whole cnurch, look at that great multitude | ture starving in the midst of plenty; carrywho have shared its sorrows-we may saying about an empty soul without a wish to of them all, when Christ has allured them have it filled; never once asking mercy for and led them into the wilderness, "they did all eat and were filled." And here I must end, not however without suggesting to you this one reflectionHow glorious a Being is the Lord Jesus Christ! Look once more at the scene this scripture presents. One man standing amidst a multitude of five thousand men, and satisfying them all with his single hand; and that not from any supplies previously collected, but creating food as he distributes it, and creating and distributing it as long as any one will take it, and doing all this without an effort or a boast, with thankfulness and prayer;-there is indeed great it, and trampling every moment on the food that would save and gladden it :-that wonder am I." And what will be the end of this mysterious folly? Prayer or ruin; conversion or death; an awakened, renewed, supplicating, abased soul here, or a starved soul, a lost soul, forever SERMON XXV. THE LOST SHEEP BROUGHT HOME. ST. LUKE XV. 4, 5, 6. ness in this spectacle, a silent but mighty What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. greatness, that no royal banquet, that no external pomp, that no earthly pageant, ever yet displayed. But after all, to what does it amount? The Lord Christ feeding for an hour one company with the bread that perishes! Why, brethren, he has been feeding for ages the whole multitude of heaven with imperishable joys; and the time is fast coming on, when around him will be assembled, not five thousand, but ten thousand times ten thousand of his saints; all the spirits in all the worlds that he has redeemed or upheld; all filled and overflowing with happiness, and not a thrill, not an emotion, of happiness to be found among them, which has not him for its Cre-admits its truth, passes over, as though unator and Giver. O the glory of that Being who is the sinner's refuge and hope! What an amazing power to bless is hidden in him! What an inexhaustible, infinite fulness! To be fainting with want, to be starving and perishing, while such a Being says, "I am the bread of life;"—if you have never wondered before, go away and deem yourselves now the greatest wonders in the world. A happy, redeemed sinner in heaven makes all heaven marvel; but a sinner starving on the earth, with such a Saviour near him as Jesus Christ; a man destitute of the food his soul needs in a Christian country and in a Christian church, with the tidings of the gospel sounding in his ears, and the blessings of the gospel waiting his acceptance-there is no wonder greater than this, none half so awful. And yet some of us say, "That wonder am I. That crea must THIS parable was spoken by our Lord in his own defence. His old enemies, the scribes and Pharisees, had turned his condescension into a ground of attack on him. "This man," said they, "receiveth sinners." The charge was not repelled. With a silent dignity, the patient Saviour noticed, the proud selfishness it manifested, and stoops down at once to justify the compassion it condemned. He appeals to the ordinary conduct of the people who surrounded him, conduct approved and followed by these very murmurers, and finds in that a triumphant vindication of his own. And in doing this, he does more than this. He turns his weapon of defence into an instrument of mercy, silencing these Jews by words of which they were not worthy; words evidently intended for men of another spirit, and for another purpose; intended perhaps for some of you; design ed to excite hope, and adoration, and joy, this very day in your hearts. They bring before us an object of peculiar need, and, at the same time, of peculiar care and mercy-a worthless sinner, recovered, saved, and carried joyfully to heaven, by the Lord Jesus Christ. I. The parable represents his natural condition. And what marvellous compassion breaks forth in the description given us of this! A veil is thrown over all that we might have expected to be most conspicuous in it. Not a word is said of man's criminality or man's pollution. The blessed Jesus appears to lose sight of both. He speaks as a father, forgetting, in the misery of his children, all their guilt. "Sinners," said the Jews. "No," says Christ, lost sheep; poor, thoughtless wanderers from their home." 66 The figure conveys to us three ideas. 1. The first is want; not absolute want, perhaps, not complete destitution-for the rocky mountain may yield some food, and the sandy desert some refreshment; but the sheep is away from the fold; it has consequently no satisfying, no adequate, no certain pasture; it lives, if it lives at all, in hunger and weariness. And what is our condition when at a distance from God? It is worse than the condition of this lost sheep, more necessitous and desolate. Regard us indeed as no better than machines of flesh and blood, creatures with no higher capacities than the brute beasts that perish, then there is enough for us, and more than enough, in this well stored world. But admit that "there is a spirit in man," view him as a being endowed with mind and affections, with a feeling heart and a thinking soul, there is not one of our race, however degraded, whom the whole earth could satisfy, nor a longing for happiness in any one breast, that the whole material universe could fill. The man born from above