Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1891 — HOMESICK SOUL. [ARTICLE]

HOMESICK SOUL.

Young Men, Listen to the Monitor's Voice. Work Yonr Way Out of Sin and Iniquity and Beturn to the Pure Scenes of Childhood* The Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn last Sunday. Subject: “The Homesick Soul. ” Text from the parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke xv, 18: “I will arise and go to my father.” He said: There is nothing like hunger to take the energy out of a man. A hungry man can toil neither with pen nor hand nor foot. There has been many an army defeated not so much for lack of ammunition as for lack of bread. It was that fact that took the fire out of this young man of the text. Storm and exposure will wear out any man’s life in time, but hunger makes quick work. The most awful cry ever heard on earth is the cry for bread. This young man of my text couldn’t get even the food fed to the swine without stealing it. So one day amid the swine troughs he begins to soliloquize. He says: £ ‘These are not the clothes for a rich man’s son to wear; this is no kind of a business for a Jew to be engaged in—feeding hogs; I’ll go home. I’ll go home; I will arise and go to my father.” I know there are a great many people who try to throw a fascination, a romance, a halo about sin; but notwithstanding all that Lord Byron and George Sand have said in regard to it. it is a mean, low, contemptible business, and putting food and fodder into the troughs of a herd of iniquities that root and wallow in the *oul of a man is a very poor business for men and women intended to be sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. And when this young, man resolved to go home it was a very wise thing for him to do, and the only question is whether we will follow him. Satan promises big wages if we will serve him; but he clothes his victims with rags, and he pinches them with hunger, and when they start out to do better he sets after them all the bloodhounds of perdition. Satan comes to us to-day and he promises all luxuries, all emoluments if we will only serve him. Liar, down with thee to the pit! “The wages of sin is death.” Oh, the young man of the text was wise when he uttered the resolution, “I will arise and go to my father.” The resolution of this text was formed in disgust at his present circumstances. If this young man had been by his employer set to cultivating flowers, or training vines over an arbor, or keeping account of the pork market, oi overseeing other laborers, he would not have thought of going home. If he had had his pockets full of money, if he had been able to say, ‘‘l have SI,OOO now of my own; what’s the use of my going back to my father’s house? Do you think I am going back to apologize to the old man? Why, he would put me on the limits; he would not have going on around the old place such conduct as I have been engaged in. I won’t go home; there is no reason why I should go home; I have plenty of money, plenty of pleasant surroundings; why should I go home?” Ah! it was his pauperism; it was his beggary. He had to go home. Some man comes and says to me: “Why do you talk about the ruined state of the human soul? Why don’t you speak about the progress of the nineteenth century, and talk about something more exhilarating?” Itis_ for this reason; a man never wants the Gospel until he realizes that he is in a famine-stricken state. Sup--pose-Lshmild come to you in your home and you are in good, robusthealth, and I should bogin to talk about medicines, and- about how much better this medicine is than that, and some other medicine than some other medicine, and talk about this physician and that physician. After awhile you would get tired, and you would say: “I don’t want to hear about medicines. Why do you talk to me of physicians? I never have a doctor.” But suppose I come into your house and 1 find you severely sick, and I know the medicine that will cure you, and I know the physician who is skillful. enough to meet your case. You say: “Bring on that medicine, bring on that physician. lam terribly sick and I want help.” If I came to you and you feel you are all right in body and all right in mind, and all right in soul, you have need of nothing; but suppose I have persuaded you that the leprosy of sin is upon you, the worst of all sickness. Oh! then you say: “Bring me that balm of the Gospel, bring me that divine medicament, bring me Jesus Christ.” But says some on in the audience: “How do you prove that we are in a ruined condition by sin?" Well, I can prove it in two ways and you may naVe your choice. I can prove it either by the statements of men or by the statement of God, . Which shall it be? You all say: “Let us have the statement of God.” Well, He says in ote place: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.’’ He Says in another place: “What is man that he should be clean, and he which is born of a woman thae he should be righteous?” He sa; siu another place: it “There is none* that doeth good, not one,” He says in another place, “As-by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” “Well,” you say, “I am willing to acknowledge that, but why

should I take the particular rescue that you propose?” This is the reason: “Except that a man be bom again he cannot see the kingdom of God. ” This is the reason: “There is one name given under heaven men. Thereby they may be saved. ” Then there are a thousand voices here ready to say: “Well, I am ready to accept this help of the gospel; I would like to have this divme cure, how shall I go to work?” Let me say that a mere whim, an undefined longing amounts to nothing. You must have a stout, tremendous resolution like this young man of the text when he said: “I will arise and go to my father,” “Oh” says some man, “how do I know my father wants me? how do I knovT if 1 go back I would be received?” “Oh, says some man,you don’t know where I have been; you don’t know how far I have wandered; you wouldn’t talk that way to me if you knew all the iniquities I have com* mitted." Then I see Christ waving His hand toward the mountains; I hear Him say: ‘‘l will come over the mountains of thy sins and the hills of thy iniquity.” There shall be no Pyrenese; there shall be no Alps. Again, Notice that the resolution of the young man of the text was founded in sorrow at his misbehavior. It was not mere physical plight. It was grief that he had so maltreated his father. It is a sad thing after a father has done everything for a child to have that child be ungrateful. •■How sharper than a serpent’s tooth It is To have a thankless child.” That is Shakespere. “A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother. ” That is the Bible. Well, my friends, have not some of us been cruel prodigals? ■Have we n6t maltreated our Father?' And such a Father! So loving, so kind. If he had been a stranger, if he had forsaken us, if he had flagedated us, if he had bounded us and turned us out of doors on the commons, it would not have been so wonderful —our treatment of Him; but He is a Father so loving, so kind, and yet how many of us for our wanderings have never apologized for wrongs done to our fellows, but some of us, perhaps, have committed 10,000 times 10,000 wrongs against God and never apologized. I remark still further that this resolution of the text was founded on a feeling of homesickness. I don t know how long this young man. How many months, how many years, he had been away from his father’s house; but there is something in the reading of my text that makes me think he was homesick. Some of you know what that feeling is. Far away from home sometimes, surrounded by every thing bright and pleasant, plenty of friends, you have said: “I would give the world to be home to-night.” Well this young man was homesick for his father's house. I have no doubt when he thought of his father’s house, he said “Now, perhaps, fatheT may not be living.”

