be so presumptuous as to dream of.  Ah! he had forgot his father’s character in the far country.  Unbelief had done its work, and “cut off his hope.”  But however dark and dim his views were, he nevertheless returned, was met afar off, and was at last received in his father’s arms.  There he poured forth the confession which relieved his choking heart, “I am no more worthy to be called thy son!” True.  But did he add, “Make me a hired servant?” No, he could not, for he had already been received as a son.

Our Lord tells us how some hearers may receive the Word immediately with joy, and yet give up when it is the occasion of their being brought into outward perils or difficulties.  Paul complained that Demas had forsaken him, and John of many who, he says, “went out from us.”  We must not think it strange, moreover, if the visible Church should ever and anon disclose to us how much evil as well as good it contains.  Our Lord never contemplated a Church on earth as possible—­owing to the sinful offences which must needs come—­which should be otherwise than a mixture of good and bad.  There was one in twelve of His own pure apostolic Church a traitor.  Among the members of the pentecostal Church, two were struck down dead for falsehood of the blackest kind.  Among the earliest professed converts in Samaria was Simon Magus, in the bonds of iniquity.  And so it will ever be.  The field will contain tares as well as wheat, and both must grow together till the harvest; the net must gather into it bad fish as well as good, until the great day of final separation comes at the end of the world.  But, nevertheless, the field may now contain a glorious crop of wheat, and the net, after a night of toil, be sometimes full of good fish, so as to excite the wonder and praise of the “fishers of men.”  Those converts who fall away have probably misunderstood the true idea of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.  They looked for safety from punishment apart from salvation from sin; upon Jesus as a deliverer from guilt and hell only, and not also a deliverer from sin, by giving that life which is heaven; they looked for that life hereafter, and not now; or they imagined faith as an act done once for all—­a coming to Christ once only for what was required, instead of as a state which receives at once pardon and acceptance through the merits of Christ, and abides in Christ for ever as the only source of life.

We have dwelt upon this point longer than we had at first intended; for the doubt so often expressed, of the possibility of one who is lost finding immediate peace when he finds his God—­and so has found himself—­betrays great unbelief or great ignorance of God.  Pride is at its root;—­a desire to find something wherewith to commend ourselves to God—­some evidence of a good character first—­some work done as a hired servant, in order to entitle us with any hope to call God father and be at peace with Him; instead of our beginning