r body"--shall have been freed in body, soul, and
spirit, from the last traces of the evil which can only be kept down
by force. In other words, so far as Christ's statement is true of
_us_, "The Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me."

XX.

_Preached February 21, 1853._

THE PRODIGAL AND HIS BROTHER.

"And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I
have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad:
for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and
is found."--Luke xv. 31, 32.

There are two classes of sins. There are some sins by which man
crushes, wounds, malevolently injures his brother man: those sins
which speak of a bad, tyrannical, and selfish heart. Christ met those
with denunciation. There are other sins by which a man injures
himself. There is a life of reckless indulgence; there is a career of
yielding to ungovernable propensities, which most surely conducts to
wretchedness and ruin, but makes a man an object of compassion rather
than of condemnation.

The reception which sinners of this class met from Christ was marked
by strange and pitying mercy. There was no maudlin sentiment on his
lips. He called sin sin, and guilt guilt. But yet there were sins
which His lips scourged, and others over which, containing in
themselves their own scourge, His heart bled. That which was
melancholy, and marred, and miserable in this world, was more
congenial to the heart of Christ than that which was proudly happy. It
was in the midst of a triumph, and all the pride of a procession, that
He paused to weep over ruined Jerusalem. And if we ask the reason why
the character of Christ was marked by this melancholy condescension it
is that he was in the midst of a world of ruins, and there was nothing
there to gladden, but very much to touch with grief. He was here to
restore that which was broken down and crumbling into decay. An
enthusiastic antiquarian, standing amidst the fragments of an ancient
temple surrounded by dust and moss, broken pillar, and defaced
architrave, with magnificent projects in his mind of restoring all
this to _former_ majesty, to draw out to light from mere rubbish the
ruined glories, and therefore stooping down amongst the dank ivy and
the rank nettles; such was Christ amidst the wreck of human nature. He
was striving to lift it out of its degradation. He was searching out
in r