activity is what exercise is to a convales- 
 cent. For the invalid's recovery no vehicle will 
 answer in place of exertion of his own muscles. 
 
 But a bold, perhaps hyperbolic, statement of 
 a truth is a goad to the soul. Provoking re- 
 sistance, it compels to thought. "But it leads 
 to error!" No; the danger of misapprehension 
 
74 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 is small. Tlie advantage of thinking one's 
 way through the paradox is great. 
 
 Our Lord was, therefore, more bent on stir- 
 ring his hearers to receive some truth than 
 on a vain attempt to load them with more truth 
 than they would carry. Wielding the sword of 
 the Spirit, which is the word of God, He looked 
 rather to its temper and keenness than to its 
 symmetry or beauty. It is quite impossible for 
 us, to whom his pointed utterances have become 
 dulled by long use, to appreciate the startling 
 shock with which they struck his hearers' ears. 
 The outcries of astonishment 1 in reply, show 
 plainly that the arrow had reached its mark. 
 
 This method of address is, in a modern teacher, 
 of course liable to abuse. Easily it may run to 
 an extravagance which the occidental mind is 
 slower to forgive than the oriental hearers to 
 whom Jesus spoke. But, none the less, it is a 
 powder with which no wise preacher will wholly 
 dispense. Precision of thought and speech is 
 not the only requisite. Our congregations are 
 more in danger of nodding a drowsy and un- 
 meaning assent than of falling into error. Many 
 a preacher, in mincing his words and cumber- 
 ing his sentences to guard against misunder- 
 standing, clogs their entrance to the minds of 
 men. Better the truth incisively, clean of all 
 obstructions. Then put the counterbalancing 
 truth, if required, on some other occasion. 
 
 1 Matt. 19 : 25. 
 
CHEIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 75 
 
 III. It is often said that our Lord taught doc- 
 trines less than Paul. It would be nearer the 
 truth to say that He taught the more practi- 
 cal aspects of doctrine. There is, perhaps, no 
 one of such dogmas of the faith as are legiti- 
 mately drawn from Scripture, and which con- 
 front us in imposing order in our theologies, 
 which does not, in some form, appear in his 
 teachings. But as He himself brings down to 
 us the majesty of the Most High under the lowly 
 lineaments of a human life, so is it that these 
 doctrines take shape in his simple, informal 
 words. They lay by their stateliness of bear- 
 ing and their regal costumes, and come home to 
 the heart as work-day truths for common life. 
 Jesus leads us into no metaphysical discussion 
 of the origin or nature of sin. But in the exam- 
 ple of the young ruler (Matt. 19:21-23) how 
 fearfully He exposes its tenacious hold on the 
 soul ! He gives us no treatise on the impotence 
 of a godless morality to fulfill obligation. But 
 as this same amiable youth turns away sorrow- 
 ful with his great possessions, facing toward 
 the dark, we seem to see the Master looking 
 sadly after him with a lamentation like that over 
 Jerusalem: "How hardly shall they that have 
 riches enter into the kingdom of God !" 
 
 Our Lord gives no doctrinal statement of 
 atonement. He is little concerned to set the 
 Great Kedemption, with its profound and awful 
 mystery, sharply outlined before us in the dry 
 
76 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 light of intellect. But with what touching 
 tenderness does He commend it to the heart! 
 "The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the 
 sheep." 1 " This is my blood of the new cove- 
 nant, which is shed for many for the remission 
 of sins." 2 "The Son of man came to give his 
 life a ransom for many." 3 His aim is not so 
 much to draft a "plan of salvation" as to move 
 the soul with the appeal of the transcendent 
 fact. 
 
 Jesus formulates no dogma of regeneration. 
 But under exquisite imagery He shadows out 
 the features of the momentous change. De- 
 scribing it as a new birth, He teaches that it is 
 a revolution of one's character as radical as if 
 he were to go back into non-existence and com- 
 mence his life anew. He gives it, in one of his 
 word-pictures, as a strait gate, with an unwel- 
 come humiliation to pride. The narrow portal, 
 tearing off as we enter it all tinsel of self- 
 righteousness, all faith in sacraments or creeds 
 as a groundwork of hope, leaves the soul in its 
 naked helplessness to throw itself on Christ. 
 Again, Jesus figures the great change as leaven 
 thrust into the meal. It is as gradual in the 
 transformation, then, as it is radical and com- 
 plete. Though at first like the distinct mass of 
 the leaven, almost an alien principle in the soul, 
 working against old habits, estimates, and moral 
 drifts, it comes in time to dissolve and blend 
 
 1 John 10 : 11. 2 Matt. 26 : 28. 3 Matt. 20 : 28. 
 
CHEIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 77 
 
 itself as homogeneous with, the whole inmost 
 life. So, instead of a dry, doctrinal treatise 
 on regeneration, nnder a score or two of heads 
 and sub-divisions, Jesus instructs us by this 
 striking imagery, rich in its wealth of sugges- 
 tion. 
 
 Again, He discusses no dogma of the perse- 
 verance of the saints. He spins no gossamer 
 theory of the harmony of necessity and certainty, 
 builds no cloudy structure of 
 
 "Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute." 
 But, looking on us through the loving features 
 of the Good Shepherd, who knows his sheep 
 and is known of them, He assures us, of his 
 sheep, "they shall never perish, neither shall any 
 man be able to pluck them out of my hand.'' 
 (John 10 : 28). 
 
 We shall find in his teachings no theologi- 
 cal discussion of repentance. The questions, 
 debated for centuries, whether faith or love or 
 contrition is the first act of the renewed soul, 
 whether "efficacious grace" or "natural ability" 
 only is requisite, whether regeneration must 
 precede conversion in the order of time or only 
 in the order of nature, get no illumination from 
 a word of his. But any benighted wanderer, 
 sin-burdened, heart- sore, and glad to surrender 
 his life to his Saviour, will find more light in the 
 story of the prodigal returning, and the father's 
 kiss, than in all the systems of theology ever 
 constructed. 
 
78 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 So as to justification. Whether the pardoned 
 soul has been ransomed, according to the theory 
 of the earlier Christian centuries, as a prisoner 
 taken in fair fight, from the captivity of Satan, 
 or delivered from a debt, on the commercial 
 theory, or from a penalty, on the moral govern- 
 ment theory, we shall not learn from the Great 
 Teacher. But in the beautiful story of the 
 "woman which was a sinner," who "loved 
 much" and whose sins, which were many, were 
 forgiven her, we have all the justification of 
 which any guilty soul will need to know. 
 
 In these methods of our Lord there is a lesson 
 for the modern preacher. The mistake is com- 
 mon of supposing that, unless one has taken 
 up the doctrines serially, calling the roll and 
 forming them in lines as for a parade, unless 
 he deals with them in a more or less technical 
 discussion of the ingenious theories with which 
 our theologies attempt to explain them, he has 
 failed to preach the doctrines. 
 
 Jesus, if we may judge from his example, 
 thought otherwise. Doctrines are instruments 
 or implements to be used in the upbuilding of 
 souls. To that end they ought to be well shaped 
 and adapted. In the hands of too many a 
 preacher, with his obsolete speculations, they 
 are as if one were to cling to the watches, the 
 flint and tinder, the matchlocks and plows and 
 flails, of a century ago. The methods of Jesus 
 are perennially new. They come home to the 
 
CHEIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHEE. ™ 
 
 heart. They touch the deepest life at the core 
 of one's being. They show these grand, eternal 
 truths of the gospel as living truths, that vital- 
 ize souls dead in sin. 
 
