The Empire of Love | Page 6

the brother who has brought me shame, the child who scoffs at my restraint, and hears the call of the far country in every swift pulsation of his passionate heart! And why cannot I settle my course of action? Because my mind is confused by something which I call justice, to which custom has given authority and consecration. Justice prescribes one course of action, affection another. The convention of the world insists that wrong-doing should be punished, which is manifestly right; but when it insists that I should be the punisher, I suspect something wrong. The more closely I study conventional justice the more I am conscious of something in myself that distrusts and revolts from it. The more I incline to the voice of affection the more I fear it, lest I should be guilty of weakness which would merit my own contempt. The struggle is one between convention and instinct, and I know not which side to take. But one thing I do know; it is that I have no certain clue to guide me, no clear determining principle that divides the darkness with a sword of light, no voice within myself that is authoritative.
Now the wonderful thing in Jesus is that He is always sure of Himself. Nothing takes Him by surprise, nothing produces the least hesitation in His judgment. Therefore He must have had an unfailing clue to which He trusted in the maze of life. Behind all consistency of judgment there must exist consistency of principle. The principle that governed all the thoughts of Jesus was that love was the only real justice. He came not to condemn, not to destroy men's lives, but to save them. There was no problem of human relationship that could not be solved by love; there was no other principle needed for the regulation of society; and no other could produce that general peace and good-will which He called the Kingdom of God.
Thus, on one occasion Jesus tells a story which is so lifelike in every touch that we may accept it, without doubt, as less a parable than an incident. A father has two sons, one of whom is industrious and dutiful, the other wayward and rebellious. The wayward son finally casts off all pretense of filial obedience, goes into a far country, and wastes his substance in riotous living. Here we have one of the saddest of all problems in human relationship, for presently the disgraced son comes home a beggar. The elder brother who represents the average social view, has no doubt whatever as to what should be done. He is offended that the disgraced son should come home at all; he would have thought better of him if he had hidden his shame in the country that had witnessed it. Probably his sense of pride and respectability is offended more than his love of virtue, though he characteristically gives his jealous anger the illusion of morality. This, I say, is the average social view. There are few things more cruel than affronted respectability. The elder brother is an eminently respectable person, totally unacquainted with wayward passions, and his only feeling for his brother is disdain.
Jesus tells the story, however, in such a way as to discredit the average social view. He begins by making us feel that whatever follies the prodigal had committed, he had already been punished for them in the miseries he had endured. It is not for man to punish with his whip of scorn one who has already been flaggellated with a whip of scorpions in the desert places of disgrace and shame. Jesus makes us feel also that whatever sins might be laid to the charge of the disgraced son, there is nevertheless in his heart a warmth of feeling of which the elder brother gives no sign. The boy loves his father, otherwise he would not have turned to him in his anguish of distress. The elder brother's attitude to his father is arrogant and harsh; the younger brother's is humble and tender. Lastly the father himself is revealed as the embodiment of love. He asks no questions, utters no reproaches, imposes no conditions; he simply takes his son back, in the rush of his affection cutting short the boy's pitiful confession, and calling for shoes and new robes and festal music, as though his son had returned in dignity and triumph. In the last scene of all, implied rather than described, the restored prodigal sits at the feast, leaning on his father's bosom, but the respectable son stands without in a darkness of his own creation--the darkness which a harsh spirit and an unlovely temper never fail to create in men of his unhappy temperament.
It is a very strange story, if we come to think of it; almost