418. The Fast Young Man

The Fast Young Man

Luk_15:13 : ’93The younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country.’94

’93Do you remember that sermon on the father’92s kiss?’94 said a man, as he thrust his arm into the carriage-window at the close of one of my meetings in England. ’93Do you remember that sermon on the father’92s kiss?’94 I said: ’93Yes; I remember it.’94 Said he: ’93That sermon saved my soul. God bless you. ’93Good-by.’94 I thought then, as I think now, that a man might preach a hundred sermons on the parable of the prodigal son, never repeat himself, have conversions under every sermon, and yet not exhaust the theme. God help us while this morning we turn our attention to one part of this great subject.

My text sets us down in a home of Oriental luxuriance. The proprietor of the estate is a lordly man. How he got his property, whether by agriculture or merchandise or by inheritance I cannot tell; but there was nothing lacking to make the father and his two sons comfortable. Across the broad acres the flocks grazed, the sheep and goats followed by their bleating young. No sudden emergency could come but they would be ready for it, for there was always the fatted calf ready to be roasted and carved for the banquet. The table on ordinary days, and when there were no visitors, had a surplus, enough and to spare. The wardrobe was filled so that there must have been a good deal of unrolling and unpacking and taking down of garments before they could decide which was the best robe. There were plenty of jewels in that household, and rings fit for the hand of a princess. Fleet-footed hired people served in house and barn and field’97some to prepare the food, some to tend the wardrobe, some to butcher the flocks, some to harvest the grain. Amid that luxuriance of park and orchard and castle the year rolled around; and if any people in all the land ought to be happy, then the lord of the estate and his two sons ought to have been happy.

But as now you sometimes find in the same family great variety of temperament, and two sons rocked in the same cradle developing opposite histories, so there was great difference between the two young men of this manor. The older was settled in his habits, fond of farming, incurious about the world, phlegmatic withal, splenetic, selfish, jealous, wanting everything for himself. The younger son was of an ardent temperament, wanted to see the world, enthusiastic, inquisitive, ungovernable. That he was frank, I know from the confessions he afterward made. That he was social, I know from the way he went into society. He was not ashamed to work, for when reduced in circumstances, rather than write home for money, he put himself into the office of a swineherd. But he was a bad boy. He was impatient of restraint. He wanted to get away from the old homestead. He wanted to be his own master. He could not wait until his father’92s death to get his property. In England the property goes to the oldest son; in this country the property is generally divided equally among the children; but in this Oriental country two-thirds went to the oldest son, and one-third to the younger son. Oh, how impatient to get that one-third was the youngest son! So there is an inventory made of the estate. The value of the land so much, the value of the wardrobe so much, the value of the jewels so much, the value of the sheep and cattle so much, the value of the notes and bonds so much’97added up, aggregated, divided into three parts. ’93Now,’94 says the father to the younger son, ’93here is your one-third; take it; I am sorry to have you go; you turn your back on a beautiful home; I fear you may fall into perils by the way; I had hoped you would be my stay in declining years, but I cannot keep you if you are not happy.’94

The morning comes for the young man’92s departure. The servants do not go to the field as early as usual, for they want to see the last of the young adventurer. I think each one has some little gift to present, however humble’97perhaps a cluster of grapes or an apple or a flower’97perhaps some nice morsel prepared by the house-servants and put away in his sack. Right in the doorway stands the father. He thinks of much counsel that he would like to give; but he does not say much. The fact is, he does not want utterly to break down. Oh, it is hard when you have planned for a child and educated a child and caressed him and petted him and fondled him and denied yourself many comforts for him, to have him go away because he is not satisfied with his home! No wonder the old man did not say much; but his lip quivered and the tears rolled down his cheeks as he said: ’93Farewell, my son; God bring you back again, that with these old eyes I may see you before I die. Farewell, farewell, my son;’94 and he kissed him.

So God would set forth by parable the fact that we have all gone away from home and trudged out into a far country. Our first parents had a magnificent residence. Harvests without any plowing, fruit without any insect to sting the rind, all the beauties and glories of spring and summer and autumn concentred in one day of brightness and joy and love; but they did not like it, and they went off into a far country. We have repeated their folly. God is our home. Charles Kingsley, when he was dying, in rapture cried out: ’93Oh, how beautiful God is!’94 God is our beautiful home; but we do not like him. All the paternal kindnesses cannot keep us back. We take our portion of blessings, and we trudge on, and we wander far away, bruised and chased and hungered and sick of sin, willing to do anything, though it were filling the swine’92s trough, rather than to go back home again. ’93All we like sheep have gone astray.’94 ’93And the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country.’94 May God this morning overwhelm our souls with the solemn lesson!

