There is another truth contained in this section of the parable.  After a life of wild sinfulness religion is servitude at first, not freedom.  Observe, he went back to duty with the feelings of a slave:  “I am no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants.”  Any one who has lived in the excitement of the world, and then tried to settle down at once to quiet duty, knows how true that is.  To borrow a metaphor from Israel’s desert life, it is a tasteless thing to live on manna after you have been feasting upon quails.  It is a dull cold drudgery to find pleasure in simple occupation when life has been a succession of strong emotions.  Sonship it is not; it is slavery.  A son obeys in love, entering heartily into his father’s meaning.  A servant obeys mechanically, rising early because he must; doing it may be, his duty well, but feeling in all its force the irksomeness of the service.  Sonship does not come all at once.  The yoke of Christ is easy, the burden of Christ is light; but it is not light to everybody.  It is light when you love it, and no man who has sinned much can love it all at once.

Therefore, if I speak to any one who is trying to be religious, and heavy in heart because his duty is done too formally,—­my Christian brother, fear not.  You are returning, like the prodigal, with the feelings of a servant.  Still it is a real return.  The spirit of adoption will come afterwards.  You will often have to do duties which you cannot relish, and in which you see no meaning.  So it was with Naaman at the prophet’s command.  He bathed, not knowing why he was bidden to bathe in Jordan.  When you bend to prayer, often and often you will have to kneel with wandering thoughts, and constraining lips to repeat words into which your heart scarcely enters.  You will have to perform duties when the heart is cold, and without a spark of enthusiasm to warm you.  But my Christian brother, onwards still.  Struggle to the Cross, even though it be struggling as in chains.  Just as on a day of clouds, when you have watched the distant hills, dark and gray with mist, suddenly a gleam of sunshine passing over reveals to you, in that flat surface, valleys and dells and spots of sunny happiness, which slept before unsuspected in the fog, so in the gloom of penitential life there will be times when God’s deep peace and love will be felt shining into the soul with supernatural refreshment.  Let the penitent be content with the servant’s lot at first.  Liberty and peace, and the bounding sensations of a Father’s arms around you, come afterwards.

The last circumstance in this division of our subject is the reception which a sinner meets with on his return to God.  “Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and be merry.”  This banquet represents to us two