 TV. It is instructive to study those silences 
 of our Lord in which He refrained from audi- 
 ble teaching. His sparse disclosures of the life 
 beyond the grave, especially in contrast with 
 the abundant and astonishing revelations of 
 Mohammedan and Eomish teachers and 
 Spiritualist mediums, have been often noted. 
 His wise design seems to have been to mass, 
 for a solid moral impact on the soul, the rewards 
 on the one side, and the woes on the other, of 
 the life to come. He knew the inevitable 
 effect of a multitude of such details as to the 
 surroundings, the language, the social life, the 
 occupations, of the redeemed as would gratify 
 our curiosity. These details and minutiae, even 
 if it be possible to disclose them to us in our 
 earthly life, would have comminuted and 
 frittered away those weighty moral sanctions 
 which He wished to bring to bear, in their un- 
 broken bulk and weight, from the world to come. 
 
 At another point there has been some wonder 
 as to his silence. Why not have given us ample 
 light as to denominational questions that so 
 distract the Christian world? How easy for 
 Him to have settled all controversy as to bap- 
 tism of infants, immersion, predestination, 
 church polity! What divisions and schisms He 
 
80 CHRTST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 might have saved! How far more harmonious 
 and effective might the churches, as one com- 
 pact body, have been! Xatural questions these 
 all seem. But is it certain that one vast organ- 
 ism would have been more in the interest of the 
 kingdom of Christ? Has it so proved in the 
 Komish or the Greek church? Do we not all 
 know the sure drift toward despotism of an 
 immense corporate body necessarily entrusting 
 enormous power to a few hands? Probably, with 
 all the evils flowing from sectarian bigotry, it 
 is better that Christians should fall off into vari- 
 ous sects and communions than that the 
 churches should, as a single huge organism, be 
 ruled by a hierarchy. 
 
 If this be so, it was well that the minor dis- 
 tinctions, around each of which a denomination 
 has crystalized, were not swept away by an 
 utterance of the Master. 
 
 But in single instances as well how striking 
 in his silence! In the account of the woman 
 taken in adultery (John 8: 3-11), assuming the 
 passage to be genuine, how solemn is the pause 
 after those searching words, "Let him that is 
 without sin among you cast the first stone !" 
 How suggestive of the yet more awful silence 
 of eternity, in which guilty consciences may yet 
 speak to souls. Again, when He is summoned 
 to entertain Herod and his men of war by call- 
 ing up infinite wisdom and omnipotence to per- 
 form for their amusement (Luke 23:8-11), in 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 81 
 
 what majestic meekness, with sealed lips, He 
 stands! In what unutterable pity, bound and 
 helpless and mocked as He is, He looks on the 
 king and his officers in the splendor of their 
 purple and gold! Why has not some great 
 artist taken the scene for his pencil? 
 
 A still more striking lesson from the silence 
 of Jesns we haye in the case of the Syrophoeni- 
 cian woman. 1 We will consider this some- 
 what more fully. "He entered into a house," 
 says Mark, "and wonld have no man know it." 
 He w^as tired down with excess of work in 
 doing good. Elsewhere He w^as so exhausted 
 that He conld sleep through all the uproar of 
 a storm on the lake. And now He was willing 
 to allow his burdened and complaining body a 
 little rest. 
 
 "But," as Chrysostom has it, "the ointment 
 betrays itself." And He whose "name was as 
 ointment poured forth " could not be hid. This 
 Syrophoenician woman, though brought up in 
 both an alien nation and religion, had heard of 
 Him. Where or how she came to the keenness of 
 spiritual insight and strength of faith she soon 
 betrays, we are not informed. It is reasonable 
 to suppose also that the Master knew of her. 
 He who perceived in Perea that Lazarus had 
 died in Bethany (John 11: 11-11), may well 
 have been no stranger to this good woman, even 
 before He met her. 
 
 Matt. 15 : 21-28, and Mark 
 
 6 
 
82 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 She lias left, it appears, in her home a daughter 
 possessed by a devil. Day after day the wretched 
 mother has sat beside the child in silent, help- 
 less anguish, 
 
 "Love watching madness with unalterable mien." 
 
 But now the wonder-working Healer of disease 
 has come. She has heard of his power 
 and compassion. She has been told of demons 
 that had scoffed at all other exorcists, but had 
 heard from Him the voice of a master and 
 obeyed. Xot a moment is to be lost. He never 
 came her way before — may never come again. 
 He will hear her cry, as He has heard a thousand 
 cries, with relief and gladness in his answer. 
 
 But now a strange, dark mystery. He answers 
 her not a word. What can be the meaning of 
 it? Does He despise her as a heathen? Are all 
 the reports of Him false? Or is his power only 
 a lying invention? 
 
 At this point the disciples interpose. "Send 
 her away, for she crieth after us." They speak 
 in no better spirit, apparently, than that of the 
 godless judge in the parable: "I will avenge 
 her, lest by her continual coming she weary me." 
 The disciples are tired of the woman and would 
 gladly be rid of her. 
 
 But still the Master keeps his silence. He 
 will not speak the word of relief. "I am not 
 sent," He replies to them, "but to the lost sheep 
 of the house of Israel." A rebuff that comes 
 like a cruel blow to the sad woman's hopes. 
 
CHEIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 83 
 
 Not a syllable yet spoken to her. Not a syllable 
 of sympathy for her. Only cold, hard words, 
 which possibly she overhears. 
 
 Bnt still, like a bird driven back seaward 
 by harsh winds from the shore, yet straggling 
 with tired wings for shelter, she holds on and 
 holds out. Close to his feet she comes, and kneel- 
 ing to look up into his face, she cries, "Lord, 
 help me!" He replies as if his heart were turned 
 to stone, "Let the children first be fed. It is 
 not meet to take the children's bread and cast 
 it to dogs!" 1 There is no hope. He scorns 
 her as a heathen dog. He is a narrow, haughty, 
 heartless Jew. 
 
 But no — that cannot be. It is Jesus of Naz- 
 areth! She watches Him more closely, kneel- 
 ing there at his feet. Does she detect, through 
 this disguise of bigotry and scorn, a glance 
 from the true Jesus? The keen insight of faith ! 
 The quick wit of inspired humility! "Truth, 
 Lord," I am a pagan dog : and therefore I claim 
 the blessing; for "the dogs eat of the crumbs 
 that fall from their master's table." "She 
 snares the Lord," says Luther, "in his own 
 speech." 
 
 And now He lets drop the disguise. Like 
 Joseph, when ruler in Egypt, first sternly re- 
 
 1 Kwdpia, literally, "little dogs." Some interpreters have seen 
 in. this a mitigation of the harshness of our Lord's repulse. 
 Others have thought it an aggravation, as more contemptuous than 
 "doss," without the diminutive. There is apparently little ground 
 for either view. But the word is certainly harsh— was intended 
 to be— as part of the test to which our Lord was putting the Syro- 
 phcenician's faith. As Trench remarks ("■'Miracles." p. 275), the 
 nobler qualities of the dog are nowhere recognized in Scripture. 
 
