You know, when the prodigal son left his father’s home he forgot everything. He forgot his father, his brother, his home, and his servants, and was entirely absorbed in his present enjoyment of worldly pleasures until a terrible calamity brought him to himself again. Then he recalled for the first time since he left his father’s home, “How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger.” Then he started homeward with a heavy heart, full of grief and remorse, and determined to reform and live a life of devotion to his father. But during all those days, perhaps years, his father had not forgotten his erring and wandering boy. He was waiting day and night for his return. Perhaps he was looking out from his windows every morning and evening in the direction his son had gone. One evening when he got a glimpse of his lost son he did not wait in his room for him, but jumped up and ran from his house to meet that wretched son. Just so, my friend, during those twenty years of my prodigal life I forgot my heavenly Father, and my Saviour, and my spiritual home and inheritance. I had been absorbed entirely in my ambitious worldly career and earthly happiness, but my Father did not forget me. He had not forsaken me. He was watching and waiting all the while for my return. In his own time the Father himself arrested me in my wild career of worldly ambition and earthly enjoyment. It was in this way. In the midst of my worldly prosperity and happiness my Father came down and suddenly took away my dear wife, leaving behind her nine motherless children, the youngest of whom was not quite four. I was overwhelmed with grief. But, oh, my children’s grief! They loved their mother very much. She was a devout woman, and not a backslider like myself. During the quarter of a century of our married life I had never heard a single murmur from her lips, nor a word of discouragement. She was always thankful and grateful for everything. She led such a beautiful life of love and devotion before her children that they almost worshiped her. When she was suddenly taken away from them, they were all thrown into the deepest grief, and they cried and wailed day and night, clinging to their dead mother. My friends came to comfort them, but they would not be comforted, because their mother was gone, and they could not see her again. Their grief was so intense that at one time I was afraid some of my children would go insane. A man may marry a second wife, and love her just as much as the first, but when children lose their own mother they can never have a second one whom they can love as their own. It was a most heartrending thought to me that death had made these nine children motherless forever.