Petitions are followed by vows.  On the one hand, the experience of forgiveness and cleansing will put a new song in our mouths, and instead of animal sacrifices, we shall render the praise which is better than ‘calves’ laid on the altar.  Perhaps the Septuagint rendering of that difficult phrase ‘the calves of our lips,’ which is given in Hebrews xiii. 15, ‘the fruit of our lips,’ is preferable.  In either case, the same thought appears—­that the penitent’s experience of forgiving and restoring love makes ‘the tongue of the dumb sing,’ and it will bind men’s hearts more closely to God than anything besides can do, so that their old inclinations to false reliances and idolatries drop away from them.  The old fable tells us that the storm made the traveller wrap his cloak closer round him, but the sunshine made him throw it off.  Judgments often make men cling more closely to their sins, but forgiving mercy makes them ‘cast off the works of darkness.’  The men who had experienced that in God, the Israel, which by its sins had brought down the punishment of His repudiation of being its father (i. 9), had found mercy, would no longer feel temptation to turn to Assyria for help, nor to seek protection from Egypt’s cavalry, nor to debase their manhood by calling stocks and stones, the work of their own hands, their gods.  What earthly sweetness will tempt, or what earthly danger will affright, the heart that is feeling the bliss of union with God?  Would Judas’s thirty pieces of silver attract the disciple reclining on Jesus’ bosom?  We are most firmly bound to God, not by our resolves, but by our experience of His all-sufficient mercy.  Fill the heart with that wine of the kingdom, and bitter or poisonous draughts will find no entrance into the cup.

II.  God’s welcoming answer.

The very abruptness of its introduction, without any explanation as to the speaker, suggests how swiftly and joyfully the Father hastens to meet the returning prodigal while he is yet afar off.  Like pent-up waters rushing forth as soon as a barrier is taken away, God’s love pours itself out immediately.  His answer ever gives more than the penitent asks—­robe and ring and shoes, and a feast to him who dared not expect more than a place among the hired servants.  He gives not by drops, but in floods, answering the prayer for the taking away of iniquity by the promise to heal backsliding, going beyond desires and hopes in the gift of love which asks for no recompense, is drawn forth by no desert, but wells up from the depths of God’s heart, and strengthens the new, tremulous trust of the penitent by the assurance that every trace of anger is effaced from God’s heart.