84 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 pelling his brethren till he can learn what man- 
 ner of men they hare become in his long absence, 
 and then revealing himself to welcome them 
 with open arms, the Lord Jesns shows the love 
 that lay hidden behind this harsh rebuff. "O 
 woman! great is thy faith! For this saying, go 
 thy way. The devil is gone out of thy daugh- 
 ter." 
 
 The use He makes of silence is as beautiful 
 as anything in all Scripture. A lapidary spends 
 small pains on any common stone. The stone 
 might crack and fly in fragments; or, if fin- 
 ished, might not pay for the labor on it. But 
 when some priceless diamond in the rough 
 comes into his hands, he cuts and grinds and 
 files and shapes and polishes, till the full beauty 
 of the brilliant is brought out. So there were 
 weaklings whom our Lord could take through 
 no such discipline of exclusiveness and mystery 
 and repulsion. To the leper He replied 
 at once, "I will ; be thou clean I" 1 At the gate of 
 Xain, amidst the widow's woe over the dead form 
 of her son, before she asks for sympathy, 
 "Young man, I say unto thee, arise!" 2 To the 
 impotent man at Bethesda, without waiting for 
 a prayer for healing, " Arise, take up thy bed and 
 walk." 
 
 So, in other instances, the feeble faith of 
 some could stand no strain of delay. "The 
 bruised reed He would not break, or quench the 
 
 1 Matt 8:3. 2 Luke 7 : 14. 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER, 
 
 85 
 
 smoking flax." But this Syrophoenician wo- 
 man was neither reed nor flax. Her faith was 
 strong. Her spiritual sight was keen. So the 
 Master folds in his loye and yeils it over. He 
 brings out the beauty and power of her trust in 
 Him. He holds it up, honored and glorified, 
 to the world's admiration to the end of time, 
 that no sad soul, hard pressed and long waiting, 
 may eyer despair. 
 
 V. There are lessons, also, in the acts of our 
 Lord, when He is not by word of mouth directly 
 teaching. Dr. Horace Bushnell 1 beautifully 
 sketches his sleep on the fisher's boat. "No wild- 
 est tumult without can reach the inward com- 
 posure of his rest. The rain beating on his face, 
 and the spray driving across it, and the sharp 
 gleams of the lightning and the crash of the 
 thunder and the roar of the storm and the 
 screams of the men, not all of them can shake 
 Him far enough inward to reach the center 
 where sleep lodges and waken Him to conscious- 
 ness." What a suggestion here, though indi- 
 rectly, of the energy with which He labored to 
 bless men. Believing the body and comforting the 
 soul of every sufferer, to his own worn body He is 
 a pitiless master, incessantly demanding from it, 
 " Give, give, more work for the lame, deaf, blind 
 and leprous and possessed, more teaching for the 
 benighted multitudes!" till it sinks on the deck of 
 the little vessel, utterly exhausted and worn out. 
 
 1 Christ and his Salvation, p. 140. 
 
86 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 "What a suggestion, too, of eagerness for ser- 
 vice, even at fearful cost (Mark 10 : 32), in Ms 
 going before the disciples on his way to Geth- 
 seniane and the cross! In his three months in 
 Jerusalem the Jews had plotted to assassinate 
 Him, had twice mobbed Him, had once issued 
 an order for his arrest, 1 and had been fired, by 
 the raising Lazarus, to still more desperate 
 rage. 2 ^To wonder that the disciples, as they fol- 
 low Him while He presses on before them in the 
 way, are amazed and afraid. How searching and 
 pathetic a rebuke to any one of us inclined to 
 complain of too many demands for Christian 
 work, too many calls on his purse ! 
 
 Another act of Jesus, which seems at first 
 reading insignificant, is fruitful in suggestion. 
 Sitting ("wearied," again, as on the fisher's 
 boat) by the well-side, He says to the dissolute 
 Samaritan woman, "Give me to drink." 3 He 
 
 1 John 7 : 19-32 ; 8 : 59 ; 10 : 31-39. 
 
 2 John 11 : 45-50. 
 
 3 John 4:7. Some most interesting points in the conversation 
 that follows are noted by Trench " Synonyms of the N. T., on aireo. 
 The woman in her reply, " How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest 
 drink," etc., uses curew which, like the Latin peto, implies a peti- 
 tion from an inferior to a superior. She evidently, at first, looks 
 on Jesus as a friendless wanderer. But He, in his rejoinder, care- 
 fully avoids the use of her word and the concession it would in- 
 volve. '• If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith 
 to thee, Give me to drink;" then, proceeding, He significantly 
 adopts her word, " thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would 
 have given thee living water." Instead of supposing thyself supe- 
 rior, thou wouldst have acknowledged thine inferiority to Him. 
 Cremer, in his lexicon, remarks that Trench (who is supported 
 bv Bengel, and bv Webster in " Syntax and Synonyms of the X. 
 T.") "wrongly limits the use of aiTeiw,wken he says that, like the 
 Latin peto, it is submissive and suppliant : as many examples of 
 the opposite might be quoted: Deut. 10:12; Acts 16:29; etc." 
 It is true that, in Deut. 10 : 12, " And now Israel, what doth the 
 Lord thy God require of thee," alrelTai can have no such suppliant 
 meaning. Also, Acts 16 : 29, where the jailer " called for a light," 
 must be conceded to Cremer. Perhaps, too, he would claim Luke 
 1 : 63, where Zacharias asks for a writing-table. Another instance, 
 (Ephes. 3 : 13), " I desire that ve faint not at my tribulations," is not 
 so clear. It would be quite like the great apostle, in his meekness 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 87 
 
 asks a favor. And nothing so gratifies and con- 
 ciliates a person in humble life as to be solicited 
 for a favor that he can easily grant. Jesus 
 understood human nature. And his methods 
 of approaching those whom He sought to bene- 
 fit are a study in themselves. 
 
 Another suggestive act of our Lord is the re- 
 moval of the hired mourners from the room 
 where lay the dead maiden. (Mark 5 : 40.) It 
 is easy to imagine how utterly repulsive to his 
 sensitive nature must have been these charla- 
 tans ("skillful in lamentation/' Amos 5:16), 
 howling like dervishes, and as hollow-hearted 
 as the "sounding brass and clanging cymbals" 
 which aided in the uproar they made. He came 
 to be, not a perfect man, but a perfect human 
 being. All the finest qualities of both sexes 
 were harmoniously blended in Him. As no man 
 ever equalled Him in the sterner, masculine 
 
 and gentleness, to adopt toward his brethren a word generally 
 used by an inferior. 
 
 But airelv is used in the New Testament, no less than seventy- 
 one times. And in every instance, with the above few possible 
 exceptions, it is in a request made to a superior. The following 
 examples are taken at random : Matt. 5 :42 ; Mark 6 :22 ; Luke 
 11 :9 ; John 15 :7 ; Acts 12 :20. A usus so uniform could be no 
 matter of accident. 
 
 Thayer's lexicon (sub verbo) asserts that Prof. Ezra Abbott 
 proves, in the N. Am. Review (1872, p. 182), that Trench is wrong. 
 Not so. Dr. Abbott, who makes atrew occur seventy-one times, 
 says only, "The following passages must, at least, be regarded as 
 exceptions, and may suggest a doubt as to the distinction asserted." 
 He adds no exceptions to those above cited but I. Cor., 1 : 22, " the 
 Jews ask for signs," and I. Pet., 3 : 15, "everyone that asketh of you 
 a reason of the hope that is in you." Allowing both these, they 
 would make five, at most six, instances, out of seventy-one. Dr. 
 Abbott did well to speak cautiously. 
 
 Another suggestive point, though a little aside from our line of 
 discussion is that to the Samaritan woman's first reply to our 
 Lord we find no "Sir" prefixed. The omission corresponds to 
 her presumptuous use of alrelv. But in her second reply, struck 
 by the words of Jesus, "If thou knewest who it is," etc., as well 
 as, probably, by the unconscious dignity of his manner, she com- 
 mences with "Sir," or "Lord," *vpie. 
 
88 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 virtues, so no woman in the refined sensibility 
 with which He shrank from everything un- 
 seemly, everything spurious and false. 
 
 In the rude age and land in which He had 
 chosen to live He had, from such sources, trials 
 to endure that rarely occur to us. There could 
 hardly be a more striking scene than this of the 
 Master standing in his majestic calmness, be- 
 fore pronouncing the almighty word that was 
 to raise the dead, with these tragic harlequins 
 jeering and scoffing around Him. 
 
 The intense significance of that other act 
 (Luke 22 : 61) in the court of the high priest, 
 when "the Lord turned and looked upon Peter" 
 swearing to his falsehood, and the apostle 
 "felt how awful goodness is," we pass with no 
 vain attempt at description. 
 
 Instances in which there was a startling power 
 in the very appearance of Jesus, in which the 
 hidden divinity must have shone through the 
 lowly exterior, the reader can study for himself 
 in Matt. 21 : 12; Mark 9 : 15; Luke 1 : 20, 30; 
 John 7: 41-16; 18: 6. 
 
 VI. There is suggestion in our Lord's con- 
 stant citation of the Old Testament Scriptures. 
 For one reason this is specially remarkable. 
 Being Himself the Truth, as well as the Way 
 and the Life, He was, independently of Scrip- 
 ture, an infallible source of instruction. Also, 
 as introducing the New Economy, which was to 
 sweep away so large a portion of the require- 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 89 
 
 ments of the Old, had He referred less than He 
 does to the latter He might not have surprised 
 us. 
 
 And yet, in driving out the traders from the 
 temple (Mark 11 : 17), in replying to the cavil 
 of the scribes about the resurrection (Mark 12 : 
 20), when tempted by Satan (Matt. 4 : 1-11), 
 on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24 : 27), almost 
 everywhere and at all times, He is bringing in 
 some utterance of Moses, the Psalms, or the 
 Prophets. 
 
 Is there no lesson here for preachers of our 
 time? They have too often been content with 
 "motto texts" — texts which are simply figure- 
 heads to a sermon. One old New England divine 
 is reported to have said that he "wanted nothing 
 from a text but to get a subject out of it." There 
 was formerly much of that style of discourse. 
 But more recently the sermon is the direct child 
 of the Scriptures. It lies on the bosom of Scrip- 
 ture and draws its life from that. It becomes, 
 in consequence, less technical and formal. It 
 has greater variety, richness, freshness of 
 thought. 
 
 VII. But various lessons our Lord taught by 
 his miracles of healing. We have seen some- 
 thing of these in the story of the Syrophoenician 
 woman. Quite as striking is that of the woman 
 with the issue of blood. And, equally with that, 
 it seems to call for special notice. 
 
 When a man has been placed on an insula- 
 
00 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 ting stool and then thoroughly charged with 
 electricity, one may, with a tonch of the hnger, 
 draw off from any part of his person a share 
 of the mysterious fluid. It may be done with- 
 out his wish or knowledge. He may be slyly 
 approached from behind. The electricity is not 
 in his will, but in his body. And his body will 
 communicate it through a touch. So this woman 
 evidently supposes the healing power to be in 
 Christ. Tormented with a cruel disease, which 
 is slowly wearing out her life, she expects to 
 find Him so overflowing with the curative virtue 
 that it saturates even his garments. She means 
 to steal, from behind, some share of this virtue 
 with a touch, and then to make off with her 
 blessing before He is aware. 
 
 Her whole notion,- of course, is a delusion. 
 There is a large alloy of superstition mixed with 
 the gold of her faith. And, had our Lord been 
 as narrow and harsh as too many a servant of 
 his through the ages since, He would have bid- 
 den her begone with her wretched conceit and 
 to wait for a cure till she had learned how to 
 approach Him. 
 
 But not so the gracious Master. The poor 
 woman's body is to be healed and her soul 
 instructed. But the healing comes first. To 
 ask her to come out, while diseased and doubt- 
 ing and trembling, with a full disclosure of her 
 sad condition, would have been too stern a test 
 for her feeble faith. He will take a gentler way. 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 91 
 
 He honors at once this dim-sighted, supersti- 
 tious faith of hers. He falls in, for the moment, 
 with her way for the healing. 
 
 Quick as an electric flash, and thrilling as that, 
 the throb of returning health runs through her 
 nerves and startles her with a vigor never 
 known for many a weary year before. Now 
 she can stand the test of exposure. "The joy 
 of the Lord is her strength. " Now, not till now, 
 the Master turns with his searching question, 
 "Who touched my clothes?" The magical virtue 
 in his clothing, as the woman supposes, has had 
 its effect. The Master knows nothing of what 
 has been done. She will hide within her own 
 bosom the gladdening secret and escape with 
 it undivulged. 
 
 But the Lord cannot let her evade Him with- 
 out a better and more lasting blessing than she 
 had in her thought. Her renewed, invigorated 
 body will, ere many years, be mouldering in the 
 dust. Into the undying soul, therefore, Jesus 
 will throw new life and light. "Who touched my 
 clothes?" is his persistent question. Peter, of 
 course and as usually, wiser than his Master, 
 thinks the question absurd. "The multitude 
 throng Thee and press Thee," he cries, "and say- 
 est Thou, Who touched me?" But Jesus is not 
 to be baffled in his loving search for this 
 daughter of Abraham. "Though many had 
 thronged," says an old interpreter, "only one 
 had touched Him." Through the contact of the 
 
92 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 others went out no stream of blessing; through 
 that of the woman passed life for the dying. 
 
 When, in a flutter of mingled joy and awe, 
 she comes out to fall down before Him and tell 
 all the truth, the word follows which is to glow 
 to her latest day in her memory: "Daughter, be 
 of good comfort : thy faith hath saved thee. Go 
 in peace." "I knew," that is, "who was behind 
 me. I knew how feeble and benighted was thy 
 hope. It was no magic in my garment, but my 
 love for thee, in response to thy faith, that has 
 cured thee. Xot only trust and be healed in the 
 body, my daughter. Believe and be saved in 
 the soul." 
 
 The whole beautiful narrative shows the use 
 and value of an immature, ignorant faith. 
 It teaches at how low a point in darkness and 
 error the Lord Jesus is able and eager to lay 
 hold on a soul. 
 
