The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1914-04-28
SNOBS. SINNERS. AND A SAVIOUR.
The International Sunday School Les
son For May = is THE PrOdigal
SOn''-Luke 15:11-32.)
lKY II. LII

~ ~ uht
(By WILLIAM Il. ELLiS.o
a Chinese illustrated version of this
Prodigal Son story lies before me as
| write. The pictures are ineligible, |
if not the text. The first scene shows
a home of the Chinese gentry, with
an upper-class old man handing over |
to his pig-tailed son a quantity of sill |
yer shoes, the old Chinese currency.
Next the youth, in his best Chinese
raiment, is leaving home while his
father weeps. The far country" is a
tea house, where the youth is feast
ing and drinking with a dancing girl
Next he is shown as a tattered Chin
csc beggar, out amid the Chinese
groves, herding Chinese pigs. Then
we see him barefooted and in rags, be-
ing clothed in the next picture, and
the feast Of the gentry, older men,
his fathers friends.
We scarcely need a hines version
to prove the universally of the story.
Fifteen minute OH the city's main
street tonight will show prodigals
dressed in the latest fashions. There
are thousands of fathers whose last
thought tonight will be of wandering
sons, who are playing the DOL. Few
things are in the expert
ence of society han this one of the
boy who, needless of the hopes CEN
tered upon him, and lacking sense
and character. turns his back upon
home and love and goes forth to "see
life
The Worlds Most Famous Story.
One school of literature demands
fiction without a moral teaching. Not
SO the present story. 1t is told to il
lustrate a great truth. The reason for
its relation lies in the two sentences
which introduced these three para
bleS Of grace. These are the key to
the narrative: without them its mean
ing may not certainly be unlocked.
Here is the significant
Now all the publicans and sinners
were drawing near unto him for to
hear him. And both the Pharisees
and the scribes murmured, saying,
This man receiveth sinners, and eat
eth with Them"
This was the reproach of Jesus then:
X is His praise now. He cares for the
common people. / once heard a blat-
ant Ounce declare: Christ came to
found an intellectual aristocracy.''
Jesus came to found no aristocraCy,
except Of holiness, and that by its
very nature is no ariStOcraCy, but a
humble, se~lf-effacing brotherhood of
people w of their own good
ness. His kingdom is not a selection
of the self-righteous, but a reunion
Of the lowly, sincere, penitent and
heart-hungry. A sinner, sorry for his
sin. is surer OF a welcome with God
than the proud and self-asservative
Pharisee. This is the meaning Of this
parable. which Farrar calls, "A divine
epitome of the wandering OF man
and the love of God, such as no liter
ature has ever eoualled. Put in one
scale all that ConfuCiuS or Sakys
Mount or ZorOaSter or Socrates eve,
wrote or said-and they wrote ar
said many beautiful and holy words
n put in the other the parable O
the Prodigal Son and can an,
candid spirit doubt which scale woul
outweigh the other in eternal preci
ouSneSS?"
The central figure of this story
a green youth; he was an unrip
soul. He thought that 1.-The old man
was SLOW" that the home life wa
dead" and that he knew it all,
which last was a sure proof of his i'm
maturity. Nobody is SO ~distrustful {
his own infalibility as the mar c
knowledge and wisdom This yout
was still in the veal perOd.
He got his share of the family FOL
tune and played the fool with it
the far country until it was gor
and he was reduced to the lot pecl
liarly lOathsome to a Jew, that of
swineherd. At last SO hungry that I
was minded to eat the very food
the wine he came to himself al
went home. This experience, bitt
ana Oeep. In6uc d man OIL MN. Iru
il perpetually saddened his life, al
left ineffeable scars and robbed hi
OF the purity which is the sweete
fountain Of joy: but this was the pri
he paid for his folly. The man wi
'Sows wild oats in youth will re;
tares in his old age.
The bird with the broken pini
never scared as high again"
Living with the pigs, the Prodie
Son learned what it is to be a ma
He "came 10 himself; he had be
beside himself before. And when a
man comes to himself he comes
God.
Getting Ones True Measure.
1t is the man without a dollar W
realizes the hard times. After I
Prodigal had spent all, famine ov,
took him in a hurry. This seem
a hardship. but it was the beginni
Of the youths real prosperity. g
began to be in want which was So
for him. for it stripped him down