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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
father’s tenderest pity was excited as the son fell prostrate in humility
before him. He did not stand back upon his dignity; he was not exact-
ing. He did not array before his son his past course of wrong and sin,
to make him feel how low he had sunk. He lifted him up and kissed
him. He took the rebellious son to his breast and wrapped his own rich
robe about the nearly naked form. He took him to his heart with such
warmth, and evinced such pity, that if the son had ever doubted the
goodness and love of his father, he could do so no longer. If he had
a sense of his sin when he decided to return to his father’s house, he
had a much deeper sense of his ungrateful course when he was thus
received. His heart, before subdued, was now broken because he had
grieved that father’s love.
The penitent, trembling son, who had greatly feared that he would
be disowned, was unprepared for such a reception. He knew he did not
deserve it, and he thus acknowledged his sin in leaving his father: “I
have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to
be called thy son.” He begged only to be accounted as a hired servant.
But the father requested his servants to pay him special tokens of
respect and to clothe him as if he had ever been his own obedient son.
The father made the return of his son an occasion of special rejoic-
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ing. The elder son in the field knew not that his brother had returned,
but he heard the general demonstrations of joy and inquired of the
servants what it all meant. It was explained that his brother, whom
they had thought dead, had returned, and that his father had killed the
fatted calf for him because he had received him again as from the dead.
The brother was then angry and would not go in to see or receive
his brother. His indignation was stirred that his unfaithful brother, who
had left his father and thrown the heavy responsibility upon him of
fulfilling the duties which should have been shared by both, should
now be received with such honor. This brother had pursued a course
of wicked profligacy, wasting the means his father had given him, until
he was reduced to want, while his brother at home had been faithfully
performing the duties of a son; and now this profligate comes to his
father’s house and is received with respect and honor beyond anything
that he himself had ever received.
The father entreated his elder son to go and receive his brother
with gladness because he was lost and is found; he was dead in sin and
iniquity, but is alive again; he has come to his moral senses and abhors