First, I remark, that when a man goes away from God he very often goes away from early religious influences. That was so with this fast young man of the text. You know that he must have had good influences around about him, yet he travels off. And you often now find a man entirely thoughtless, who had a good father or a good mother or both. It was not the amount of positive religious talk in the household, but the Christian atmosphere that pervaded it.

That scene often comes very graphically before your soul. Perhaps you are walking across the corn-field in time of husking, or you smell the ripe apples of the orchard while you are riding past, or you come upon a family relic, or a profile cut in old style, and you find yourself musing over the past, and you think how, barefooted, you pattered along through the furrows your father turned up, and of the hay-rack loaded with golden sheaves, and of the brook that you waded searching for pebbles, and of your mother seated at the evening stand looking up at you through her spectacles. Yes; you remember the Sabbath morning when they took you to church, fitted out in garments knit or woven, or fashioned by your mother’92s own hand. You remember just how the hand looked’97the roughness at the end of the finger from the touch of the needle, the color of the veins on the back of the hand. Alas! that hand still forever.

And you remember the house of God. You remember just how the tombstones looked around the old meeting-house as you went in, and the hum of the bees amid the clover-tops about the graves. You remember the man of God in the pulpit. Those psalms and hymns are floating in your memory today. You remember the family altar where your parents knelt, sometimes with their sorrows and their anxieties tarrying longer than you could have wished. You remember the evening prayer that was taught you. Have you forgotten it? You remember the morning when you left home to seek your own fortune. You remember as you came to the last turn of the road, and looked back at the old farmhouse, just how it looked, and wished you could just cry and have no one know it.

Oh! that old scene, that home scene, you will never forget it. You may have been out in the world forty years, fifty years; you can never forget it. God was in that home. Your parents loved him. They consecrated you to him at the altar in baptism. They remembered you in their dying prayer. It was their great desire that you might be good and Christian and useful. When they bowed their head in the grave, it was in the hope of lifting it up again in the resurrection of the righteous, and joining you in the great home circle of the saved. Do you think that you will meet them there? Do you pray as much now, at this time, as you did when you were five years of age, six years of age, seven years of age? Have you walked in the path that they marked out for you? Sometimes, when you cannot sleep, do you think of an early example and the prayers offered for your salvation? O Lord God of a Christian ancestry, have mercy on us!

But I remark again that, when a man goes away from God, he is very apt to go away from Christian associations. It was so with the young man of the text; it is so with many. There was a time when you regularly attended the house of God. You were surprised at the words of the chapter we read just now; they were so very familiar to you. There was some Presbyterian or Methodist or Baptist or Episcopal church where the faces were all familiar to you. But somehow you have been wandering away from Christian associations. Your friends are not perhaps those who love God and keep his commandments. You are not as much shocked at profanity as you used to be. Perhaps you occasionally indulge in it. Perhaps you have been to places where you once could not have been persuaded to go, or you have been floating away’97you squarely face the fact this morning, my brother, that you have been floating away from God and his people.

If you wanted some one to pray for you, you would hardly know whom to ask. If you were sick and dying and you wanted some one to implore mercy on your soul, you could not ask your friends’97they do not know how to pray. If your little child were dying, and you must fold its little hands over the silent heart, and close the long lashes over the bright eyes, and you wanted some one to talk of Jesus and the resurrection, they could not do it. They have no hope of resurrection. Rather than all their wit and their brilliancy, you would send for some plain Christian man who, knowing nothing else, knows how to talk with God. They can laugh with you, they can sing with you, they can drink with you; but they cannot weep with you, and they cannot comfort you. Oh, have you not been floating away from the family altar, floating away from the altar of baptism, floating away from Christian associations, away from God, and away from heaven?

