36 The Prodigal Son. CHAP. 



with them. I have yet more to say on the action of 

 God and His Son in seeking and saving the lost; 

 and to this I demand the attention equally of the 

 righteous and of sinners, of Pharisees and of publicans." 



Probably nothing else that Christ has taught 

 has been so well learned by His Church as the 

 lessons of these parables, that repentance is possible 

 even after a career of open sin ; that it will be 

 accepted by God, and ought to be accepted by 

 man. On the contrary, it was by this feature of 

 Our Lord's life and teaching that the religious men 

 of the Jewish Church the Pharisees were most 

 offended. They called Him truly, though not in 

 the sense which they intended a friend of sinners ; 

 they really believed Him to be a subverter of moral 

 distinctions. Yet they might have learned better 

 from the prophets whose sepulchres they built and 

 adorned. Isaiah had written long before, "Wash 

 you, make you clean ; put away the evil of your 

 doings from before mine eyes. . . . Though your 

 sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow : 

 though they be red like crimson, they shall be as 

 wool." J No language of Christ's could be stronger. 

 But this, like many other prophetic sayings, appears 

 to have remained unappreciated and uncompre- 

 hended until it was adopted into the teaching of 

 Christ. 



There is no room for doubt or controversy as to 

 the meaning of that part of the parable which tells of 

 1 Isaiah i. 16, 18. 



