Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1914-05-01
MANY PROD|GALS ARE
PLAYING THE FOOL
Sinner, Sorry For His Sin, Is Sure
of Welcome From the
Father
HE CARES FOR COMMON FOLK
Climate of Far Country" Condu-
Give to Cold Chills on the
Morning After
HE CARES FOR COMMON FOLK
sNoBs, SINNERS AND A SAVIOUR
The International Sunday School Les
son For May 8, Is "The ProdigaI
Son"--Luke 15:11-32.
(Ry WIN. T. Ellis)

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 Chi
nese beggar, out amid the Chinese
groves herding Chinese pigs. Then
we see him barefooted and in rags,
being greeted by his father outside
the Chinese gate of the old home. He
is being clothed in the next picture,
and the feast that followed. in typ
1cal Chinese fashion, is a feast of the
gentry, older men, his fathers friends.
We scarcely need a Chinese ver-
sion to prove the universally of the
story. Fifteen minutes on the city's
main street tonight will show prod
igals dressed in the latest fashions.
There are thousands of fathers whose
last thought tonight will be of wan
dering sons, who are playing the fool.
Few things are commoner in the ex-
perience of society than this one OF
the boy who, needless of the hopes
centered 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
hction without moral teaching. Not
so the present story. 1t is told to il
lustrate great truth. The reason
for it's relation lies in the two sem
tences which Introduce these three
parallels of grace. These are the key
to the narrative; without them its
meaning may not certainly be un-
locked. Here is the significant intro
duction: Now all the publicans and
sinners were drawing near unto Him
for to hear Him. And both the Phar-
isees and the Scribes murmured, say
ing. This man receiveth sinners, and
eateth with them"
This was the Ieproach of Jesus then.
1t is His praise now. He cares for the
common people. I once heard a blat-
ant Ounce declare, Christ came to
found an intellectual aristrocracy."
Jesus came to found no aristrocracy,
except of holiness, and that by its
very nature is no aristocracy, but a
humble, self-effacing brotherhood of
ness. His kingdom is not a selection
of the self-righteous, but reunion of
the lowly sincere, penitent and heart
hungry. A sinner, sorry for his sin,
Is surer of welcome with God than
the proud and self-aSsertive 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 literature has ever
equalled. Put in one scale all that
Confucius or Sakya Mount or Zoroas-
ter of Socrates ever wrote or said
and they wrote and said many beauti-
full and holy words-and put in the
other parable of the Prodigal Son
and can any candid spirit doubt which
scale would outweigh the other in
eternal preciousness
When Youth Plays the Fool
The central figure of this story is a
"green" youth; he was an unripe soul
He thought that 1.-The old man" was
"slow," that the home life was dead"
and that he "knew it ALL" which last
was sure proof of his immaturity.
Nobody is so distrustful of his own
infallibility as the man of knowledge
and wisdom. This youth was still in
the veal period.
He got his share of the family for
tune and played the fool with it in
"the far country" until it was gone
and he was reduced to the lot pecu-
liarly loathsome to a Jew. that of a
swineherd. AT last, so hungry that
he was minded to eat the very food
of the swine, he "came to HIMSELF
and went home. This experience, Bit
ter and deep, made a man Of him.
True. it perpetually saddened his life,
and left ineffacable scars and robbed
him of the purity which is the sweet
est fountain of joy; but this was the