419. Homesickness

Homesickness

Luk_15:18 : ’93I will arise and go to my father.’94

There is nothing like hunger to take the energy out of a man. A hungry man can toil neither with pen nor hand nor foot with any spirit. There has been many an army defeated not so much for lack of ammunition as for lack of bread. It was that fact that took the fire out of this young man of the text. Storm and exposure will wear out any man’92s life in time, but hunger makes quick work. The most awful cry ever heard on earth is the cry for bread.

A traveler tells us that in Asia Minor there are trees which bear fruit looking very much like the long bean of our time. It is called the carob. Once in a while the people reduced to destitution would eat these carobs, but generally the carobs, the beans spoken of here in the text, were thrown only to the swine and they crunched them with great avidity. But this young man of my text could not even get them without stealing them. So one day amid the swine troughs he begins to soliloquize. He says: ’93These are no clothes for a rich man’92s son to wear; this is no kind of business for a Jew to be engaged in’97feeding swine; I will go home, I will go home; I will arise and go to my father.’94

I know there are a great many people who try to throw a fascination, a romance, a halo about sin; but notwithstanding all that Lord Byron and George Sand have said in regard to it, it is a mean, low, contemptible business, and putting food and fodder into the troughs of a herd of iniquities that root and wallow in the soul of man is a very poor business for men and women intended to be sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. And when this young man resolved to go home, it was a very wise thing for him to do, and the only question is whether we will follow him. Satan promises large wages if we will serve him; but he clothes his victims with rags, and he pinches them with hunger, and when they start out to do better he sets after them all the bloodhounds of hell. Satan comes to us today and he promises all luxuries, all emoluments if we will only serve him. Liar, down with thee to the pit! ’93The wages of sin is death.’94 The young man of the text was wise when he uttered the resolution: ’93I will arise and go to my father.’94

In the time of Mary, called bloody because of her cruelties, a persecutor came to a Christian woman who had hidden in her house for the Lord’92s sake one of Christ’92s servants, and the persecutor said: ’93Where is that heretic?’94 The Christian woman said: ’93You open that trunk and you will see the heretic.’94 The persecutor opened the trunk, and on the top of the linen of the trunk he saw a glass. He said: ’93There is no heretic here.’94 ’93Ah!’94 she said, ’93you look in the glass and you will see the heretic!’94 She was right, for a persecutor not having Christ’92s spirit is the worst kind of a heretic. As I take up the mirror of God’92s word today, I would that instead of seeing the prodigal of the text, we might see ourselves’97our want, our wandering, our sin, our lost condition, so that we might be as wise as this young man was and say: ’93I will arise and go to my father.’94

The resolution of this text was formed in disgust at his present circumstances. If this young man had been set by his employers to culturing flowers, or training vines over an arbor, or keeping account of the pork market, or overseeing other laborers, he would not have thought of going home. If he had had his pockets full of money, if he had been able to say, ’93I have a thousand dollars now of my own; what’92s the use of my going back to my father’92s house? Do you think I am going back to apologize to the old man? Why he would put me on the limits; he would not have going on around the old place such conduct as I have been engaged in. I will not go home; there is no reason why I should go home. I have plenty of money, plenty of pleasant surroundings, why should I go home?’94 Ah! it was his pauperism, it was his beggary. He had to go home.

Some man comes and says to me: ’93Why do you talk about the ruined state of the human soul? why do you not speak about the progress of the nineteenth century, and talk of something more exhilarating?’94 It is for this reason; a man never wants the Gospel until he realizes he is in a famine-struck state. Suppose I should come to you in your home and you are now in good, sound, robust health, and I should begin to talk about medicines, and about how much better this medicine is than that, and some other medicine than some other medicine, and talk about this physician and that physician. After a while you would get tired, and you would say: ’93I do not want to hear about medicines. Why do you talk to me about physicians? I never have a doctor.’94 Suppose I come into your house and I find you severely sick, and I know the medicines that will cure you, and I know the physician who is skilful enough to deal with your case. You say: ’93Bring on that medicine, bring on that physician! I am terribly sick and I want help.’94 If I come to you and you feel you are all right in body and all right in mind, and all right in soul, you have need of nothing; but suppose I have persuaded you that the leprosy of sin is upon you, the worst of all sickness, oh, then you say: ’93Bring me that divine medicament; bring me Jesus Christ, the great Physician.’94

