enough, his resources are more than abundant-they are redundant to the utmost plentifulness. If you gave him more gold he would not know that you had given it to him. What can we do for this man? Listen to him. He is the victim of superstition, of narrow notions, of false ideas, of bigoted conceptions, of sectarian sympathies; he is in prison, his soul is in bondage. Reveal the truth to him; show him how little he has yet seen; teach him how to take up his stakes and put them further out, how to lengthen his cords, take in more roofage; give him a peep over boundaries that have already shut him in-what have you done to that man? You found him in prison; you opened the door and sent him into a wide and glorious and incorruptible liberty. We have never been in prison, in the ordinary sense of the term, and therefore I contend we must not have the kingdom of heaven shut up within a few terms that are necessarily limited; we must find for the limited word an illimitable meaning, and thus the kingdom of heaven shall overlap the kingdom of earth, and the greater shall include the less.

If we make a third call, the case will be still more complete. It shall be upon a person who has gone the round of the whole scheme of things in society-a man who has drunk every cup, tasted to exhaustion every enjoyment, who has had men-servants and women-servants, and the delights of the sons of men, and musical instruments of all sorts, gardens and pools of water; who has been in the giddy swirl and riot of conventional happiness; gone through it all and set down the drained goblet with a curse. "What are you, sir?" I say to this man, who has passed the whole round of earthly and sensual delights. He says, "I am sick, sated, nauseated, poisoned." Will you take again the goblet you have set down? Never. What ails thee? Sickness-death. Ah! let me speak to thee: there is another world, a faith-world, where souls live, where Hope rekindles her lamp, where the spirit can be satisfied; where ideas are enlarged and answered by ever-completing revelations a kingdom thou hast never been in, bread thou hast never eaten, water thou hast never tasted. The King of the fair land sends me to thee, sick one and dead, and says, "Compel him to come in." Wilt come? He says, Will you take me?" I answer, "I will." He says, will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him: Father, I have sinned; there is nothing on Thy side to be accounted for, explained or justified; the burden is on me, and on me alone. He goes; his sickness is forgotten; a new and healthy appetite stirs every faculty of his nature. He was sick and in prison-you visited him--so you have

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enlarged the number of the guests that throng the house of the Saviour.

I begin now, with these incidents before me, to see that the upshot of this, if ever it came to a great assize, must be very solemn; for this hunger was no passing appetite; this thirst was no flake of fire that could be put out with a drop of water; this nakedness was no exposure of the skin; this sickness was no affection of the physical functions. It was a hunger of the soul, and a thirst of the spirit, and a nakedness of the whole nature, and the whole head was sick and the whole heart was faint; and if you can find a man who can answer these necessities and destitutions, you will find a man worthy of a kingdom, be it infinite in measurement, be it lasting as eternity; you will indeed deserve the "Well done," which is heaven.

The other side of the case is thus abundantly provided for. The difficulty of everlasting punishment is now no difficulty at all, but a necessity. For what would the case be then-who are they that go away? According to the terms set forth in the Scripture before us, as enlarged according to human experience and consciousness, there are people who have done nothing, answered no cry of the spirit, appeased no desire of the soul, healed no affection of the conscience, thrown no light of liberty upon the judgment of men, neglected every one, answered no prayers, heeded no cries, satisfied no wants-my friends, to what can they go? When the solemn answer comes, "To everlasting punishment," the conscience says, "Severe, but right.' The hunger of the universe for uprightness and justice is answered and satisfied in that going away. I believe in everlasting punishment. I cannot define it, nor will I have any ordinary human definition thrust upon me. I only

know this, that it must be something fearful, beyond the imagination of man to conceive. It is not everlasting because it continues three hundred centuries rather than three hundred days. That is a question of time: everlasting is a quality as well as a quantity. Eternal is more than duration-it is duration forgotten, duration sunk in an agony or delight. Joy has no time, misery has nothing but time.

How large the field of service is-hunger, thirst, nakedness, sickness, imprisonment, destitution of every kind! There is room enough in that field for your talent and mine, and the resources of the individual and the whole commonwealth. Find your corner-work it well. If it be the giving of natural bread, God bless you-it is much needed. If it be the giving of ideas, God bless you-they are the true bread which cometh down from heaven. If it be the giving of sympathy, God bless you-it is wanted, for the sick heart

dies of the poisoned confections of time. It is just the field Christ Himself occupied; Jesus Christ has written His own history in these words: He did nothing else for three years than what He describes the righteous as having done in these verses-He went about doing good. If the people were hungry He said, "Give them to eat." If they were thirsty of spirit, feeling the keen necessities of the heart, he sat down upon the mountain and opened His mouth and taught them. If they were deluded, victimized, ensnared by temptations, traditions, and if they were befooled and misled by incompetent teachers, He liberated them from their prison of inadequate perceptions and perverted ideas and introduced them into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

This leads me to say that no man can occupy this field except in Christ's spirit. It is not an inviting field : no man goes to the hospital for a day of recreation, he goes to teach, to heal, to mitigate pain. No man would go to the lunatic asylum for the purpose of spending a half-holiday. He goes to see if anything can be done, if any poor wretch can yet be saved from the outermost; and as he goes in the angels sing, "Glory to God in the highest: on earth peace and good will toward men." If you have not Christ's spirit, you soon tire of dealing with the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, imprisoned, miserable. There is nothing in these things themselves to fascinate the taste, to engage the affections, to conciliate the esteem and fire the energy of the human heart. These things are repulsive in themselves; unless we get the right view they will shock us and affright us and repel us, and we shall seek health and beauty and plenty and freedom, and call these things our delights.

So, then, the case is not so simple as you at first thought it to be. It is not the thrusting a loaf into the hands of a beggar and therefore going to heaven. It is not a sinful life for seventy years, and then calling in some poor wretch off the streets and giving him a goblet of water, and then saying, "There, now, I am going straight up to glory." I thought it must be deeper than that; I felt that that was wrong. I know it now. What has the Christian teacher done this morning-changed a single word? Not one. Altered the venue? Not for a moment. Re-written the Bible? Not a verse of it. What then? What every Christian expositor and every Christian controversialist must do then he will take the spoil from mighty kings: he must enlarge his definitions, thrust out his terms to their full signification, and he will find that the kingdom of heaven is wide enough to include all science, all politics, all hunger, all thirst, all misery, all need-that it is a kingdom of kingdoms, as its Lord is King of kings.

The Prodigal's Resolve.

A SERMON

PREACHED BY T. DeWitt Talmage, D.D., IN THE BROOKLYN TABERNACLE. I will arise and go to my father.-Luke xv: 18.

THIS young man, the son of a rich Jew, was thoroughly destitute. He was hungry and in rags. Seated amid the swine-troughs, perfectly wretched, an idea flashes across him-"I will go home. These are no clothes for a rich man's son to wear. What business is this for a Jew-feeding swine? I can stand it no longer. I will arise and go to my father!" Not waiting to patch up his poor clothes or improve his personal appearance, away he flies. Homesickness gives him a fleet foot. That was a wise resolution. He could not sew up his rags or satisfy his hunger. Satan has a great many herds of iniquity, and he says he will give us large wages if we will only watch them. Liar! Down with thee into the pit! The wages of sin is death.” Satan covers his employés with rags; he pinches them with eternal hunger, and when they are weary of the business and try to get away, he chases them with all the bloodhounds of perdition.

I. I remark that this resolution of the prodigal was made in a disgust at his present condition. If his employer had set him to tending flowers or to training vines over the arbor, or to keeping an account of the pork market, or to overseeing the other laborers, that young man would have never gone home to his father's house. If he had had salary enough to clothe himself even moderately; if he had had salary enough to get on ordinarily, he would have said: "I can get along without these splendid things; I can rough it just as a great many other men have roughed it." If he had had money in his pocket he would never have started home. He would have said: "What do I want of my father, with fifty, a hundred, a thousand dollars in my pocket; what do I want to go home for? I will never apologize to the old man. Besides that, I have one-third of the property coming to me anyhow. Besides, if I went home, I know father would put me on the limits. He would not allow such goings on in the old place as I like to indulge in. Come, my boys, fill high and let's drink again to the good time that's coming." Ah! it was his utter destruction and pauperism; it was the fact that they be

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grudged him even the beans and the "carobs." It was because he had come down to destitution, beneath which there was no lower depth, that he resolved to go to his father. Let me here say that no man ever starts for God until he is persuaded of his famine-struck condition. People say to ministers, Why do you stand and talk about the lost state of man?" For the reason that unless men are persuaded of it they do not want the gospel. If I come into your house, and you are well, and I talk about powerful medicines and physicians, you say: "That is nothing to I have no cough, no neuralgía, no rheumatism. Why do you talk to me about medicine?" But if I come into your house and you feel that you are desperately sick, and unless you get help very soon you must die, as soon as I begin to talk about medicines or a doctor you say, "Bring them quickly or I shall die." Now, if I can convince you that in your natural condition you are lost, that you are sick and diseased by reason of sin from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, then you are ready to hear me while I speak of Jesus Christ, the great Physician, and of the balm that will heal all our wounds.

By every possible simile the Bible sets forth the truth that we are guilty and that there is no help for us, so far as human medicament is concerned. Sin is a red-hot plowshare that turns up Eden, and it has prostrated the whole earth with the exhaustion of death; and unless a man quits his sin and comes to God for salvation he cannot be saved.

Are there not some here to-night who would like to be Christians? You cannot be where you are, down in your sin. Go home! go home! Make some stout resolution, like the young man of my text. A mere whim, a mere indefinite longing, will not amount to anything. The young man of the text did not say, "I will wait until a caravan comes along and I will get a ride." No! With an emphasis that sounded through all the ages, he said: "I will arise and go to my father."

2. I remark further that the resolution of the text was formed in sorrow at his past behavior. It was not a mere physical plight; it was sorrow at the thought that he had so badly treated his father. Oh! it is a sad thing that a son, after having been watched over by a father and educated and cared for, should go away and break that father's heart. "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child." That is Shakespeare. "A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother." That is the Bible. Oh ! have we not treated our Father badly? And such a Father! Three times a day with wonderful_regularity He has fed you. Through how many winters He has given you wood