knows this well; but I appeal not to him; no, nor to that wretched groveller in the dust, whom the disappointments of life have soured and chilled. I ask the happiest of you all, the young, and light-hearted, and prosperous, what is the world to you? It may be your all, but are you satisfied with your all? Has it not left wants within you, great and painful wants, which you cannot quiet? Conscience tells you it has. You could hardly define them, you never talk of them, you try to bury them deep in the secrecy of your own breasts, to lose the sense of them in the excitements of pleasure or the hurry of business, but you feel them still; there are moments when you hardly know how to bear them, when you are conscious of such thirstings within and such dissatisfaction with every thing without you, that the world seems a desert, and you starving in it and wretched. And this feeling of desolation all springs from one source-you are as sheep that are lost. You are at a distance from God, the fountain of happiness; and the blessedness that flows from his presence is consequently at a distance from you. 2. And think of the danger of such a state. A sheep in eastern countries, when away from the shepherd, is never safe. No animal is beset with more enemies, or exposed to greater perils. And to what are we exposed? To foes so numerous and dangers so manifold, that the mind is bewildered as it contemplates them. A soul delivered from them, is one of the greatest wonders in the creation of God. It is one of the most splendid manifestations, we might almost say, one of the mightiest efforts of his omnipotence. As such Saint Peter regarded it. He says of the redeemed, that they are "kept," and how? By God? by his grace and love? No; they are "kept by the power of God unto salvation." And to aggravate the dangers encompassing us, we are naturally fearless of them; unconscious perhaps of their existence; nay, we meet, we court them. A sheep straying where the lions roam and the tiger lurks, is a representation that does not come up to the fact. Behold that sheep running to sport by the tiger's side, going for rest in its weariness into the lion's hiding place; and there is a more exact emblem of man's danger and man's reckless ness. 3. And we must add to these features of our condition yet one more—helplessness. The sheep has neither strength to overcome, courage to resist, nor swiftness to elude its enemies. Its preservation depends entirely on the shepherd's arm and the fold's security. And herein, again, it represents us and our state, with fearful precision. Not that in this helplessness, considered in itself, there is any thing fearful. We share it in common with the whole creation. Sin has not entailed it on us. The highest archangel that does the bidding of Jehovah in heaven, or the purest spirit that worships him there, has no more strength in himself than the most lost of lost men; he is no more able to satisfy his own soul than to create a world. And place even us in heaven, place us anywhere by | again; and as a faithful Servant, he must the side of our God, we may rejoice in our watch over this charge; the flock which weakness. It binds us to the Holy One; his Father has given him, must be comit is a claim on his pity and care, which he plete. Hence he speaks of himself as exnever disowns. But when separated from ercising a care far beyond that of any God, this weakness of our nature becomes earthly guardian; as knowing not only the an appalling evil. There is ruin in it. number of his people, but their persons, "Every one that findeth me," said the and characters, and circumstances; and wretched Cain," shall slay me ;" and we deriving a part of his excellence and glory may say the same of all the perils that be- from this knowledge. "I am the good set us. Left to ourselves, we have neither Shepherd," he says, "and know my sheep." the power nor the will to escape them. As-"He telleth the number of the stars," says sault is the same as defeat; temptation is the psalmist; "he calleth them all by another word for sin, and danger another their names ;" but he says of himself, "He name for destruction. calleth his own sheep by name.' this be not enough, he turns again to his redeemed, and says to them plainly, without exaggeration or metaphor, "Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered." This is our condition, brethren, and in all the need, peril, and weakness of it, every redeemed spirit was once involved. The parable places him in the midst of his wretchedness, and then goes on to tell us how he was extricated. II. It bids us notice the conduct of Christ towards him. 1. The first circumstance that strikes us in this, is the Redeemer's care and concern for the lost sinner. He is aware of his loss; he misses him. Among a hundred sheep, it might have been conceived that the absence of one would probably escape observation; and even if observed, would occasion very little concern; but the parable takes the reverse of this for granted. It supposes that every one of the flock is under the shepherd's eye; that when it strays, its wandering is noticed and its loss felt. And the same Bible that describes the Lord Jesus Christ as the great Shepherd of his church, describes him as a Being whose care is not only extensive, reaching to all the worlds that crowd his universe, but particular and close; fastened as much on every creature his hands have formed, as though he had formed none other, as though that one creature were