But says some one, ’93How do you prove that we are in a ruined condition by sin?’94 Well, I can prove it in two ways, and you may have your choice. I can prove it either by the statements of men, or by the statement of God. Which shall it be? You will say, ’93Let us have the statement of God. Well, he will say in one place: ’93The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.’94 He says in another place: ’93What is man that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?’94 He says in another place: ’93There is none that doeth good, no, not one.’94 He says in another place: ’93As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.’94

’93Well,’94 you say, ’93I am willing to acknowledge that, but why should I take the particular rescue that you propose?’94 This is the reason: ’93Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’94 ’93There is one name given under heaven among men whereby they may be saved.’94 Then there are a thousand voices here ready to say: ’93Well, I am ready to accept this help of the Gospel; I would like to have this divine cure; how shall I go to work?’94 Let me say that a mere whim, an undefined longing amounts to nothing. You must have a stout, all-conquering resolution like this young man of the text when he said: ’93I will arise and go to my father.’94

Some man says: ’93How do I know my father wants me? How do I know, if I go back, I would be received?’94 Another says: ’93You do not know where I have been; you do not know how far I have wandered; you would not talk that way to me if you knew all the iniquities I have committed.’94 What is that flutter among the angels of God? It is news! Christ has found the lost.

Nor angels can their joy contain,

But kindle with new fire;

The sinner lost, is found, they sing,

And strike the sounding lyre.

When Napoleon talked of going to Italy, they said: ’93You cannot get there; if you knew what the Alps were you would not talk about it or think of it; you cannot get your ammunition wagons over the Alps.’94 Then Napoleon rose in his stirrups, and waving his hand toward the mountains he said: ’93There shall be no Alps.’94 That wonderful pass was laid out which has been the wonderment of all engineers. And you tell me there are such mountains of sin between your soul and God, there is no mercy. Then I see Christ waving his hand toward the mountains, and I hear him say, ’93I will come over the mountains of thy sin and the hills of thine iniquity.’94 There shall be no Pyrenees, there shall be no Alps.

Again, I notice that this resolution of the young man of the text was founded in sorrow at his misbehavior. It was not mere physical plight. It was grief that he had so maltreated his father. It is a sad thing after a father has done everything for a child to have that child ungrateful.

How sharper than a serpent’92s tooth it is

To have a thankless child.

That is Shakespeare. ’93A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.’94 That is the Bible. Well, my friends, have not some of us been cruel prodigals? Have we not maltreated our Father? And such a Father? So loving, so kind. If he had been a stranger, if he had forsaken us, if he had flagellated us, if he had pounded us and turned us out of doors on the commons, it would not have been so wonderful’97our treatment of him; but he is a Father so loving, so kind, and yet how many of us for our wanderings have never apologized. We apologize for wrongs done to our fellows, but some of us perhaps have committed ten thousand times ten thousand wrongs against God and never apologized.

I remark still further, that this resolution of the text was founded in a feeling of homesickness. I do not know how long this young man, how many months, how many years, he had been away from his father’92s house; but there is something about the reading of my text that makes me think he was homesick. Some of you know what that feeling is. Soldiers sometimes get nostalgia or homesickness, and army doctors say that when a man gets it they have great difficulty in curing it, and there is no sure cure except a furlough. Far away from home sometimes, surrounded by everything bright and pleasant’97plenty of friends’97you have said: ’93I would give the world to be home to-night.’94 Well, this young man was homesick for his father’92s house. I have no doubt when he thought of his father’92s house he said: ’93Now, perhaps, father may not be living.’94

We read nothing in this story’97this parable founded on everyday life’97we read nothing about the mother. It says nothing about going home to her. I think she was dead. I think she had died of a broken heart at his wanderings, or perhaps he had gone into dissipation from the fact he could not remember a loving and sympathetic mother. A man never gets over having lost his mother. Nothing said about her here. But he is homesick for his father’92s house. He thought he would just like to go and walk around the old place. He thought he would just like to go and see if things were as they used to be. Many a man after having been off a long while, has gone home and knocked at the door, and a stranger has come. It is the old homestead, but a stranger comes to the door. He finds out father is gone, and mother is gone, and brothers and sisters all gone. I think this young man of the text said to himself: ’93Perhaps father may be dead.’94 Still, he starts to find out. He is homesick. Are there any here homesick for God, homesick for heaven?

