iv Dangers of the Religious Life. 39 



The characteristic danger of such a life and such 

 a character is a narrowness of mind which tends to 

 set the observance of a Sabbath, or other piece of 

 ceremonial, on an equality with justice, mercy, and 

 purity ; and it belongs to the same legal and some- 

 what mechanical view of righteousness, that the elder 

 son found it difficult to believe in the possibility of 

 repentance, and impossible to believe that a repentant 

 sinner ought to be, at once and completely, restored 

 to the position of a child. And this mechanical 

 view of righteousness and narrowness of sympathy, 

 though it did not alienate him from his father, yet 

 made his service of his father less filial and less 

 happy than it ought to have been. His unsympa- 

 thising and unpitying harshness to the returning 

 Prodigal is what strikes us most and this is what 

 Our Lord intended. But let us not be unjust to 

 him. Harshness to a returning prodigal was by no 

 means so manifestly contrary to the will of God 

 under the old dispensation as it has been since Our 

 Lord spoke this wonderful parable ; and, deeply as 

 its lesson has sunk into the mind of Christendom, 

 yet perhaps the commonest feeling, even of good 

 men, on this subject is still that of the people 

 described by an English novelist, with whom re- 

 pentant prodigals " were sure of their daily bread, 

 but it had to be eaten with the proper quantity of 

 bitter herbs." 1 What was worst in the elder son 

 was not his unbrotherly feeling towards his brother, 

 1 The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot. 