But I remark again, when a man goes away from God, he goes away from happiness. Now, my friends, what I have already said may be inappropriate to some of you, for the reason that you had no early Christian surroundings, but this remark is true of every one’97going away from God, you go away from happiness. There is no peace in a life of impiety. Now, my brother, be frank and confess that when you compare your life as it now is with your life as it once was, you are not happy. Do you have any calm contemplation of the grave in which your body must soon moulder, and of the eternity into which your spirit must soon fly? As intelligent men, as common-sense men, you know what a short and uncertain thing life is. Your business partner fell suddenly and fatally sick. Your friend dropped under an apoplectic stroke. Walking as you do on the edge of perils, without one act of preparation for the great eternity, are you happy? No, no, no! This world cannot make a man happy. Tamerlane conquered half of it, and yet could not conquer his own spirit. Haman is wretched because Mordecai will not bow to him. Herod is in agony because a child is born in Bethlehem. Ahab goes to bed sick because Naboth will not sell his vineyard. Felix trembles because a plain minister of the Gospel will preach righteousness, temperance and judgment to come. Henry VIII is in a rage at Thomas a Becket. Alexander, wanting more worlds to conquer, is drowned in his own bottle. From the time of Louis XII to Louis XVIII, there was not a straw-bottomed chair in France that did not stand more firmly than the throne on which the Bourbons reigned. The frivolities of this life cannot silence a disturbed conscience, its voice crying: ’93I am immortal. The stars shall die, but I am immortal. The earth shall flee at the glance of the Lord, but I am immortal.’94 The unpardoned soul from all its midnight caverns echoes: ’93Immortal! immortal!’94 Yet a man will take up the cup of sin, and think he has found happiness in it, and while it glitters and foams in his grasp he will say: ’93Aha, I have found it, I have found it!’94 And the words of Moore break from his lips:

Fill the bumper fair;

Every drop we sprinkle

On the brow of care

Smoothes away a wrinkle.

And then he quaffs the bowl to the dregs, but the never-dying worm coiled up at the bottom strikes him, and in its dreadful clutch throttles his soul forever. O my friends! there is no peace away from God. The sweetness of sin, like the honey gathered from the fair rhododendrons, makes that man mad who eats it. As the Persians planted a red flag wherever a tiger had slain a man, so I lift a warning this morning in the places where men have been destroyed.

The fact is, that the soul is too large a craft to sail up the shallow stream of sinful pleasure. Going away from God, you go away from happiness. Now, my invitation is to all those who have wandered away to come back. I do not invite the righteous; I invite the prodigals. I have seen your disquietude. You may think that the Lord does not want you back. He does. He sends me out to say so. He wants you to come back. I come on the bended knees of my soul, and I beg you to quit that wilderness. Christ puts one hand on his bleeding side, and he puts the other hand on his bleeding brow, then he stretches forth his hand, blood-tipped, and says: ’93Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’94

The Holy Spirit has moved upon your heart, and if I should ask those who would like to return to their Father’92s house by repentance and faith, to raise their hands, there would be many hands lifted, I think. You would be willing to start now, but you know not which way to take. God help me to show you the way. Throw yourself on God; say to him: ’93I am a sinner, save me; I am a prodigal, give me rest. I make no apology for my crimes; I plead the sacrificial blood of the Son of God.’94 God will not shut the door against that poor soul. Famishing and dearth and death in the wilderness; but rest, perfect and everlasting rest, in God. ’93Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as snow.’94

There is a fable which says that Mohammed rode on a steed called Alborak from Jerusalem to Mecca in one night The steed had eyes like jacinth, and the fable says at every step it went as far as the eye could reach. But with what swifter step cometh the rider on the white horse, cometh to pardon, cometh to bless, and cometh to save.

I was reading of a ship that was coming from California during the time of the gold excitement. The cry of ’93Fire! fire!’94 was heard on shipboard, and the captain headed the vessel for the shore, but it was found that the ship would be consumed before it reached the beach. There was a man on deck fastening his gold around him in a belt, just ready to spring overboard, when a little girl came up to him and said, ’93Sir, can you swim?’94 He saw it was a question whether he should save his gold or save that little child, and he said, ’93Yes, my darling, I can swim,’94 and he dashed his gold on the deck. ’93Now,’94 he says, ’93put your arms around my neck; hold on very hard; put your arms around my neck.’94 And then the man plunged into the sea, and put out for the beach, and a great wave lifted them high upon the shore, and when the man was being brought to consciousness, he looked up; the little child, with anxious face, was bending over him. He had saved her. It was a beautiful rescue. But between us and the shore of safety there is a deep flood. We cannot swim it. Christ the Lord comes to the rescue. He takes us upon his shoulder. He plunges into the wave of blood and tears, and a billow of human hate and infernal wrath hurls him dead upon the beach, but we go forth safe and free. Oh, the matchless sacrifice of the Son of God! ’93This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’94

For sinners, Lord, thou cam’92st to bleed,

And I’92m a sinner vile indeed;

Lord, I believe thy grace is free;

Oh! magnify that grace in me.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage