ed by this feeling--it is my
Father, and enjoyment can be taken with a frank feeling; my Father has
given it me, without grudging, to make me happy? All that is having a
home in God. Are we at home there? Why there is demonstration in our
very childhood that we are not at home with that other world of God's.
An infant fears to be alone, because he feels he is not alone. He
trembles in the dark, because he is conscious of the presence of the
world of spirits. Long before he has been told tales of terror, there
is an instinctive dread of the supernatural in the infant mind. It is
the instinct which we have from childhood that gives us the feeling of
another world. And mark, brethren, if the child is not at home in the
thought of that world of God's, the deep of darkness and eternity is,
around him--God's home, but not his home, for his flesh creeps. And
that feeling grows through life; not the fear--when the child becomes
a man he gets over fear--but the dislike. The man feels as much
aversion as the child for the world of spirits.

Sunday comes. It breaks across the current of his worldliness. It
suggests thoughts of death and judgment and everlasting existence. Is
that home? Can the worldly man feel Sunday like a foretaste of his
Father's mansion? If we could but know how many have come here to-day,
not to have their souls lifted up heavenwards, but from curiosity, or
idleness, or criticism, it would give us an appalling estimate of the
number who are living in a far country, "having no hope and without
God in the world."

The second truth conveyed to us in this parable is the unsatisfying
nature of worldly happiness. The outcast son tried to satiate his
appetite with husks. A husk is an empty thing; it is a thing which
looks extremely like food, and promises as much as food; but it is not
food. It is a thing which when chewed will stay the appetite, but
leaves the emaciated body without nourishment. Earthly happiness is a
husk. We say not that there is no satisfaction in the pleasures of a
worldly life. That would be an overstatement of the truth. Something
there is, or else why should men persist in living for them? The
cravings of man's appetite may be stayed by things which cannot
satisfy him. Every new pursuit contains in it a new hope; and it is
long before hope is bankrupt. But my brethren, it is strange if a man
has not found out long before he has reached the age of thirty,