Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/74

70 the old man; "he was dead and is alive once more. Let us pray and be glad!" With what a serene and hallowed countenance you met your friends and neighbours, as their glad hearts smiled up in their faces when the prodigal came home from riot and swine's-bread, a now man safe and sound! Many such things have I soon, and hearts long cold grow bright and warm again. Towards evening the clouds broke asunder; Simeon saw his consolation, and went home in sunlight and in peace. The general result of this treatment in the family is, that the dull boy learns by degrees, learns what he is fit for; the straggler joins the troop, and keeps step with the rest—nay, sometimes becomes the leader of the march; the vicious boy is corrected; even the faults of his organization get overcome, not suddenly, but at length. The rejected stone finds its place on the wall, and its use. Such is not always the result. Some will not bo mended. I stop not now to ask tho cause. Some will not return, though you go out to meet them a great way off. What then? Will you refuse to go? Can you wholly abandon a friend or a child who thus deserts himself? Is ho so bad that he cannot be made better? Perhaps it is so. Can you not hinder him from being worse? Are you so good that you must forsake him? Did not God send His greatest, noblest, purest Son to seek and save the lost? send Him to call sinners to repent? When sinners slew Him, did God forsake mankind? Not one of those sinners did His love forget.

Does the good physician spend the night in feasting with the sound, or in watching with the sick P Nay, though tho sick man be past all hope, he will look in to soothe affliction which he cannot cure; at least to speak a word of friendly cheer. The wise teacher spends most pains with backward boys, and is most bountiful himself where Nature seems most niggard in her gifts. What would you say if a teacher refused to help a boy because the boy was slow to learn; because he now and then broke through the rules? What if the mother said, "My boy is a sickly dunce, not worth the pains of rearing. Let him die!" What if the father said, "He is a born villain, to be bred only for the gallows; what use to toil or pray for him! Let the hangman take my son!"