But the third character is quite distinct from both the others. The Prodigal Son was lost because he deliberately and determinately left his father’s home. He was totally unlike the wandering sheep led on from step to step without a plan, for he had a plan, and he deliberately carried it out. This, then, is far the worst of the three. It represents one living in the midst of privileges, but deliberately casting away his faith. He has life and death brought before him, and he chooses death, or, at all events, he chooses that which leads to death. Oh! how marvellous is the boundless grace and mercy of our God, that He should go out of His way to seek and to save any one so unthankful and so guilty! THE SEEKING OF THE SAVIOUR. He seeks by coming Himself as the Son of Man. The Shepherd leaving the fold and going forth into the wilderness to seek the wanderer, is a picture of the Son of God leaving the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, and visiting this fallen world as the Son of man, in order that He might seek, and, by His atoning blood, might save the sinner. We shall never understand His grace in seeking us if we do not realize that great act of His already complete. This great finished work of His is the foundation of all that follows, and if we want to understand the mystery of His love in seeking us we must begin with the two great facts, Incarnation and Atonement. Why did He become man? Why was He born at Bethlehem? Was it not because He came on a divine mission to seek the sinner? Why did He die? Why did He utter that bitter cry upon the cross? Was it not that He might remove the curse by bearing it, and having broken down every barrier, might have the joy of bringing the lost one to the Father’s home? You, then, who are anxious about your souls, and whose earnest desire it is to be sought out and saved, remember what the Son of man has already done; fall back on the finished fact; and never forget that however doubtful you may be as to your own position, there is no doubt whatever as to the fact that the Son of God has come to seek the lost one and to save him by His blood. HE SEEKS THROUGH HUMAN AGENCY.