It is a base truth that men often only desert the world when the world deserts them. But, I have seen it observed, there is something very touching in the fact that men thus find that they must turn to God at last, after all, without Him, has disappointed, and that if they truly turn, so gracious is He, that He will deign to accept the world’s leavings. The story of the lost sheep, of the piece of money, but chiefly of the prodigal son, assure us of the truth of this. When he had spent all, it was,--all his rich patrimony of young powers, feelings, hopes, and after he had even gone after swine’s husks,--after he had spent _all_, the Father accepted the empty casket! When the seed-time, and the ripening-time, and the harvest-time had passed, the bare November fields and stripped boughs were accepted, because over them had gathered the mournful mist of true repentance, and because they were thickly strung with abundance of sorrowful tears!
Oh, wonderful love, not of earth, but divine!--God deigns to prize what earth has thrown away! Therefore let those who seem even settled on their lees, fixed in the ways of the world or of sin, let them tremble exceedingly, but let them not despair. If they _will_, they yet _may_. Let them cry to the Helper, let them retrace the path with tears, gleaning as they go a scattered rare grain here and there,--redeeming the time, although the evil days have come. There is One for whose perfect merits the harvest of the saint and the handful of the sinner shall alike find acceptance; and though ’tis best to “sin not,” nevertheless, “if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
Let none presume, however; for the gleaning commonly goes the same way that the harvest has gone. And it were base indeed, designedly, to set apart only life’s leavings for God’s share. Oh, rather let those who can give life’s whole broad year to God!
Too late, too late! This, if the year had postponed its work, must be the sad burden of the winds’ wailing over its desolate and weed-strewn fields. But it is a thought to humble the heart, and bring tears of shame and gratitude into the eyes, that no human life with which God’s Spirit is still striving need take that bitter wail for its own. Too late to love God? Nay, be assured that, if it _be_ love, it shall be as tenderly, gladly welcomed as the dawn of the lonely white Christmas rose on the bare Winter beds.