"When he was yet a great way off." We are as good as told then, that day after day the father had been watching. How small were the probabilities that at any particular hour the son would return, and yet every hour the father's eyes were on that long, dusty road! When at last he saw what he was dying to see, what did he say? Was there a word of rebuke? He stopped his boy's mouth with kisses and cried for the best robe and the ring and the shoes, and proclaimed a feast--the ring, mark you, a sign of honour! "Say nothing of pardon; the darkness hath gone: Shall pardon be asked for the night by the sun? No word of the past; of the future no fear: 'Tis enough, my beloved, to know thou art here." "Oh, my friends," said the preacher, "just consider that it is this upon which Jesus, the Son of God, has put His stamp, not the lecture, not chastisement, not expiation, but an instant unquestioning embrace, no matter what the wrong may have been. If you say this is dangerous doctrine, I say it is _here_. What other meaning can you give to it? At the same time I am astonished to find it here, astonished that priestcraft and the enemy of souls should not have erased it. Sacred truth! Is it not moving to think of all the millions of men who for eighteen hundred years have read this parable, philosophers and peasants, in every climate, and now are we reading it to-day! Is it not moving--nay, awful--to think of all the good it has done, of the sweet stream of tenderness, broad and deep, which has flowed down from it through all history? History would all have been different if this parable had never been told." Mr. Cardew paused, and after his emotion had a little subsided he concluded by an appeal on behalf of the infirmary. He inserted a saving clause on Christ's mediatorial work, but it had no particular connection with the former part of his discourse. It was spoken in a different tone, and it satisfied the congregation that they had really heard nothing heterodox.