the only object of And if 2. A care thus extraordinary in its nature, may naturally be expected to lead to action, and action as extraordinary as itself. And it does so. The Lord Jesus Christ seeks the lost sinner. The shepherd in the parable is supposed to leave the ninety and nine sheep in the wilderness; that is, safe amidst the culti vated grounds or enclosed pastures of the wilderness; and to "go after that which is lost." And why does he after it? go Because "that which is lost," can be recovered by no other means. The wan dering sheep never returns. Not like the dog or the dove that will find its way back from almost any distance, it cannot retrace its steps. Once a wanderer, it wanders on forever. And when did an erring sinner ever return to his forsaken God? Of his own accord, never; and were the world to stand ten thousand years, and were the same question to be asked at the end of those years, the same answer would still be given-never. The thing is impossible. Sin has rendered it impossible. It alienates man from God. It throws up a bar. And when we add to this anoth-rier between them in man's own heart. It er truth, that he has a special love for this deprives him of the very desire to return. fallen world as the chosen theatre of his Show him the bridge that Christ has thrown manifestation, and sojourning, and glory; over the gulf which separates earth from and a more peculiar love still for those in heaven, he will not so much as set a foot it whom he has bought with his blood; we on it; he would rather starve and sink need not wonder that neither the glories of where he is. heaven nor the confusion of earth, can But O the unsearchable grace of Jehoconceal the wandering of one poor sinner vah! he goes after the creature that will from his eye. Besides, his sheep are his not inquire after him. He comes down charge; he received them as a sacred out of heaven, from the most glorious place trust from Jehovah to be returned to him in the creation to one of the dreariest, and his care. this, he tells us, is his errand, "to seek and though you were on the point of leaving to save that which was lost." And when it; as full of anxiety about eternity, as arrived on the earth, no part of it did he though you saw its heaven and its hell leave unsought, that he might find his own. lying open before you, and yourselves He goes to Samaria, to seek a lost woman about to go into the one or the other. The there; to Bethany, to seek Mary, and Mar- sermon you are listening to, would be tha, and Lazarus; to guilty Sidon, to seek heard as never sermon was heard by you the woman of Canaan; to accursed Jeri- yet, and you would go from this house of cho, to seek Zaccheus. He goes to the re- God, and make your own chambers, perceipt of custom, that he may find the pub-haps for the first time since those chamlican Matthew; to the sea-side, that he bers were built, places of prayer. And may call to himself Peter, and James, and not this only, you would feel yourselves John. And while hanging on the cross, lost; you would see the wants, and danin the very agonies of death, his work of gers, and helplessness, of your condition : searching is not suspended. He turns and with a feeling which you never before round to the malefactors beside him, and experienced, you would cry aloud, “What sees in one of them a sheep of his fold, a must I do to be saved?" And then you companion for paradise. And the same would cast yourselves on Christ; and that work is going on now. By his word, and would be the happiest moment of your life. his ministers, and his providence, and his Then indeed would you "be found of him." Spirit, he is at this day and at this moment His hand would be on you, and his Spirit seeking us; and were we on the very verge within you. A connection would begin of destruction, nay, were there but a step between him and your soul, so close, that between us and all that is fearful, he would henceforth he would deem you one with follow us on; he would seek us still; he himself; so sweet, that you would cheerwould still desire and labor to pluck us as fully give up all the world rather than "brands from the burning." Hear his own have it severed; so lasting, that when all language by his prophet Ezekiel : "Thus earthly ties are snapped asunder, this would saith the Lord God, Behold I, even I, will be strong as ever. You would be enabled both search my sheep and seek them out. to stand on the ruin of all that is dear to As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the you, on the wreck of a perished world, day that he is among his sheep that are and ask with the exulting Paul, “Who scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and shall separate us from the love of Christ? will deliver them out of all places where Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecu they have been scattered in the cloudy and tion, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or dark day." sword? I am persuaded that neither death nor life; nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers; nor things present, nor things to come; nor height, nor depth, nor any oth er creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 3. And this promise carries us on to another part of the Lord's merciful conduct towards the sinner-he finds him. He misses "that which is lost;" there is his care, his watchfulness:-he goes after it; there is his anxiety, his diligence; he finds it; there, his perseverance, his success. And what are