We read nothing in this story — this parable founded on everyday life—we read nothing about the mother. It says nothing about going home to her. I think she was dead. I think she had died of a broken heart at his wanderings. A man never gets over having lost his mother. Nothing ! said about her here. But he is homesick for his father’s house. He, thought he would just like to go and walk around the place. He thought he would just like to go and see if things were as they used to be. Many , a man, after having been off a long while, has gone’home and knocked at the door, and a stranger has come. It is the old homestead, but a stanger comes to the door. He finds outfattrerisgonea&dmotherls.gone and brothers and sisters all gone. I think this young man of the text said to himself: “Perhaps father may be dead.” Still he starts to find out. He is homesick. Are there any here to-day homesick for God. Homesick for heaven? Olmy friends, have you waded out too deep? Have you waded down into sin r Have you waded from the shore Will you come back? When you come back will you come in the rags of your sin, or will you come robed in the Savior's righteousness? I believe the latter. Go home to your God to-day. He is waiting for you. Go home. But I remark concerning this resolution, it was immediately put into execution. The context says “he arose and came to his family." The trouble in ninety-nine times out of a hundred is that our resolutions amount to nothing because we make them for some distant time. If I resolve to become a Christian next vear, thut amounts to nothing at all. If I resolve to become a Christian tomorrow, that amounts to nothing at all. If T resolve at the service tonight to become a Christian, that amounts to nothing at all. If I resolve after I go home to-day to yield my heart to God, that amounts to nothing at all. The only kind of resothat amounts to anything is the resolution that is immediately put into execution. There is a man who had the typhoid -fever. He said: “Oh, if I could get over this terrible distress! jf this fever should depart, if I could be restored to health, I would all the rest of my life, serve God. ” The fever departed. He got well enough to walk around the block. He got well enough to go over to New York and attend to business. He is well today—as well as he ever was. Where is the broken vow? There is a matt who said long ago: “If I could live to the year end, by that time I will

have my business matters arranged, anj. I will have time to attend to religion, and I will be a thorough consecrated Christiah. ” The year 1891 has come. January,February, March, April, May, June—almost half of the year gone. Where is your broken vow? O, says some man, “I’ll attend to that when I can get my character fixed up: when I can get over mv evil habits: I am now given to strong drink. ” Or, says the man “I am given to uncleanliness:” or says the man, “I am’ given to dishonesty. < When I get over my S resent ha6its,then I'll be a thorough hristian.” u, My brother, you will get worse and worse until Christ takes you in hand. “Not the righteous; sinners, Jesus came to call.”’ O! but you say; “I agree with you on all that, but I must put it off a little longer. ” Do you know there were many who came just as near to the kingdom of God and never entered it. “To-day I offer you the pardon of the Gospel—full pardon; free pardon. I do not care what your sin has been. * Though you say you have committed a crime against God, against your own soul, against your fellow man, against your family, against the day of judgment, agairst the cross of Christ —whatever your crime has been, here is pardon, full pardon, and the very moment you take that pardon your heavenly father throws his arms around about you and says: “My'son, I forgive you. It is all right. You are as much in my favor now as though you had never sinned.” Oh! there is joy on earth and joy in heaven. Who wIIITake the father’s, embrace? . • There was a gentleman in a rail car who saw in that same car three-pas-sengers of very different circumstances. The first was a maniac. He was carefully guarded by his attendants; his mind, like a ship dismantled, was beating againt a dark, desolate coast from which no help could come. The train stopped and the man was taken out into the asylum to waste away, perhaps, through years of gloom. The second passenger was a culprit The outraged law had seized on him. As the cars jolted the chains rattled. On his face were crime, depravity and despair. The train halted and he was taken out to the penitentiary, to which he had been condemned. There was the third passenger, under far different circumstances. She was a bride. Every hour was gay as a marriage bell. Life glittered and beckoned. Her companion was taking her to his father’s house. The train halted. The old man was there to welcome her to her new home, and his white locks snowed down upon her as he sealed his words with a father’s'kiss. Quickly we fly toward eternity. We will soon be there. Some leave this life condemned. Oh. may it be with us that, leaving this fleeting life for the next, we may find our Father ready to greet us to our new home with Him forever. There will be a marriage banquet! Father’s welcome! Father's bosom! Father's kiss! Heaven! Heaven!