ft from his father's bounty:
he claimed a share of the property as of right. The terms are
significant; "Give me the portion of goods that _falleth_ ([Greek: to
epiballon meros]) to me." The phrase faithfully depicts the atheism of
an unbelieving human heart; the fool hath said in his heart, "No God."
He has become brutish: as swine gather the acorns from the ground,
heedless of the oak from which they fell; alienated men snatch God's
gifts for the gratification of their appetites, and forget the giving
God. This seeing eye, and this hearing ear, and these cunning hands, the
irreverent son counts his own, and determines to employ them in
ministering to his own pleasure.

The father might justly have refused to comply with his son's demand:
although a certain part of the property might by law "fall" to the
younger son at the death of the father, there was no law or custom that
gave the youth a right to any of it during his father's life. In this
case, however, the father saw meet to let the young man have his own
way; he threw the reins loose upon the neck of the prodigal. Although
the father of his flesh could not see the end from the beginning, the
Father of his spirit, in permitting his departure, already planned the
glad return.

"Not many days after:" weary of paternal restraint, he made off as soon
as possible. He gathered all; for he needed all as a price in his hand
to pay for his pleasure. He went into a far country, and there wasted
his substance with riotous living. Even a large substance may in this
manner soon be consumed; money and health waste away quickly when they
are employed as fuel to feed the flame of lust. An interesting parallel
to this portion of the parable occurs in Luke xii. 45. A servant to
whom much had been intrusted thought his master was at a great distance,
and would remain a long time away; then and therefore he began "to beat
the men-servants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken."
It is when a man is, or imagines himself to be, far from God that he
dares to indulge freely his vicious propensities: and conversely, those
who are secretly bent upon a life of sin, put God far from their
thoughts, in order that they may not be interrupted in their pleasures.

The crisis came. The "season" of pleasure did not last long; and the man
who had "sowed to the flesh" was compelled to fill his bosom with an
early harvest of misery. The hunger, nakedness, and shame that
accumulated