THE PRODIGAL SON'S EPITAPH. A Sermon PREACHED AT REGENT SQUARE CHURCH, BY THE REV. JOHN MCNEILL. TEXT-Psalm exix. 55-56. HAVING preached twice to-day already--this afternoon to a Welsh audience, for about an hour-I have, I fear, spent a good deal of both physical and mental energy. Will you allow me, then, to-night to give a simple evangelical address upon the text? These words, of course, bring us back again to the line of thought in the parable of the Prodigal Son, which we have just now read. This is the Old Testament story of the Prodigal Son. What you have in the New Testament, set forth in wondrous detail by our Lord in His inimitable story, you have condensed into this brief epitome of the experience of the man who wrote the Psalm. There, as here, you have the history of a man who once lived, and of whom it is implied here, and expressed there, that he wandered on the wrong track; that he came to the end of that—he came to himself, he wandered back again, and brought himself into all temporal and eternal blessing by his return. "I thought on my ways, and turned my feet into Thy testimonies." It is just, I sometimes think, what one might have expected to be seen on the headstone of the Prodigal Son, after he died and was buried. We have ceased to Vol. II.-No. 22. think of him as a lay figure in a religious story, merely set up for the purpose of illustration. Because Christ told the story, we think of him as a real man, and follow his course after he returned. We hope he lived long and did well, and that in the end of the day he redeemed the follies and disasters of its early part; then, at last, filled with years and honours, he lay down and died, and was buried. "Devout men carried him to his burial, and made lamentations over him ;" and we will suppose that, as they do in this country, they put up a headstone and inscription. If so, I cannot think of an inscription more suitable than our present text: "Here lies a man who thought on his ways, and turned his feet to God's testimonies; and made haste, and delayed not to keep His commandments." This is the record of an experience. The Lord grant we may find, as we go through it, that we are occupying ourselves with our own experience; and if it has not been so with ourselves until now, may we begin the experience recorded here to-night. It is--to change the figure-an entry in the spiritual diary of the man who wrote the Psalm. It is one of those little autobiographical bits that are one of the elements which give to the Psalms their perennial interest. They so often come down to our own level and our own experience; they so often, like all good and true poetry, express what we were all thinking of, and when it is expressed for us, we lift our hands and say, "Dear me, how true! It is a wonder I never thought of saying that myself." So here you have a little autobiographical bit; one of those things which keep the Psalms in a state of great freshness and interest for all our hearts. We find we are surveying our own joys, and speaking of our own sorrows, when we are being led by that much-tried man, the sweet singer of Israel, who sobbed and sang the Psalms of David. I wonder if we keep a diary? I don't know if we do, or do not. It is said the "vice" of diary-keeping is that the entries are often made with a view to subsequent publication. If so, perhaps it is as well we should not; but at least let us know that God is keeping a diary for us. He has kept it, as we sometimes say in the children's hymn-as though the idea were childish : "For we know the Lord of glory Of their thoughts and actions too." If there is anything that grown men want to remember, it is that God is writing our diary. Listen to the scratching of the pen behind the arras! Has God had occasion, do you think, to enter into the diary of your spiritual history such an entry as we find here, by His grace, in the diary of the man who wrote the Psalms; I am not going to say it was David's in these critical days. We will not quarrel with the critics, but simply speak of the man who wrote the Psalms-David, or the other man. Do you think God has had good occasion to write this entry? I want to get at the root of the idea of experimental religion to-night, with the little strength I have. Has He had good cause to write, on such and such a day, known to Him, in such and such an hour, that you were born again, that you were converted, that you were turned from sin and self to grace and Christ? It is time the entry was in, for there are black and shameful entries opposite your name and mine to a great extent, and it will need every entry which will avail to redeem the record. That which I have named is the only entry that will save it from being a damning indictment against us in the day when the Judgment is set, and the dead, both small and great, are gathered before God, and the books are opened, and the dead are judged out of things that are written in the books. The diaries will be brought out, and our eternal state will be fixed by the record of our diary that God with impartial pen has kept. That will be reading for some of us! This will redeem it-this red-letter entry,-only this, all this, nothing less than this: "I thought on my ways, and turned my feet to Thy testimonies. I made haste, and delayed not to keep Thy commandments." Do not let any one turn away, saying, "I am not included, for I have not wandered; I am not a prodigal." My friend, you have. I am face to face with a congregation that is either somewhere on the out-going journey from God, or somewhere on the in-going journey back to God, holiness, and heaven. But we all started on the out-going track; we are born upon it, "we go astray from the womb." “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way." You got off into the far country on your way, and I got on mine; but every one turned to his own way—a departure from God. Some of us go blundering on through the mud and mire of drunkenness, swearing, licentiousness, and open sinning; that is our way to the far country. Some of us go along the macadamized road of self-righteousness and church-going and sermon-hearing; that is our way to the same outer darkness and the same far country. Therefore this text becomes one of pressing personal importance; it is the record of a tremendously essential experience of every soul descended from Adam. There are two or three things that mark off this essential experience. First of all we have here a pregnant expression, "I thought on my ways." "I thought on my ways." A man rises before us; he tells us plainly that the beginning of true religion with him lay in this, in personal thinking, "I thought on my ways." The beginning lies there. Now, I speak to people who pride themselves, I have no doubt, "that they are thinkers, and they pride themselves that they are hard-headed people, that dust is not to be thrown in their eyes, and they judge and they discern, and they examine what is set before them." I am delighted to meet with such an audience. A preacher of the Gospel asks for nothing better than that. "I speak unto wise men: judge 66 to the law and to the testimony; " if I speak not according to that Word, it is because there is no light in me; and if you speak not according to the same Word, the same to you-there is no light in you. I thought on my ways." The beginning lies in serious thoughtfulness. When will we learn in all the churches, when will we learn in the midst of all our religiosity, that it is possible to miss the one door, and never once to enter in, for the door is somewhat lowly and obscure? It is not high and over-arching and conspicuous; it is this, "I thought on my ways." All blessedness springs from that grain of mustard-seed, “I thought on my ways." Religion is not magic, it is miracle: but it is not jugglery; it is not witchcraft; it is not being —what is that latest jugglery that is out?-it is not being "hypnotized," as talked of in the newspapers; it is not any of these things. It is a daylight business: it is open and honest, and done in the daylight of clear understanding. "I thought." You never put your intellect to a higher use than when you turned its powers upon your own ways, enlightened by the surest guide the Word of God. You never come into any meeting with a fuller consent of all your intellectual and moral powers than the meeting in which the Gospel of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ is being preached. I rather fear that many people think that, while you need to take your intellect with you when you go to hear a lecture on philosophy or on science, you can bring your addled head when you come to hear the Gospel. Get rid of that idea. Bring your best brains with you when you come to hear God's Word. Nothing more needs thinking on my part, and strenuous thinking on your part. God's Word is not a trifle; God's Word is not to be easily spoken, nor easily and off-handedly listened to. "I thought on my ways;" that is the beginning of all experimental religion, and that is the only thing; because it begins |