 Again, take the account of the palsied man 
 (Matt. 9 : 1-8). In all his wretched helpless- 
 ness he is laid by his Mends, on his pallet, be- 
 fore the Master. They desire nothing so much 
 as the sovereign word of cure. But how indif- 
 ferent seems the Lord to his sad condition! 
 For some time not a syllable of relief from it 
 falls from his lips. There is no sign reported 
 of sympathy Avith his sufferings. There is not 
 a trace of recognition of them in any way. Yet, 
 while the man is still lying unrelieved, Jesus 
 cries to him, "Son, be of good cheer!" What, 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 93 
 
 to most of the bystanders, could this have 
 seemed but irony? Jesus evidently intended to 
 intimate, as well to them as to him, that the 
 body is nothing — that, even if cured of its ail- 
 ments, it soon goes to the dust — and that the 
 soul is the jewel within the casket. 
 
 "Thy sins be forgiven thee!" That great de- 
 liverance, He will have all present understand, 
 may well thrill one with gladness, however 
 palsied and distressed the outward frame. 
 
 It is not till after the charge of blasphemy 
 from the Pharisees, and the necessity of vindi- 
 cating his Divine prerogative in the forgiveness 
 of sins, that He pays any attention at all to the 
 body of the sufferer. Even then He brings in 
 the miracle only incidentally. ' ' Now, "He seems 
 to say, "since I have granted this poor sinner 
 the greatest boon conceivable, in the forgiveness 
 of his sins, if you count the little matter of the 
 healing of his body of so much moment, before 
 dismissing him I will attend to that." The man- 
 ner of the miracle is every way as instructive as 
 the miracle itself. 
 
 VIII. Our Lord's way of startling his hearers 
 by paradoxes and solecisms is remarkable. 
 "Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood 
 hath eternal life" (John 6 : 54). "She is not dead, 
 but sleepeth" (Matt. 9 :24). "Destroy this tem- 
 ple, and in three days I will raise it up " (John 
 2 : 19). These and like utterances sometimes 
 seem as if He cared for nothing so much as to 
 
04 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 rouse the dull minds around Him and bolt them 
 into some activity of thought on the great 
 themes He handled. 
 
 There is danger to the preacher, of course, in 
 following this example, that he may ran into 
 sensationalism and extravagance. But nothing 
 of much value is to be had without danger. And 
 without more or less of this style of speech the 
 preacher is exposed to a more serious danger 
 — that of inattention and indifference to his 
 words. 
 
 IX. The dramatic skill with which Jesus 
 makes the characters in his parables speak, each 
 one like himself, is admirable. Take, for exam- 
 ple, the two sons bidden by their father to go 
 into the vineyard. (Matt. 21 : 28.) The father 
 uses, as in the story of the prodigal, the filial 
 title "Son." This is an intimation both of his 
 rightful authority and that he commands not 
 as a heartless task-master. But the first son, 
 who represents the reckless, defiant publican or 
 sinner, answers without the corresponding 
 "Father." His surly reply is short, sharp, and 
 decisive: "I will not!" x 
 
 But his brother is a true Pharisee — a model 
 of hollow, unmeaning obsequiousness. "I go, 
 Sir." 2 He lays great stress on the "I." It is 
 like him who prays in the temple. "I thank 
 Thee that I am not as other men." "I fast twice 
 
 1 Or rather, as, in contrast with his brother, lie omits the iyu>. 
 it is " Will not '* (ov M u ). He puts all force into his rebellious will. 
 
 2 eyw, icvpie. 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 95 
 
 in the week. I give tithes of all that I get." 
 Again, the "go" is not a word used by this 
 hypocritical son. It is thrown in by the trans- 
 lators. The son omits it, apparently to give more 
 prominence to the "I." And finally the "sir," 
 which his rongh brother omits, he deferentially 
 inserts. His reply is, "I, sir!" "I am the model 
 son, who knows the respect due to a father." And 
 his sycophancy ends in words. 
 
 So is it with the Rich Fool (Luke 12 : 17-19). 
 What fine irony in making him congratulate his 
 soul on having a store of luxuries for the 
 palate! As if one, reversing the process, were 
 to feed the body on the nutriment of the soul — 
 on grand ideas and hopes and aspirations. How 
 absolute a fool he is! And with what tragic 
 power comes in the voice of God, "This night 
 thy soul," for which thou hast provided thy 
 dainties, "shall be required of thee!" — to startle 
 him from his fatuous dream. 
 
 Again, in the parable of the Pounds (Luke 
 19 : 12-27), as contrasted with that of the 
 Talents (Matt. 25 : 14-30), there are lessons in 
 che bearing and acts of the characters intro- 
 duced. In the latter parable, the several ser- 
 vants have different sums entrusted to them, five 
 talents, two, and one, with, of course, different 
 grades of responsibility. When then they ren- 
 der accounts, their master addresses him who 
 with five talents, has gained five more, in the 
 words, "Well done, good and faithful servant; 
 
96 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 thou hast been faithful oyer a few things; I will 
 set thee over many things; enter thou into the 
 joy of thy lord." 
 
 Then comes he who has doubled his two tal- 
 ents. He has brought to his master less than 
 half what his brother has earned. But relatively 
 to his ability he has done precisely the same. 
 Not only, therefore, does he receive the same 
 reward, that of entering into the joy of his lord, 
 however much or little this may mean, but it is 
 conveyed to him, syllable for syllable, in the 
 same words. The verse which contains it, one 
 of the very longest in the whole parable, cannot 
 have been so carefully repeated by the Great 
 Teacher without an object. Jesus plainly meant 
 to stamp deep into our conviction the truth 
 that God is no respecter of persons, that the 
 humblest, lowliest disciple, if equally faithful 
 with his eminent brother, shall have, to the last 
 particle, as large and rich reward as he. 
 
 But turn, now, to the parable of the Pounds. 
 Here the amounts entrusted to the servants 
 are not, as the talents, unequal. But each 
 receives, like every other, one pound. And in 
 the reckoning, after the lord's return, he who 
 has multiplied his pound ten-fold has an "en- 
 trance ministered unto him abundantly" into 
 his master's favor. Hear the welcome, "Well 
 done, thou good servant! Because thou wast 
 found faithful in a very little, have thou author- 
 ity over ten cities." Almost every word is praise. 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 9? 
 
 The utterance blooms and shines along the lines 
 with commendation. 
 
 But how with him who, with the same 
 ability and opportunity, has been but half as 
 faithful? He has gained but five pounds. How 
 different the Lord's answer to him! No long- 
 verse repeated, as to the servant who had earned 
 two talents. Not a word of commendation now. 
 No "well done!" for him as for his brother. 
 No "thou good and faithful servant!" for him. 
 No "because thou wast found faithful in a very 
 little." He had received more than a very little. 
 And short and abrupt is the answer, "Be thou 
 also over five cities." He is "saved so as 
 through fire." 1 
 
 In the parable of the Pharisee and the publi- 
 can at the temple, what keen irony (in view of 
 his offering not a single request or petition) in 
 saying, "The Pharisee prayed thus with him- 
 self'! The publican's plea, on the other hand 
 "God be merciful to me a sinner!" is all peti- 
 tion. And, with downcast eyes and hands beat- 
 ing his breast, he strives, in the intensity of 
 his feeling, to find a tongue in every limb. 
 