A sailor, after having been long on the sea, returned to his father’92s house, and his mother tried to persuade him not to go away again. She said: ’93Now you had better stay at home; do not go away; we do not want you to go; you will have it a great deal better here.’94 But it made him angry. The night before he went away again to sea, he heard his mother praying in the next room, and that made him more angry. He went far out on the sea and a storm came up, and he was ordered to very perilous duty, and he ran up the ratlines, and amid the shrouds of the ship he heard the voice that he had heard in the next room. He tried to whistle it off, he tried to rally his courage; but he could not silence that voice he had heard in the next room, and there in the storm and the darkness he said: ’93O! Lord, what a wretch I have been, what a wretch I am. Help me just now, Lord God.’94 In this assemblage there may be some who may have the memory of a father’92s petition, or a mother’92s prayer pressing mightily upon the soul, and who this hour may make the same resolution I find in my text, saying: ’93I will arise and go to my father.’94

A lad at Liverpool went out to bathe, went out into the sea, went out too far, got beyond his depth and he floated far away. A ship bound for Dublin came along and took him on board. Sailors are generally very generous fellows, and one gave him a cap and another gave him a jacket, and another gave him shoes. A gentleman passing along on the beach at Liverpool found the lad’92s clothes and took them home, and the father was heartbroken, the mother was heartbroken, at the loss of their child. They had heard nothing from him day after day, and they ordered the usual mourning for the sad event. But the lad took ship from Dublin and arrived in Liverpool the very day the garments arrived. He knocked at the door and the father was overjoyed, and the mother was overjoyed at the return of their lost son. O! my friends, have you waded out too deep? Have you waded down into sin? Have you waded from the shore? Will you come back? When you come back will you come in the rags of your sin, or will you come robed in the Saviour’92s righteousness? I believe the latter. Go home to your God today. He is waiting for you. Go home!

But I remark the characteristic of this young man’92s resolution was, it was immediately put into execution. The context says, ’93He arose and came to his father.’94 The trouble in nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand is that our resolutions amount to nothing because we make them for some distant time. If I resolve to become a Christian next year, that amounts to nothing at all. If I resolve to become a Christian to-morrow, that amounts to nothing at all. If I resolve that at the service to-night I will become a Christian, that amounts to nothing at all. If I resolve after I go home today to yield my heart to God, that amounts to nothing at all. The only kind of resolution that amounts to anything is the resolution that is immediately put into execution.

There is a man who had the typhoid fever. He said: ’93Oh! if I could get over this terrible distress; if this fever should depart, if I could be restored to health, I would all the rest of my life serve God.’94 The fever departed. He got well enough to walk around the block. He got well enough to go to New York and attend to business. He is well today’97as well as he ever was. Where is the broken vow? There is a man who said long ago: ’93If I could live to the year 1899, by that time I will have my business matters all arranged, and I will have time to attend to religion, and I will be a good thorough, consecrated Christian. The year 1899 has come. January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September’97three-fourths of the year gone. Where is your broken vow? ’93Oh!’94 says some man, ’93I’92ll attend to that when I can get my character fixed up, when I can get over my evil habits; I am now given to strong drink,’94 or, says the man, ’93I am given to uncleanness,’94 or, says the man, ’93I am given to dishonesty. When I get over my present habits, then I will be a thorough Christian.’94 My brother, you will get worse and worse until Christ takes you in hand. ’93Not the righteous, sinners Jesus came to call.’94 ’93I agree with you on all that,’94 you say, ’93but I must put it off a little longer.’94 Do you know there were many who came just as near as you are to the kingdom of God and never entered it? I was this summer at East Hampton and I went into the cemetery to look around, and in that cemetery there are twelve graves side by side’97the graves of sailors. This crew, some years ago, in a ship went into the breakers at Amaganset, about three miles away. My brother, then preaching at East Hampton, had been at the burial. These men of the crew came very near being saved. The people from Amaganset saw the vessel, and they shot rockets, and they sent ropes from the shore, and these poor fellows got into the boat, and they pulled mightily for the shore, but just before they got to the shore, the rope snapped and the boat capsized and they were lost, their bodies afterward washed up on the beach. Oh! what a solemn day it was’97I have been told of it by my brother’97when these twelve men lay at the foot of the pulpit and he read over them the funeral service. They came very near shore’97within shouting distance of the shore, yet did not arrive on solid land. There are some men who come almost to the shore of God’92s mercy, but not quite, not quite. To be only almost saved is to be lost.

