The Forrest City times., 1891-06-26
THE PENITENT TROPICAL
DIR. TALMACE PORTRAITS THE
 HOME-SICK SOUL.
The Pleasures of sin Not Equal to the Promise Held Out-The severe Discipline of Experience Sh own by Vivid illustrations.

Talmages sermon this morning was an appeal to young men. Numbers of these come to the Tabernacle services many of them from country homes, where they received Christian training, which, in the temptations of city life has been east off. Dr. Talmage called his sermon, The Home-Sicl1 Soul and his text was from the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15; Is, 'I will arise and go to my father"
 There is nothing like hunger to take the energy out of a man. A hungry man can toll 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. A travel CT tells us that in Asia Minor there are trees which bear fruit looking very much like the long bean of our time. It is called the carab. Once in a while l the people reduced to destitution would eat these carabs, but generally the carabs, the beans spoken of here in the | text, were thrown only to the swine | and they crunched them with great | avidity. But this young man of my | text could not even get them without
 
 | swine troughs he begins to soliloquise. He says, '"rhese are no clothes for a l rich mans son to wear; this is no kind | of business for Jew to be engaged in | feeding swine; I'll go home, I'll go 1 home; l will arise and go to my l father"
 | And when this young man resolved ! to go home it was very wise thing | for him to do, and the only question is l whether we will follow him. Satan promises large wages if we will serve him; but he clothes his victims with rags, and he pinches them with hunger, 1 and when they start out to do better | he sets after them all the bloodhounds | of perdition.
 The resolution of this text was l formed in disgust at his present cir | cumstances. If this young man had been by his employer set to culturing flowers, or training vines over an ar Dor, or keeping account of the pork market, or 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, "I have u thousand dollars now of my own; what's the use of my going back to my fathers house? Do you think am go- ing back to apologize to the old manP Why he would put me on the limits; he would not have going on around the old place such conduct us have been en- | gagged in; l won't go home; there is no reason why I should go home; l have plenty of money, plenty of pleasant surroundings, why should go home?" An! it was his pauperism, it was his beggary. He had to go home. | Supposed come into your house and find you severely sick, and know the medicines that will cure you, and l know the physician who is skillful enough to meet your case. You say: Bring on that medicine, bring on that physician. 1 am terribly sick and 1 want help If 1 come to you and you feel you are all right in body and all right in mind, and all rlght in soul, you have need of nothing; but suppose have persuaded you that the leprosy of sin is upon you, the worst of all sickness, O,then you say; ''Bring me that balm of the Gospel. bring me that divine medicament, bring me Jesus Christ"
 But says someone in the audience, ''how do you prove that we are in a ruined condition by siu?" Well, I can prove it in two ways, and you may have your choice. l can prove it either by l the statements of men, or by the state | ment of God Which shall it be? You all say, ''let us have the statement of God" We'll he says in one 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, that he should be righteous?" He says in another place: "There is none that doeth good, no, 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, II am will ing to acknowledge that, but why should take the particular rescue that you propose?" This is the reason: Except n man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God" This is the reason. "There is none other name given under Heaven among men where by they may be saved" Then there arc thousand voices here ready to say: "Well,I am ready to accept this help of the Gospel; I would like to have this divine cure; how shall l go to work ?' Let me say that Il mere whim, an un- defined longing amounts to nothing, Yoa must have stout, tremendous resolution like this young man of the text when he said: Il will arise and go to my father"
 Again, l notice that this resolution of this young man of the text was founded in sorrow at his misbchavior. It was not mere physical plight. It was grief that he had so maltreated his father It is q sad thing after father has done everything for a child, to have that child be ungrateful.
 How sharper than serpent's tooth. it is,
 To have thankiess chitd
 i That Is Shakespeare "A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother" That Is the Bible. We'll. my friends, have not some of us been foolish prodigals? Have WIG not maltreated our Fatherp And such . Fathera So loving, so kind. We apologize for wrongs done to our fellows, but some of us perhaps have committed ten thousand times ten thousand wrongs against God and never apologiaed.
 remark still further that this reso- lution of the text was founded in feel. ing of homesiclsucsS have no doubt when he thought of his father house he said: "Now, perhaps, father may not be living"
 We read nothing in this story--,his parable founded on everyday hfe-~we read nothing about the mother. It says nothing about going home to her. think she was dead. l think she had died of broken heart at his wander.