The great supper of Luke 14:speaks of what God has treasured up in Christ for us. He sends out an invitation to tell men they are perfectly welcome to come and enjoy it:but having in hand present things-God's things really, which they treat as their own,-they excuse themselves. Seeking enjoyment in what they claim to be their possessions, the better and higher joy God invites to they care not for and refuse.

Where, then, will God find His guests? How the answer bows the soul and heart in adoration! . There are among men some who are not enjoying present things, such as the despised man of the streets, the destitute inhabitant of the lanes, and the wretched child of poverty, who, by dire necessity, has been driven to seek shade and shelter beneath the hedge; to such God turns; it is such He seeks and finds and brings to His table,-men who have no excuses to bring but whose necessity makes them willing to be simply receivers-debtors merely to simple grace.

In the beginning of chapter xv, our blessed Lord is in the midst of a company of such people; and who can measure His joy or theirs as He eats and drinks with them ? If there are some among men who cannot be happy with sinners, God can; nay, more,-it is such, and only such, He receives. Dear reader, do you complain of this? Does your heart murmur against the grace that stoops down to meet publicans and sinners ? Are you Pharisee enough to speak sneeringly of such grace? God grant you may not be; but whether or not, He finds His joy in His love to sinners, and vindicates Himself against every murmur lurking in the heart of all who scorn to be called sinners.

The parables of this chapter show us this. The first two tell us of the joy there is in heaven, and before the angels, over a sinner who repents. In the first of these, God is a seeker, and the sinner is a wanderer, who goes on and on, and further away, until, not only the joy of his own way vanishes, but worn out by the roughness of his road, he is at last content to be served by the God of all grace; who, finding him as such-a needy one, takes him up in the arms of His love and rejoices over him with a joy immeasurable, though divinely expressed.

In the next, God is a seeker still; but we have more the means and methods used to bring the sinner where God in His grace can meet him. As walking after the course of this world he is morally dead,-1:e., he has no apprehension in his soul of God or of his true condition before God. The lighted candle of the word or testimony of God, and the broom of circumstances, which are wholly under the ordering of God, whatever agencies may be employed in producing them, brings the sinner forth a heap of dirt and rubbish, which only divine grace can meet, and in which only God Himself can find the silver-1:e., one for whom Christ died to be his redemption. As being simply that God finds him; thus we learn it is the sinner who repents that God finds; and such, and only such, are the occasion of the joy with which all heaven rings in full accord with the heart of God.

The last parable describes, for our profit and learning, the wondrous welcome and reception God gives the sinner who repents, and in connection with this we are shown what repentance is. The younger brother having received his portion of his father's goods goes to the far country. He now belongs to the class who in the fourteenth chapter made excuse. He has in his hand what he wants to enjoy:but in the far country it soon goes; all is soon squandered and lost. A famine comes, and he is in want; his hand is empty now ; he has nothing to enjoy. But why does not the father go and meet him now? Simply because he is not yet the sinner that repents. He does not yet think himself the suited object for pure grace, and so he goes and joins himself to a citizen of that country, to try and see if he can retrieve his lost fortune; but, thank God! this cannot be done. When we have spent all our goods, and lost our reputation and our character, no effort, no reformation, can possibly regain what we have lost. We have written our history, and it is irreversible; we belong now to the men of the streets, lanes, highways, and hedges. Our names as being sinners are indelibly stamped upon us, and in spite of every thing we can do we find our selves put where we do not wish to be. Happy is he who submits to it; for until then, we must remain . strangers to the welcome and reception of the God of all grace.

At last the prodigal bows; he submits to his necessity. He thinks of the grace and plenty that is with his father, and he says, That is just what I need. It just suits him now. A hungry, perishing sinner needs the grace of God. He says, " I will arise, and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants." He is a sinner now-a man of the streets. He has accepted the counsel of God against himself; he will let God tell him all things that ever he did; but having bowed to this, he bows to the grace that meets it all. He renounces airworthiness of his own. Not knowing the character of the grace he submits to, he says, " Make me as one of thy hired servants;" but so saying, he shows he is willing and content to be indebted to grace. This is repentance. The prodigal is now a sinner that repents; he has risen up to go to his father.

We will now look at his welcome and reception. As soon as the prodigal has started for his father, the father is on his way to him. " When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." How wonderful! Until he repented, the father could not go to meet him; but just as soon as he repents, the father hastens to him. Beloved reader, this is a picture of the way God meets a sinner. He is not austere, demanding of sinners to cease to be sinners. He invites them to come as sinners-as being simply sinners and nothing else; and the moment they take Him at His word, and consent, in the reality of their souls, to meet Him as simple sinners, needing, by that very fact, His grace, He comes to meet them just as here,-"When he was yet a great way off," 1:e., still in the far country-a sinner in his sins, " he saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." How blessed that!

But this is not all. God not only comes and meets the returning, repenting sinner to welcome him back, but He at once, without the least delay, appropriates to him all the provision He has made for sinners in Christ, set forth here by the best robe, ring, and shoes. So fully has Christ answered before God for all the sinner's need, that as soon as a sinner takes his place with God as one of those for whom Christ died, all the fullness of the provision of God in Christ for sinners is his, and his forever; God having met and welcomed him to His bosom bears witness to him that all is his-his at once. When a sinner tells God he has no worthiness, God answers, I will clothe you with worthiness; I will put worthiness upon you; just as here, when the prodigal says, " I have sinned, and am no more worthy," the father replies, " Bring forth the best robe, and put it upon him."How wonderful! A sinner in his rags- his sins, in the full consciousness of having nothing else but his sins, in God's presence telling him so, and God at once giving him a change of raiment, even the worthiness and beauty of Christ, accepting him in His beloved, so that he is now henceforth forever before Him without blame- the blamelessness of Christ on him, in the eye of God. Oh, what grace! and how full and perfect! Dear reader, it is the grace of God, and nothing short of it, would suit him. It is a grave mistake to suppose any delay on God's part in making over to the sinner that repents the provision of His grace in Christ, as if He were waiting on sinners to cease being sinners, to become saints, ere He could give them His provision for them. God does not invite sinners to come to His great supper and then tell them when they come they cannot partake of it until they have passed through certain experiences, and made certain attainments. Such a thought is thoroughly derogatory to God. It makes the gospel only a half gospel; it falsifies the character of God, and denies His full and perfect grace. It is sinners He seeks; it is sinners He calls to repentance. " This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."So too the sinner that repents He receives and rejoices over. It is the ungodly that He justifies. Those who come as ungodly-as without strength and as lost, He meets, and that, too, in the very place they take before Him; and, meeting them thus, He assures them of a full and hearty welcome, and that every thing He has provided for them in Christ is theirs. The kiss upon the cheek of the prodigal is the token of the full and hearty welcome, and the best robe, ring, and shoes speak as clearly of the unreserved appropriation to the returning one of all that God has in Christ for sinners.

Beloved reader, have you ever received God's kiss of welcome? and do you know its full meaning? And further, have you ever gone to God without any reserve in your soul to tell Him all your heart-all your care and trouble, and all your sins? Ere your tale was fully told did you not find yourself in a change of raiment, shining before the eye of God in all the beauty and brightness of Christ? Truly yes, for then it was God accepted you in His beloved. Having thus received you and robed you, how He rejoiced over you! Already, from your meeting Him-at the very moment of your reception, God-the blessed God is merry and glad over you. It is His joy to have you in His family; it is yours, too, to be in it; and the joy thus begun is without end-eternal.

May our hearts know better the reality, depth, and blessedness of it. C.C.