ed the process
of printing coloured landscapes by lithograph. One stone by one
impression deposits the outline of the land; another stone, by another
impression, fills in the sea; and a third stone, on a different machine,
subsequently adds the sky to the picture. No observer is so foolish as
to complain, while he sees the process in its earlier stages, that there
is no sea or no sky in the landscape. It is thus with the parables in
general, and with this group in particular. By the two first, certain
portions and aspects of the scene are represented; and by the last one,
when it is impressed on the same field, the remaining features are
completed.

* * * * *

Hitherto we have been occupied exclusively with the younger of the two
sons; but the notice given in the first sentence of the parable
prepares us for meeting with the elder in some significant capacity ere
it close; and here, accordingly, he comes up to sustain his part.

At the moment of the prodigal's return, his elder brother was in the
field, whether for his father's profit or his own pleasure we are not
informed. When he came home in the evening, and before he had entered
the house, he heard the sound of the festival within. Surprised and
displeased that a feast on so large a scale should have been instituted
without his privity and participation, he assumed and maintained an
attitude of haughty reserve. Instead of going in at once and seeing all
with his own eyes as a son, he went to a servant, and in the spirit of
an alien, inquired the reason of the mirth. Having learned the leading
facts, instead of imitating his father's generosity, he abandoned
himself to selfish jealousy, and went away in a pet. The father, on
every side true to his character, came out and pleaded with him to enter
and share the common joy. Hereupon the true character of the
_soi-disant_ model son is revealed; he peevishly casts it in his
father's face, as a reproach, that he had never provided such a feast
for his immaculate and superlatively dutiful child.

The elder son, in his statement of the case, introduces an elaborately
constructed double contrast between his brother's experience and his
own, which is peculiarly interesting in relation to the mercy of God and
the methods of the Gospel. To the jaundiced eye of this sour-tempered
pharisaic youth, it seemed that his father gave much to him that
deserved least, and little to him that deserved mo