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When we read of the prodigal being a great way off, and so are led to think of his return as a long and toilsome journey, we are not to suppose that conversion is necessarily a protracted process. The coming back, of course, in the parable, must correspond to the departure into the far land; and though frequently there is a considerable time of anxiety and struggle between the moment of awakening and the time when the soul finds joy and peace in believing, yet this dark middle-passage is by no means essential. Rather it is the result either of faulty views as to the way of salvation, or of a want of faith in it as it is presented to the sinner. On this point I cannot refrain from reproducing an anecdote which I heard one evening in conversation from the lips of Mr. Spurgeon. An earnest young evangelist was one morning on his way from Granton to Edinburgh, and overtook a Newhaven fishwife carrying her burden to the market. Anxious to do some good, he said to her, "There you go with your burden on your back. Once I had a heavier load than that, but, thank God, I have got rid of it now." "Oh," she replied, "you mean the burden that John Bunyan speaks of; I know all about that; but I have got rid of mine many and many a year ago." "I am happy to hear of it," said the evangelist. "Yes," she answered; "but, do you know, I don't think that man Evangelist was a right preacher of the gospel at all. When Christian asked him where he was to go, he said, Do you see yonder wicket-gate? He said he didn't; and it was no wonder. He asked again, Do you see yonder shining light? and he said he did; and then Evangelist directed him to make for that. Now, what business had he to speak either about the shining light or the wicket-gate? Couldn't he have pointed him at once to the Redeemer's cross. Christian never did lose his burden till he saw that cross; and he might have seen it sooner if Evangelist had known his business better. Much good he got, too, by making for the shining light. Why, before he knew where he was, he was floundering in the Slough of Despond; and if it had not been for the man Help he would never have got out." "What!" said the evangelist to her, "were you never in the Slough of Despond?" "Ay, many a time, many a time," was the reply; "but let me tell you, young man, it's a hantel easier to get through that slough with your burden off than with your burden on!" Now, though as a record of what often actually happens, the immortal allegorist has given us a truthful portraiture, the Christian fishwife was in the right; for the moment a sinner rightly apprehends and thoroughly believes the doctrine of the Cross he loses his sin-burden; and this may be after no painfully protracted process of agony and inward conflict.

(W. M. Taylor, D. D.)

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KJV: And he said, A certain man had two sons:

WEB: He said, "A certain man had two sons.