ountry, for a few weeks, or possibly
a few months, he had plenty of money. He thought his money would always
last. Bad men and women gathered around him, for they all wanted to
enjoy what his money would secure for them. But it didn't take long; his
money was soon spent, and when his money was gone his pretended friends
were gone also. He soon found himself penniless, friendless and
hungered. He had to go out and seek for work. Perhaps he had been too
much indulged at home. He had never learned a trade, and possibly had
never learned to do work of any kind, and so there was nothing for him
to do but to accept the humblest and meanest kind of labor. He was a
Jew, and for a Jew to tend swine or hogs was one of the meanest things
in all the world. And yet he was willing because of his poverty and his
want, to do even this most degrading service. This boy who wanted to be
his own master, now became the most menial of slaves, even to the
tending of swine. He wanted gay company, but he had only pigs for his
companions. He wanted wine and feasting, but now no one even offered him
husks to eat. He left his home to seek happiness, but he found only
misery.

[Illustration: The Disappointed, Hungry Prodigal Tending Swine.]

These husks which I showed you, which some boys call "Johnny bread," are
exactly what this wayward, disappointed, disheartened, hungry boy was
given to feed to the swine which he was hired to tend. He was so
hungry that he would have been glad to eat these husks with the pigs,
but no one gave him any to eat.

When this wayward boy was thus brought down to poverty and hunger in
that far-off country, while he was tending the swine, he began to think.
If he had only stopped to think before he left his home, he would never
have started away. He would surely have known that he was better off at
home than anywhere else. But now that misery and want had come to him,
we are told that "he came to himself." That is, he came to his senses.
It was sentiment which led him from his home. It was sense that brought
him back. The trouble with boys and girls, and with older people too, is
that they do not stop to think. They follow their fancies and
sentiments, and they are led astray in this way.

God wants us to stop and think, and He says, "Come, let us reason
together." God does not ask any unreasonable thing of us. He simply
wants to treat us as thoughtful beings, but we want to follow our own
inclination and our own de