surrounded by dust and moss, broken pillar, and defaced architrave, with magnificent projects in his mind of restoring all this to former majesty, to draw out to light from mere rubbish the ruined glories, and therefore stooping down amongst the dank ivy and the rank nettles; such was Christ amidst the wreck of human nature.  He was striving to lift it out of its degradation.  He was searching out in revolting places that which had fallen down, that He might build it up again in fair proportions a holy temple to the Lord.

Therefore He laboured among the guilty; therefore He was the companion of outcasts; therefore He spoke tenderly and lovingly to those whom society counted undone; therefore He loved to bind up the bruised and the broken-hearted; therefore His breath fanned the spark which seemed dying out in the wick of the expiring taper, when men thought that it was too late, and that the hour of hopeless profligacy was come.  It was that feature in His character, that tender, hoping, encouraging spirit of His which the prophet Isaiah fixed upon as characteristic.  “A bruised reed will He not break.”

It was an illustration of this spirit which He gave in the parable which forms the subject of our consideration to-day.  We find the occasion which drew it from Him in the commencement of this chapter, “Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to hear Him.  And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”  It was then that Christ condescended to offer an excuse or an explanation of His conduct.  And His excuse was this:  It is natural, humanly natural, to rejoice more over that which has been recovered than over that which has been never lost.  He proved that by three illustrations taken from human life.  The first illustration intended to show the feelings of Christ in winning back a sinner, was the joy which the shepherd feels in the recovery of a sheep from the mountain wilderness.  The second was the satisfaction which a person feels for a recovered coin.  The last was the gladness which attends the restoration of an erring son.

Now the three parables are alike in this, that they all describe more or less vividly the feelings of the Redeemer on the recovery of the lost.  But the third parable differs from the other two in this, that besides the feelings of the Saviour, it gives us a multitude of particulars respecting the feelings, the steps, and the motives of the penitent who is reclaimed back to goodness.  In the two first the thing lost is a coin or a sheep.  It would not be possible to find any picture of remorse or gladness there.  But in the third parable the thing lost is not a lifeless thing, nor a mute thing, but a being, the workings of whose human heart are all described.  So that the subject opened out to us is a more extensive one—­not merely the feelings of the finder, God in Christ, but besides