st: to the profligate
son, the fatted calf; to the eminently dutiful child, not even a kid.
Here the hard, self-satisfied formalist, like Pilate and Caiaphas,
preaches the Christ whom he did not know. The envious contrast portrayed
by the elder son is a dark shadow which takes its shape from the Light
of life. It is a law of the Gospel that nothing is given to the man in
reward for the righteousness which he brings forward as his boast; but
all is given to the man who has flung away his own righteousness with
loathing as filthy rags, and come, "wretched, and miserable, and poor,
and blind, and naked," to cast himself on the mercy of God. The greatest
gift is bestowed on the most worthless; for "God commendeth his love
toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us"
(Rom. v. 8).

At this point the line of our parable touches that of the lost sheep,
and thenceforth runs coincident with it to the close: it points to the
same features of human character, and teaches the same principles of
divine truth. In the first place, it repeats the answer already given in
the two preceding parables to the question embodied in the complaint of
the Pharisees,--"This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them." The
father announces with great clearness and fulness, the grounds on which
he rejoiced more that day over the prodigal restored than over the elder
son, who had never left home. It is a rule in human experience,
universally understood and appreciated, that though a son never lost is
as precious as one who has been lost and found, parents experience a
more vivid joy in the act of receiving the exile back than in the
continuous possession of a son who has been always in their sight.[85]

[85] This law may be illustrated by an analogous fact in the
material department of creation. Lay a ball, such as a boy's marble,
on an extended sheet of thin paper, and the paper, though fixed at
the edges and unsupported in the midst, will bear easily the weight:
take now another ball of the same shape and weight, and let it drop
upon the sheet of paper from a height, it will go sheer through. The
two balls are of the same weight and figure; but the motion gave to
one a momentum tenfold greater than that of the other at rest. It is
in a similar way that the return of a lost son goes through a loving
father's heart, and makes all its affections thrill; while the
continued possession of another son, equally v