RELIGION and LIFE:

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24135, 29 November 1941, Page 16

RELIGION and LIFE:

J]STO the story of the Prodigal Son tht ; re stalks the gaunt figure of Famine, an unexpected tragedy for the wayward youth. The far country had seemed to him a place of joy and plenteousmess, where slaves toiled and freemen danced to magic flutes. And sufe enough the world into which he came did not at first disappoint hint. He hong'it its pleasures freely. He was the ideal companion at the wineeup. 3)elilah bound him in her silken spells. The conventions and restraints were gone. He was free of good counsel and appeal. There was none to dissuade, none to forecast the inevitable end, and if, in some odd hour, his father's voice "broke in it was like the sound of bells from a distant city buried deep beneath the sea. But- it could not last. "There rose a mighty famine in that country." The blazing sun smote its pastures. Its springs dried up. The corn grew in withered stalks in the fields. Kven the pods ior the swine were measured out. And- then the world threw off its dieguise. The young prodigal had "wasted his substance in riotous living." He had neither earned nor saved. His once gay companions cast him off. The mincing harlots waved him adieu from their casements. The innkeeper, whose house he had filled with laughter, disowned him at the door. His costly attire became ragged and ill-patched. His carefree smile faded out and the look of the lost, came into his eyes. Until at last, forsaken and hopeless, he Hum; himself through the gate of the keeper of pigs and besought that lie might serve at the trough, coveting the very "husks that the swino did eat." It. is a startling picture of the folly and fatuity of self-indulgence. For a long or short, Jesus would say,

young worldlings have their day. Their table is laden with ample fare. They live in a world of flattery and good company. They deny themselves nothing, as though there were no to-mor-row. But such pace, such improvidence and wastage, such sterilising of the mind and affections, can have but a single end. It issues in famine, a famine "not of bread nor a thirst for water," but a sore famine of the soul. It is of this tragic dearth, this starvation and atrophy, of the best within the man, that the Master speaks, knowing well that the most bitter tears are those shed by disillusioned youth, brooding over the evil it has brought upon itself and the hearts it has broken. And this "far" and sterile country is no distant land. It is remote only to spiritual measurement. Its starving souls wander in our streets, appoar in our law courts, they bring sorrow, too. into many a good home. They are the bored and surfeited thousands of our L'ellowmen who have been beguiled and defrauded by the world. Their pleasures are evanescent as "the snowfall on the river."'They are left in poverty irretrievable with no hope.but in the grace of God. There was a dream which came to Shelley more than once. A cowled figure approached his bedside and, bending over him, made demand; "Art thou satisfied?" And always with the question the visitant dropped bis hood and looked deep into the poet's eyes, and Shelley saw his own face looking down upon him. Thus man's inmost self searches him in candid hours and will have answer. And on the sure word of .Jesus Christ we know that for the most prodigal the way home from the far country is always open, with the father making haste to receive his still beloved son.