Precious answer! Yes, unspeakably precious to all who know aught of its meaning. What have I got instead of my former "idols?" God! Instead of this world's vain and sinful pleasures? God! Instead of its riches, honors, and distinctions? God! Oh, blessed, glorious, perfect Substitute! What had the prodigal instead of the rags of the far country? The best robe in the Father's house! Instead of the swine's husks? The fatted calf of the Father's providing! Instead of the degrading servitude of the far country? The Father's welcome, his bosom, and his table! Reader, is not this a blessed exchange? Have we not, in the familiar, but ever charming history of the prodigal a most touching and impressive illustration of true conversion in both its sides? May we not well exclaim, as we gaze on the inimitable picture, "What a conversion! What a turning from and turning to!" Who can utter it? What human tongue can adequately set forth the feelings of the returned wanderer when pressed to the Father's bosom and bathed in the light and love of the Father's house? The rags, the husks, the swine, the slavery, the cold selfishness, the destitution, the famine, the misery, the moral degradation--all gone, and gone forever; and instead thereof the ineffable delight of that bright and happy home, and, above all, the exquisite feeling that all that festive joy which surrounded him was wakened up by the very fact of his return--that it made the Father glad to get him back! But we shall, perhaps, be told that all this is but a figure. Yes; but a figure of what? Of a precious, a divine reality; a figure of what takes place in every instance of true conversion, if only it be looked at from a heavenly standpoint. It is not a mere surrender of the world, with its thousand and one vanities and follies. It is this, no doubt; but it is very much more. It is being brought to God, _brought home_, brought to the Father's bosom, brought into the family; made--not in the language of a barren formulary, but in the power of the Spirit, and by the mighty action of the Word--a child of God, a member of Christ, and an heir of the kingdom.