I wish to speak to you to-day of the
parable of the prodigal son, or, as it is becoming very common to call it,
perhaps with greater exactness, the parable of the lost son. I shall not read
it to you again. It has already been read in the lesson for the day. And in any
event it is too familiar to require that you should be reminded even of the
minuter details of the narrative. Probably no passage of the Scriptures is more
widely known or more universally admired. The conversation and literature of
devotion are full of allusions to it. And in the conversation and literature of
the world it has far from an unhonoured place.
It owes the high
appreciation it has won, no doubt, in large part to the exquisiteness of its
literary form. From this point of view it fully deserves not only the measured
praise of a Grotius, but the enthusiastic exclamations of a Trench. It is “the
finest of Christ’s parables, filled with true feeling, and painted in the most
beautiful colours.” It is “the pearl and crown of all the parables of
Scripture.” Nothing could exceed the chaste perfection of the narrative, the
picturesque truth of its portraiture, the psychological delicacy of its
analysis. Here is a gem of story-telling, which must be pronounced nothing less
than artistically perfect, whether viewed in its general impression, or in the
elaboration of its details. We must add to its literary beauty, however, the
preciousness of the lesson it conveys before we account for the place it has
won for itself in the hearts of men. In this setting of fretted gold, a marvel
of the artificer, there lies a priceless jewel; and this jewel is displayed to
such advantage by its setting that men cannot choose but see and admire.
