At the ends of the earth, I chanced upon a spectacle of misery. Crime and want and disease, like so many vultures of evil, had seized upon him as their prey. Haunted by an evil conscience, and a memory cruel as death, he had come there to die.
I happened to know him; also his father and his home, and his history, at first promising, afterward so miserable. I felt I could deal with him respecting his condition, touching here and there springs of memory and feeling known to no one, as he imagined, but to himself. What I wanted in touching those springs, was to bring him to some sense of himself and of his father, and of that distant home, which, I knew, would be happier and brighter than ever if he, poor prodigal, were there.
I said to him, “How long have you been here?”
“A long time.”
“Do you know the place?”
“Yes.”
“Have you any friends here?”
“No; none.”
“Not a happy position.”
“No; a miserable one.”
“You seem in want?”
“In great want.”
“But you had means?”
“I had, but I―”
“But what?”
“I wasted them.”
“How did you waste them?”
“Evil habits, bad companions.”
“They robbed you?”
“Yes; as long as they could.”
“And then left you?”
“Yes.”
“The old truth, is it not?-that where the carcass is, there are the vultures; but, if no carcass, no vultures. When they could get nothing more, they left you?”
“And hated me.”
“Poor wages! reminding of another old truth, ‘The wages of sin is death.’”
“I often heard it.”
“But did not mind it?”
“No.”
“And how do you now live?”
“Live! the damps of death are on me; no home, no food, no friends, I am ready to die.”
“Miserable end!”
“Yes; but death would be welcome.”
“Do you ever think of home?”
“Home! Not often―not―”
“Not what?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“And why?”
“I would rather not think.”
“But they think of you.”
“Who thinks of me?”
“Your father thinks of you.”
“My father thinks of me? Do you know my father?”
“I do. I know the house and the farm, and the hill-side, and the tinkling of the sheep-bells, and the bark of the shepherd’s dog as the shepherd leads the sheep home at evening to the fold; and I know the change which has come over the scene since you left it. I know it all. It is the same, and yet not the same. It wants but one thing; and the last that I ever saw of your father was, that he was sitting on the slope of that hill on one of the field-gates, still looking out; for he said he yet had hope that some day he should see his poor prodigal come back.”
“You cannot mean me?”
“I do mean you.”
“Would he receive me?”
“‘Would he?’ He longs to receive you. He has never ceased to long for it. In his constant longing for you, he has almost forgotten, at times, those who are still at home. He has never changed. He loved you before you left; he loves you still; yes, seemingly more now than then. Often then, it is said, he did not manifest any remarkable regard; but now it seems as if you were his one thought.”
Said my poor outcast, “You take me by surprise. Do I understand you? I thought my father hated me, that he could think of me only to condemn me. He surely does not love me!”
“He surely does; and good news it is for you in this far country. And think what a welcome he has for you, where the joy, the music, and dancing of the father’s house, await you.”
“Not for me?”
“Yes, for you.”
“But I have sinned.”
“He knows it.”
“And dishonored him.”
“He knows it.”
“And am in rags.”
“Yes.”
“And filth.”
“Yes.”
“And ready to perish.”
“Yes; he knows all, and wants you as you are.”
“In my rags and misery?”
“Yes, just as you are―ragged, guilty, and miserable.”
“Then I will go.”But, still thinking of himself, he adds,” He may take me as a servant.”
Dear friends, he goes. It is all true; for there in the distance is the father. The father sees him; he has compassion on him; he runs to meet him. The son sees the father. The poor lost one is bowed, broken down, sunk―yea, deep sunk, on the breast, and closely enfolded in the arms of his father. And what he resolved to say, and was about to say, that he would be a servant, was all prevented. But how? Oh, scene of touching wonder and of tender love! for without one sentence of rebuke, after falling on his son’s neck, after the embrace of him in his arms and the kiss, so deep of meaning, so assuring of compassion and pardon and reconciliation, he commands his servants, “Bring forth the best robe” (now the best robe is not for a servant, but for a son), “and put it on him; and put a 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.” (See Luke 15:11-32.)