we to understand by his finding it? Nothing more than his making sermons, and afflictions, and mercies, effectual; causing them by his Spirit to do their appointed work; overtaking the sin ner by them in his way to ruin, stopping and turning him. Were the Saviour this moment to find you, he would not at once take you away from all the evils of your condition, but he would open your eyes to discover them, and your hearts to care about them. He would make you as careless about the world and its concerns, as 4. The consequence of this union with Christ would be a blessed experience of another act of his goodness, the consummation of his mercy towards the recovered sinner-he bears him home. "And when he hath found it," says the text, "he layeth it on his shoulders." We know why the shepherd places it there. The sheep, worn out by its wanderings and hardships, may be unable to follow him; or it may be unwilling to return to the fold, or averse to the road that leads to it; or dangers may be thick around; the beasts of the wood may be lying in wait, and, even in the shepherd's presence, seeking to destroy. He accordingly places it on his shoulders, | in the constant care and keeping of your and thus ensures at once its safety, its com- omnipotent Lord. fort, and its arrival at home. We need no apostle or prophet to explain to us a figure like this. It tells us of the distance still stretching itself out between us and heaven; of the mountains to be climbed and the wastes to be traversed; of the ten thousand labors and dangers that beset the road, and of our utter inability to avoid or surmount one of them. It shows us the miserable sheep exhausted and sinking down in the desert far away from its rest; hungering for the green pastures of the fold, but unable to take a step in the way to them; and there, it says, is an image of ourselves. And then it tells us of the power we have so often felt raising up and sustaining us; of the arm we have rested on, and never yet found it fail us; of the ease, and security, and blessedness, with which we are passing through temp tations and conflicts, and drawing near, almost without being aware of it, to a heavenly land. It is cheering to think of the blessed Jesus as the companion of our pilgrimage; it imparts an unutterable delight to the soul, to feel that we are going up from the wilderness leaning on our Beloved; but this thought and this feeling come far short of the truth. We are not by his side; he tells us that we are on his shoulders, in his bosom, in his arms. "Ye have seen," he says to his redeemed, "how I bare you on eagles' wings," carried you with more than a shepherd's care, with a father's solicitude, and a mother's tenderness," and brought you," through clouds, and storms, and darkness," unto myself." I bare you "as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came unto this place." And observe, brethren, the peculiar force of this language. While it assures you of your safety, it represents that safety as depending every moment solely on the Lord Jesus. You can never perish, not because you have been "found of Christ," not because he has bought you, and gone after you, and made you his own; but because you are on his shoulder, borne along by him, upheld by his power. You are safe, but your safety rests not in yourselves; it springs not from any thing that has been wrought within you or done without you; it lies simply in this one thing-your being And this is the view given us in this text of the conduct of Christ towards the people he loves-he misses them when lost, he seeks them, he finds them, he bears them home. What a wonderful expendi ture of mercy on creatures so vile! We throw away that which is worthless, for we have no power to alter its nature or to give it value; but the things that are worthless, or seem so, are the very things that God gathers up. "The weak things of the world, and base things of the world, and things that are despised, hath he chosen,” and chosen them for this very purpose, that he may glorify himself by making them the most precious and splendid of the treas ures of heaven. III. We have yet one point more to consider-the feeling with which the great Shepherd of the church carries on this blessed work. And this feeling is as wonderful as the work itself. It is not pity, it is not com passion or kindness, no, nor yet love; it is joy, and joy overflowing; a joy so great that the divine mind cannot hold it: the whole creation is called on to come and share its abundance. "He layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost." We are ready perhaps to take this as a mere figure of speech, as little or nothing more than an eastern ornament, meaning something perhaps, but much less than is expressed. And even if we give this language what we consider its full force, even if we admit that the Lord Christ actually experiences some joy in saving his church, we are tempted to think that it is only as man that he feels it. But the testimony of scripture on this point is plain and decisive. It declares that in the divine mind itself, even in God considered as God, there is joy in the conversion and salvation of a transgressor's soul. Look at the parables following one another in this chapter. The main scope of them all is to imply, if not to express, this very thing. Look at the explicit declarations of the Holy Ghost. "God," says the prophet Micah, "delighteth in mercy," in pardoning, redeeming mercy; it is congenial to his nature; grati |