 X. Our Lord is remarkable for his word-pic- 
 tures. Like a true artist, He never paints with- 
 out a background. He looks well to the lights and 
 shades. He puts truths and facts by comparison. 
 
 1 These significant distinctions, as well as the "entrance 
 ministered abundantly " and the " saved as through fire" (escaping 
 from a house on fire), indicate far greater differences of reward in 
 heaven, far more occasion for regret on the part of self-indulgent 
 Christians, there, than most Bible readers imagine. 
 
98 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 To warn Ckorazin of the giddy height and 
 tremendous peril of her privilege, He points her 
 to Sodom and Gomorrah (Matt. 11:21), which, 
 with her light, would have long ago repented 
 in sack-cloth and ashes. To rebuke the churl- 
 ish ruler of the synagogue, canting about the 
 Sabbath, he contrasts the poor woman, delivered 
 from a demon, with the sheep released from a 
 pit on the Sabbath day. (Matt. 12 : 11.) In 
 cheering his disciples with the assurance of 
 their Father's protection and care, He reminds 
 them of Him who feeds even the fowls of the 
 air, and clothes with more than the splendor of 
 Solomon, the lilies of the field. (Matt. G:26- 
 29.) That He may raise the standard of char- 
 acter among his disciples, He takes, as the foil 
 on which to exhibit the righteousness He re- 
 quires, that of the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 
 5:20). Though despised and rejected of men, 
 He reminds those around Him, with the assur- 
 ance, "A greater than Solomon is here,' 1 (Matt. 
 12 : 12) of the transcendent majesty of his per- 
 son. 
 
 There is in all this a rhetorical suggestion 
 for the young preacher. He comes upon many 
 a great truth which, because it is great, has been 
 so often repeated as to seem threadbare. He is 
 at a loss how to give it so fresh an utterance as 
 will hold attention. Let him remember that a 
 painter often brings out a figure, not by touch- 
 ing it at all, but by darkening its surroundings. 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 99 
 
 Let the young preacher paint a background, 
 show a contrast, to his thought. So he may 
 easily throw it out into new and more vivid light. 
 
 XI. The style of our Lord in public speech 
 is at other points instructive. It abounds in 
 hints as to "the art of xuitting things." Every 
 student of rhetoric is aware how superior in 
 vivacity and energy is the metaphor to the 
 simile. It is more forcible to call an extortioner 
 a shark than to say that he acts like a shark — 
 to declare that a good woman is an angel, than 
 that she is like an angel. 
 
 JS'ow our Lord's style of speech wonderfully 
 abounds in metaphor. A tame speaker might 
 have said that He was the source of sacred truth 
 to men. Jesus says, "I am the light of the 
 world." The unskilled preacher might have 
 reminded believers that they were a preserva- 
 tive element among men. Jesus says, "Ye are 
 the salt of the earth." So, "I am the good shep- 
 herd," "I am the door," "I am the vine; ye are 
 the branches," "I am the bread of life." 
 
 The objection to metaphor is, that it is liable 
 to obscurity and misapprehension. But often, 
 even at the risk of that, Jesus adheres to it. 
 For instance, in the beautiful metaphors (John 
 10 : 1-5) of the shepherd, the sheep, the porter, 
 and the fold, "they understood not what things 
 they were which He spake unto them." He is 
 obliged to come out more plainly with his 
 meaning. 
 
100 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 Jesus had peculiar modes of illustration. 
 He often unfolded a great principle, not so much 
 by taking analogies from animate or inanimate 
 nature as by selecting a special instance, a con- 
 crete application, of the principle itself, and, 
 with wonderful power, picturing and pressing 
 that home on the souls around Him. 
 
 Instead of enjoining meekness in general 
 terms, He says "If a man smite thee on the one 
 cheek, turn to him the other also." Urging 
 philanthropy, He says, "From him that would 
 borrow of thee turn not thou away." Instead 
 of asking, in general, what father would refuse 
 favors to his children, He demands, "If a son 
 ask bread of any of you that is a father, will 
 he give him a stone?" Instead of forbidding 
 uncharitable judgments, with what vividness 
 He puts it: "Why beh oldest thou the mote that 
 is in thy brother's eye, and considerest not the 
 beam that is in thine own eye?" (Matt. 
 7 : 3). 
 
 As Wkately remarks, too, this is an excel- 
 lence in style which, without loss of power, cam 
 be translated into other tongues. The eloquence 
 of many a fine rhetorician, rendered into a 
 foreign language, is like the golden clouds of 
 sunset condensed into a spatter of water drops. 
 Macaulay says of "Paradise Lost," that not a 
 word could be altered or displaced without injury 
 to the poem. But the wonderfully effective 
 style of Jesus is essentially the same in any 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 101 
 
 human tongue. Is it hard to see a Divine 
 prescience in all this? 
 
 XII. Jesus illustrates, not only with familiar 
 speech, but from familiar objects. The wine, 
 the sheep, the tree, the nets, the bargains in 
 the market-place, the lost coin in the house, 
 the wine- skins with their contents, the salt 
 losing its savor, the servant called in from feed- 
 ing cattle, the sower and his seed, the wheat 
 and the tares, the plowman looking back from 
 the plow, the leaven, the mustard- seed, the 
 importunate widow and the judge — all are made 
 to move as in a panorama before us, each with 
 its golden lesson. 
 
 So each of these objects becomes, in its turn, 
 a preacher eloquent in its silence, to remind 
 disciples of their Master's words and to speak 
 in his name long after He has passed away. 
 The salt that has lost its savor becomes a savor 
 unto life, and the barren fig-tree bears such fruit 
 as never hung- on tree before. 
 
 Again, Jesus was no indifferent observer of the 
 events of his time. From them, as from other il- 
 lustrations,He drew lessons of wisdom. He warns 
 the disciples against the foul influence of Herod. 
 (Mark 8 : 15.) He cautions them against the exam- 
 ples of the scribes. (Matt. 23: 3.) He admonishes 
 them to draw no hasty inference as to the guilt 
 of them whose blood Pilate mingled with their 
 own sacrifice (Luke 13:2, 3), or them on whom 
 had fallen the tower in Siloam. (Luke 13 : 4.) 
 
102 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 He teaches Christian duty toward the Ko- 
 nian emperor (Matt. 22:21). He shows himself 
 abreast of the times, awake to what goes on 
 around Him and to the duties which flow ont 
 of the hour that is passing. 
 
 Here, too, there is a lesson for the pulpit of 
 our time. Not that the preacher should secular- 
 ize himself or his work. Xot that, from a mere 
 temporal point of view, he should deal with mere 
 temporal interests. But the grandest truths 
 of Christianity lie often in close connection with 
 the passing events of the time. They look out, 
 with fresh light and meaning in their faces, 
 through these events. Prof. Phelps, of Andover, 
 records the x>owerful impression made by a 
 Boston pastor, at the time of the conviction and 
 execution of Prof. Webster of Harvard College, 
 by drawing from that event lessons as to 
 retribution. 
 
 XIII. The parable was pre-eminently the 
 beauty and glory of our Lord's way of teaching. 
 ''Without a parable spake He nothing unto 
 them. (Matt. 13:34) 
 
 A parable is very precarious ground on which 
 to build any great doctrine of Scripture. A doc- 
 trine which is taught elsewhere in literal 
 speech, we may recoguize as re-appearing in one 
 of these beautiful pictures. But where and how 
 far the imagery of the parable represents literal 
 fact is no easy matter to decide. 
 
