of apparent failure; there too the highest courage is often shown by sticking to the very last to a failing cause; -there too you must be ready at all times to give way to others, and not expect to have all the batting or all the bowling to yourself;-there too you may be unsuccessful without any fault of yours, and if it be God's will that thus for you the chance should be over, and the wickets fall, almost before you have well taken your stand, you must step from your place, not with despair, not with anger, least of all with the angry gesture and passionate curse of disappointed vanity, but bravely, and quietly, and with a manly and cheerful heart.

VII. Yes, life is a game; a complicated game; a difficult game; a game which requires wisdom, diligence, patience; a game of which you must learn the conditions; a game which will try your powers; a game in which there is not one good quality of head or heart that will not greatly help you; a game of which the forfeits are terrible, of which the issues are infinite. "It has been played for untold ages, and every one of us is one of the players in it." The rules of it have been made independently of us, but they are absolute, and we must obey them. Those rules are the laws of nature, the laws of health, the laws of intellect, above all, the moral laws of God. If we violate them from mistake, or from ignorance, some allowance may be made for us; none, if we defy them wilfully. Obey them, and by prayer and the grace which your Saviour will give, you can obey them, and you must and will find peace unto your souls. Disobey them, and you make of life a misery, and of death a ruin. But there is one respect in which the game of life differs from our earthly games. In these there is always an element of chance; in the game of life there is none. He who keeps the high

and simple rules of it must win. He may seem indeed to lose. He may seem to die broken-hearted, in indigence, obloquy, failure. Fools may think his life madness, and his end to be without honour; but he has won, and more than won, for he is counted among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints. So that in this respect it is not with life as with your games at cricket. There a player may have done his very best, but if he has made no score, you do not cheer him, and, his chance being over, he walks in silence up the steps. Not so when any faithful player-even the humblest-leaves the game of life. He may leave it, not only amid the world's silence, but even amid its execrations; he may leave it to join

but as his last breath ebbs away, be it even in a sigh of sorrow, be it even with a groan of agony, how joyfully does the guardian angel utter the record, "He has done his best!" And then, upwards, and ever upwards, peals even to the glimmering summit, the glad answer, has done his best!" and so at last, while

He

he who has lost his life for Christ's sake, finds it. The poor failure of earth becomes the high success of heaven. He hears a voice he knows, a voice which thrills into his inmost soul, and oh! he cannot mistake it. It is the voice of his Saviour, heard far amid the crowding Immortalities of Heaven, and it says "Servant of God, well done!"

May 14, 1876

SERMON XXXVII.

FROM SORROW TO REPENTANCE.-THE PRODIGAL'S

RETURN.

LUKE XV. 18.

"I will arise and go to my father."

I. FROM innocence to sin,-from sin to sorrow,-is there any one soul in this congregation which is not so far at least, it may be to very different extents, but still to some extent acquainted with this path of the prodigal ? Which of us must not confess that he has gone astray like a sheep that is lost? which of us cannot testify that no jot or tittle of God's word has in his case fallen to the ground, but that every step away from God is a step in the road to death? But this third stage in the soul's journey-the path from sorrow to penitencehave we all trodden that? "I have sinned with Peter, not wept with Peter," was the dying wail of the cruel bishop. Are there none of us who must confess we have wandered like the prodigal, but we have not with him repented, we have not, like him, returned? Yet many of us, I trust, have trodden that path of penitence. Oh, may every soul which has not trodden it begin to tread it now; may God grant that even these poor and feeble words—the last, except it may be a few words of farewell, that I shall ever utter in this position from

this place, to this congregation—may be so blessed by His Holy Spirit as to help some soul here to find its Saviour, to return from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God. May God grant it for His dear Son's sake!

II. We left him in the depths of his degradation,— his penal degradation,-the degradation which was the inevitable consequence of his sins, this once gay and happy boy; we left him seated in his hunger, in his loneliness, afar from the God whom he had forsaken, abandoned of the companions by whom he had been betrayed, a lost soul, a ruined life. Sin, revealing itself to him, as sooner or later it does to all, in its native hideousness, took no further pains to make him believe in its charm or beauty. Active agencies and strong deceptions are needful only at the first; but when temptation has done its work, habit may be left to continue, and despair to finish it. Vice must come at first in full attractiveness-it must come to the boy in the guise of a friend, bold and radiant, with a smile on the face and light in the eye;-to the youth with all the mysterious enchantments of Circean beauty and Siren

But she comes very differently to the gloomy, to the fallen, to the suffering, to the disillusioned man. When she has once won her victim Sin may come undisguisedly as Death; being no longer a temptress to dupe, but a fury to scourge the soul, she may heap upon it the chains of its iniquities, and grate and clang upon its prison-house the locks and bars of hell.

III. But, thanks be to God, again and again are the prisoners delivered-again and again does the malice of Satan overreach itself. Because we are made in God's image, which we may deface and desecrate, but never quite lose; because He has placed the light of

His Holy Spirit, as a lamp in our souls, which may smoulder, but never quite be quenched;-because we are His sons, and even when we have made ourselves slaves in some far country, can never quite become its citizens ;-because we cannot sink so low as not to feel that we were born for God and for heaven, not for foul offices and swinish husks,-therefore not seldom is the spoiler reft of his victims. The soul which he had drugged, and well-nigh slain, shakes off its torpor; there come back to it the stirrings of its old strength; it tears off its fetters; a power not its own bursts the gates of brass and smites the bars of iron in sunder; and in spite of the thraldom of habit, in spite of the power of Satan, the duped, degraded, imprisoned soul is free.

IV. The prodigal "came to himself." He steadily faced-and oh how much is there in this!-he steadily faced his true position. He had left his home, and his father, and his mother, and the innocence of his early years; he had sought independence, and found slavery; had sought friends, and found tyrants and traitors; had sought pleasure, and found agony; had sought plenty and importance, and had found famine, detestable humiliation, and the husks of swine. Was this to be the end? Was his life worth nothing more than to be thus sacrificed? Ah no! He came to himself. The child who had played in the sunlight of his father's love, the clear-browed lad with no taint of evil in his thoughts the favourite son, so dear, so happy, so full of generous purpose and unselfish life-that was himself. But the loveless, thankless, graceless boy-the troubled, the corrupt, the dissolute youth-the companion of rioters and harlots-the fool who had laid waste the inner sanctities of his being, and squandered the highest