their sin under a cloak of sanctity. They gratify
every lust, and crucify none. They live without God in the world. The
key-note of their being is, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.

To all this class the parable proclaims a warning. A rank, soporific
superstition has crept over these free and easy spirits,--a superstition
as dark and deceitful as any of the inventions of Rome. Men seem
actually to persuade themselves that their very wickedness will supply
them with a passport into heaven. They seem to expect that they will be
made pets in the great day, because they made no pretension to
saintship; and that they will be fondled by the Judge as they have been
by their boon companions, because hypocrisy cannot be reckoned among
their sins. It is a false hope. Free thinking, free living brother, if I
saw you about to put to sea in a ship which I knew to be affected with
dry-rot in the timbers of the bottom, I would warn you with all my
energy, that I might save your life: when I see you preparing to launch
into eternity leaning on a lie, I cry vehemently, Beware, lest you be
lost for ever! Without holiness no man shall see God. The absence of a
hypocritical pretension to holiness will not be accepted instead of
holiness. All who go away to the judgment-seat without holiness will be
shut out of heaven--alike those who thought they had it, and those who
confessed that they had it not. It was all right at last with the
profane son in the parable; but mark, he repented and obeyed. God's
invitation to the wicked is, Turn and live; but the promise contains in
its bosom the counterpart threatening, If you turn not you shall die. It
was not the bold, frank declaration of disobedience that made the first
son all right: it made him all wrong. It was his change,--his passing
out of that state, as if he had passed from death unto life, that saved
him.

But to this class the parable speaks encouragement as well as warning.
So great is God's mercy in Christ that even you are welcome when you
come; the gate stands open; the Redeemer from within is calling chief
sinners in, He has pledged himself to cast no comer out because of his
worthlessness. Nor does the freeness of his grace prove that the
prodigal's sins are small; it proves only that the forgiving love of
Christ is great.

2. There is still a class corresponding to the Pharisees, and to these
the Lord in this parable conveys both warning and encouragement.

The ess