 The use of the story is not so much to teach 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 103 
 
 any new doctrine as to illustrate and enforce 
 what is elsewhere taught. It appeals, like 
 an allegorical painting, to the imagination. It 
 is rather for suggestion and impression than 
 for information. And the suggestive richness 
 of it is largely due to the fact that it faces, with 
 different incidental meanings, in various direc- 
 tions. 
 
 In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which might 
 be regarded as a sort of modified and extended 
 parable, what is the meaning of the "Valley of 
 the Shadow of Death"? To one reader it means 
 a time of deep spiritual gloom; to another, of 
 terrible bereavement that left him alone in 
 the world; to another, of heavy reverses that 
 swept away his livelihood. The dismal Valley 
 serves indifferently for any or all these trials. 
 And because it does, it is far richer in themes for 
 thought than a baldly literal statement of truth. 
 
 The right view of analogies between the 
 material creation and moral truth, we conceive to 
 be that they are no accident. They are not in- 
 genious inventions. They were divinely in- 
 wrought in the plan of creation itself. The world 
 is a vast diagram drawn to shadow forth truth. 
 
 Take, for example, the relation of parent to 
 child. What could be more superficial than to 
 suppose it instituted solely for the perpetuation 
 of the human species? How easily that might 
 have been accomplished by direct creation, as 
 of Adam in Eden! But the plan of God was 
 
101 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 evidently first to bring ns into the world, in a 
 helpless infancy, from human parents; and then, 
 when with every tendril of our being we have 
 clung to an earthly father, when a thousand 
 endearing memories and associations have 
 sanctified the word father, God comes in to 
 proclaim Himself the Infinite Father and invite 
 us to a childlike trust in Him. 
 
 So again, the solid bulk and weight of things 
 in the visible creation, controlled as it is by 
 such ethereal, unseen forces as gravitation, 
 animal and vegetable life, heat, light, electric 
 currents — what room for question that all this 
 was originally designed of God to shadow forth 
 "the invisible things of Him" which are "clearly 
 seen in things that do appear"? 
 
 All nature, in short, is a vast and infinitely 
 varied system of diagrams, or object-lessons, 
 with spiritual uses of suggestion and instruction 
 inwoven with its material laws. 
 
 But Jesus, in his illustrations of truth, goes 
 even farther than this. He finds "a soul of good 
 in things evil." His parables are remarkable 
 for the suggestions they draw from the selfish- 
 ness, the cruelties, the iniquities in general, of 
 men. 
 
 Sometimes the parable, as the one which is 
 the main theme of this volume, touches the truth 
 illustrated at many points of contact. But again 
 it has, as in these analogies from the sins and 
 crimes of men, hardly more than one such point. 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 105 
 
 Thus, froni the story of the Unjust Steward 
 (Luke 16:1-9) we learn only that we are wisely 
 to make provision, not only for the life that now 
 is, but for that to come. The parable of the Un- 
 just Judge (Luke 18 :l-8) is simply a dark back- 
 ground on which to paint the contrasted loye of 
 God for his people. In the parable of the Un- 
 merciful Servant (Matt. 18:23-35), whose lord 
 commands him and his wife and children all to 
 be pitilessly sold into slavery, Jesus, without 
 intending to ascribe to God such cruelty and 
 injustice toward the innocent as this, is only 
 warming an unforgiving soul of its peril. 
 
 When the man finding a treasure hid in the 
 field (Matt. 13 : 44), instead of honestly report- 
 ing it to the rightful owner or his heirs, hides 
 it again, and selling all that he has, buys the 
 field for himself, the only lesson is that we 
 must make any sacrifice for the priceless treas- 
 ure of immortal life. 1 
 
 This method, as a whole, of extracting good 
 from evil falls in with the Divine policy of 
 making the wrath of man to praise Him. "My 
 Father worketh hitherto and I work." It hints 
 
 1 The parable of the Leaven (Matt. 13 : 33 and Luke 13 : 21) also 
 seems to illustrate our Lord's way of extracting; pood from evil. 
 In the Old Testament, leaven, as implying fermentation and 
 incipient decay, is used as a symbol of depravity. The only appar- 
 ent exceptions are Lev. 7:13, 23:17; and Amos 4:5. The first 
 two instances are those of the consecration of the first-fruits of the 
 bread made from the new wheat. It was such bread as was eaten 
 in the households. The instance in Amos is indignant irony 
 against those who worship false gods with offerings of leaven, 
 in the New Testament leaven typifies moral corruption. It must 
 have been, through the training of centuries, associated in the 
 Jewish mind with sin. It is quite remarkable, therefore, that 
 Jesus, in the parable, should have made it a type of moral purity. 
 
106 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 to us, also, that in all Christian effort, whether 
 of instruction or of securing help for Christian 
 ends, we are to make the best use possible even 
 of evil men. 
 
 XIV. Our Lord, in his teaching, drew out 
 from his hearers the expression of their own 
 thought. He quickened in that war their 
 mental activity in receiving the truth. Question 
 and answer was largely his method. He 
 endorsed the Socratic method. The following- 
 are examples: Matt. 9:2,8; 17:25; 20:22; 
 21:25-31. Mark 8:27-29; 10:3. Luke 10:26, 
 36. And often, as we saw above (VIII), He 
 threw his thought into such paradoxes as, even 
 more effectually than questions, would stimu- 
 late the mind. 
 
 Question and answer, in the delivery of ser- 
 mons, are, of course, impracticable. But a far 
 larger share than has been common, of the 
 attention of the pulpit, ought to be given to the 
 children of the congregation. With them this 
 method is indispensable. It is the easiest way 
 of holding their attention. It impresses truth 
 deep on the memory. It will, better than any 
 other method, awaken the mind to activity. The 
 saying applies to these little hearers under in- 
 struction, as fully as elsewhere, that "it is more 
 blessed to give than to receive." 
 
 The entire subject of illustration in public 
 address is one as to which the discourses of Jesus 
 are rich in suggestion. It is a subject which our 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 107 
 
 liomiletical teachers have strangely neglected. 
 Two bulky octavo volumes on sacred rhetoric, 
 of more than 600 octavo pages each, occur to us, 
 in neither of which is more than two pages 
 given to this whole matter. 1 ^ot so the Great 
 Teacher. As to this excellence in his methods, 
 no less than as to others, "never man spake like 
 this Man!" 
 
 It was with various objects and aims that He 
 resorted to illustration. 
 
 I. For explanation of a truth. When the 
 Pharisees and Herodians, hoping to compass 
 his destruction, ask whether or not to pay 
 tribute to Caesar, how clearly, with a coin as 
 an object-lesson, He sets the case before them: 
 "Whose is this image and superscription?" 
 "Caesar." "Kender, therefore, to Caesar the 
 things that are Caesar's, and to God the things 
 that are God's." By the very stamp, that is, 
 which you put on your money you acknowledge 
 the emperor's authority. Act, then, as to the 
 matter of tribute, accordingly. 
 