I will tell you of two prodigals, the one that got back and the other that did not get back. In Richmond, Virginia, there is a very prosperous and beautiful home in many respects. A young man wandered off from that home. He wandered very far into sin. They heard of him often, but he was always on the wrong track. He would not go home. At the door of that beautiful home one night there was a great outcry. The young man of the house ran down and opened the door to see what was the matter. It was midnight. The rest of the family were asleep. There were the wife and the children of this prodigal young man. The fact was he had come home and driven them out. He said: ’93Out of this house. Away with these children; I will dash their brains out. Out into the storm!’94 The mother gathered them up and fled. The next morning, the brother, the young man who had stayed at home, went out to find this prodigal brother and son, and he came where he was, and saw the young man wandering up and down in front of the place where he had been staying, and the young man who had kept his integrity, said to the older brother: ’93Here, what does all this mean? what is the matter with you? Why do you act in this way?’94 The prodigal looked at him and said: ’93Who am I? Who do you take me to be?’94 He said: ’93You are my brother.’94 ’93No, I am not. I am a brute. Have you seen anything of my wife and children? are they dead? I drove them out last night in the storm. I am a brute. John do you think there is any help for me? Do you think I will ever get over this life of dissipation? There is just one thing that will stop this,’94 and the prodigal ran his finger across his throat and added: ’93That will stop it, and I’92ll stop it before night. Oh! my brain; I can stand it no longer.’94 That prodigal never got home.

But I will tell you of a prodigal who did get home. In England two young men started from their father’92s house and went down to Portsmouth. The father could not pursue his children; for some reason he could not leave home, and so he wrote a letter down to Mr. Griffin, saying: ’93Mr. Griffin, I wish you would go and see my two sons. They have arrived in Portsmouth, and they are going to take ship and going away from home. I wish you would persuade them back.’94 Mr. Griffin went and he tried to persuade them back. He persuaded one to go. He went with very easy persuasion because he was very homesick already. The other young man said, ’93I will not go. I have had enough of home. I’92ll never go home.’94 ’93Well,’94 said Mr. Griffin, ’93then if you won’92t go home, I’92ll get you a respectable position on a respectable ship.’94 ’93No, you won’92t,’94 said the prodigal; ’93no you won’92t. I am going as a common sailor; that will plague my father most, and what will do most to tantalize and worry him will please me best.’94 Years passed on and Mr. Griffin was seated in his study one day when a message came to him saying there was a young man in irons on a ship at the dock’97a young man condemned to death’97who wished to see this clergyman. Mr. Griffin went down to the dock and went on shipboard. The young man said to him: ’93You don’92t know me, do you?’94 ’93No,’94 he said, ’93I don’92t know you.’94 ’93Why, don’92t you remember that young man you tried to persuade to go home and he wouldn’92t go?’94 ’93Oh! yes,’94 said Mr. Griffin, ’93are you that man?’94 ’93Yes, I am that man,’94 said the other. ’93I would like to have you pray for me. I have committed murder and I must die; but I don’92t want to go out of this world until some one prays for me. You are my father’92s friend and I would like to have you pray for me.’94 Mr. Griffin went from judicial authority to judicial authority to get that young man’92s pardon. He slept not night nor day. He went from influential person to influential person until, in some way, he got that young man’92s pardon. He came down on the dock, and as he arrived on the dock with the pardon the father came. He had heard that his son, under an assumed name, had been committing crime and was going to be put to death. So Mr. Griffin and the father went on the ship’92s deck, and at the very moment Mr. Griffin offered the pardon to the young man, the old father threw his arms around the son’92s neck and the son said: ’93Father, I have done very wrong and I am very sorry. I wish I had never broken your heart. I am very sorry.’94 ’93Oh!’94 said the father, ’93don’92t let us dwell on it. It don’92t make any difference now. It is all over. I forgive you, my son,’94 and he kissed him and kissed him.

To-day I offer you the pardon of the Gospel’97full pardon, free pardon. I do not care what your crime has been. Though you say you have committed a crime against God, against your own soul, against your fellow-man, against your family, against the day of judgment, against the cross of Christ’97whatever your crime has been, here is pardon, full pardon, and the very moment you take that pardon your heavenly Father throws his arms around about you and says: ’93My son, I forgive you. It is all right. You are as much in my favor now as if you had never sinned.’94 And so there is joy on earth and joy in heaven. Who will take the father’92s embrace?

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage