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.