 Again, after the question why his disciples 
 do not, like those of John the Baptist, fast, when 
 explaining that the liberty of the Christian 
 Economy cannot be imprisoned within old Jew- 
 ish rites, how happy his illustrations (Matt. 
 9:16, 17) of the folly of that! The new cloth 
 must not be sewed into the old garment. It 
 
 1 Prof. F. W. Fish's "Manual of Preaching," which devotes to 
 illustration an entire chapter, indicates an advance toward a fuller 
 appreciation of the subject. 
 
108 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 would only, by tearing away the edges, enlarge 
 the rent. The new wine must not be ponred 
 into the old skins. Its vigorous ferment would 
 soon burst them. One such illustration is worth, 
 for explanation, a whole treatise. 
 
 So, when the Jews charge Jesus with casting 
 out demons through the prince of the demons, 
 He asks (Matt. 12:29), "How can one enter 
 into the house of the strong man and spoil his 
 goods, except he first bind the strong man?" 
 How could I snatch his victims from Satan if 
 I had not a supernatural power over Satan? 
 The commonest of the people could see, if the 
 Pharisees could not, the point and force of that 
 question. 
 
 Once more, listening to his explanation why 
 bad men must be allowed, for the present, to 
 live amongst the good, the dullest disciple would 
 see how the roots of the tares become entangled 
 with those of the wheat — how, lest the wheat 
 be uprooted, they must be suffered to grow with 
 it till the harvest. 
 
 II. Jesus used illustration for impressing 
 such truth as needs little or no explanation. 
 What power for that purpose in Nathan's touch- 
 ing story (II Sam. 12:1-7) of the ewe lamb! 
 How tame and weak, in comparison, would have 
 been a direct complaint to David of his infa- 
 mous treatment of Uriah! When the prophet 
 had first gathered a storm of just indignation 
 in the king against the imaginary rich man 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 109 
 
 oppressing Ms poor neighbor, and then turned 
 the point of it round against the king himself, 
 it might well pierce within him the fountain 
 of contrition and tears. 
 
 In Matt. 8: 19, 20, where one who, if we may 
 judge from the reply of Jesus, was governed by 
 self-interest, 1 offers to follow our Lord, it would 
 have been a feeble reply for the Master to say 
 that He was poor. But the illustration, with its 
 pathetic contrast — how absolute a destitution 
 it pictures : " The foxes have holes and the birds 
 of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath 
 not where to lay his head." No mercenary for- 
 tune-hunter would travel far along the road 
 which led to that. 
 
 Again, to preach a homily on the sovereign 
 right of God to allot to his creatures, who of 
 right can claim nothing, such conditions as 
 seem to Him best, might have wearied many 
 and convinced none. But when, in the parable 
 of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matt. 20: 1-16), 
 the employer had paid all for which the men 
 engaged in the morning had agreed, every 
 hearer would see that he was entitled, if he 
 chose, to give to those who had toiled but an 
 hour an equal sum. 
 
 III. For awakening sympathy Jesus uses 
 many a touching illustration. The Good Samar- 
 itan, the Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son, have 
 
 1 The man probably expected Jesus to set up a temporal king- 
 dom and reign in splendor. Like James and John (Marft 10 : 37), 
 he was apparently an office-seeker. 
 
110 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 moved men of every generation to tears. In 
 another case, the reply of the people (Matt. 21 : 
 41), "He will miserably destroy those wicked 
 men, and will let out his vineyard nnto other 
 husbandmen," shows how Jesus, like Xathan 
 the prophet, actually moved the indignation of 
 his hearers against imaginary offenders who 
 were simply the hearers' own reflections in a 
 mirror. 
 
 IV. Our Lord's different ways of introduc- 
 ing illustrations will well reward study. This 
 is a matter in which the average preacher, if he 
 illustrate at all, often falls into monotony. "This 
 subject may be illustrated as follows," or "Let 
 us suppose a case for illustration," is enough 
 to tire a hearer with what is coming before he 
 has heard the first word of it. Jesus, on the 
 contrary, illustrates sometimes by metaphor 
 (Matt. 5 : 13, 14), sometimes by simile (Matt. 
 13 : 33; Luke 13 : 19), now by analogy, then by 
 contrast (Matt. 11:21; Luke 18:1-8), now by 
 assertion (Matt. 13 : 45), then by question (Matt. 
 7 :10; Luke 11 : 5), again, by an object-lesson 
 (Matt. 18:2; Luke 5:10; 7:44). At times He 
 draws out his fictitious narrative with no inti- 
 mation, at first, of the uses to which He will 
 apply it (Luke 8:5; 10:30). In some cases 
 (Matt. 13:18-23, 37-42), He explains a para- 
 ble. Often He leaves us to find for ourselves the 
 application. 
 
 Jesus was indeed, in Himself, in his whole 
 
CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. HI 
 
 personality and mission, a grand visible illustra- 
 tion of the unseen, eternal Godhead. It was as 
 natural that exquisite word-pictures of truth 
 should fall from his lips as that light should 
 flow from the sun or fragrance from a grove of 
 spices. He so marvelously shadowed forth, 
 under visible forms, both the glory of the Divine 
 nature and the lowliness of a perfect and suffer- 
 ing humanity, that neither hostile Jews nor 
 friendly disciples admitted to intimacy could 
 comprehend Him. 
 
 That the same Being, born of a virgin, throw- 
 ing the shadow of mystery in advance, from 
 even before his birth ; should be both "Wonder- 
 ful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, 
 Prince of Peace," regnant in transcendent 
 majesty, and also that, when we see Him, there 
 is no beauty that we should desire Him, despised 
 and rejected of men — is it any marvel that 
 saint and seer alike, along the centuries of the 
 older Economy, studied the mystery of his 
 nature in vain? 
 
 As one looks along the face of the famous 
 cliff in the White Mountains for the outlines of 
 that gigantic face, of which he has heard, he dis- 
 covers nothing but angles and jags of rock 
 jutting out in seemingly wild confusion. They 
 have no form or comeliness. They appear to 
 have nothing in common. But, going on, till, 
 at a turn in the pathway, a finger-board signifi- 
 cantly points upward, he looks again. And 
 
112 CHRIST AS A PUBLIC TEACHER. 
 
 there lie beholds, in clear, sharp relief against 
 the azure, all these scattered crags and notches 
 blending sublimely into the grandest semblance, 
 perhaps, on the planet of the " human face 
 divine." The ancient believers, searching what 
 time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ 
 which was in them did signify, when it testified 
 beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the 
 glories that should follow them, among all the 
 scattered, incongruous features of his Messiah- 
 ship, foretokened through the centuries, "found 
 no end in wondering mazes lost." But when, 
 in due time, was reached the exact, essential 
 point of view, there showed these strange, isolat- 
 ed features of his life, so long predicted, falling 
 harmoniously into the one perfect and Divine 
 humanity. What could such a Being be but 
 the Way and the Truth, no less than the Life? 
 If in Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead 
 bodily (amazing words!), how inevitably shall 
 we find in Him also, for the matter not 
 only, but the manner as well, of DMne illustra- 
 tion, an exhaustless study, an unfailing inspira- 
 tion! 
 

 
 ^^- ^'.^^k> N ^^■" 
 
 iSRe 
 
 ^7j£? 
 
 SKr 
 
 .. 
 
 
 
 
 
 <M 
 
 ■ ■ 
 
 ". '■ • v ■•^.•' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 *£ - 
 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 556 011 1,