Testimony Treasures, Volume 1 - Ellen G. White

sin had resulted in his separating himself from his father. He thought of the
privileges and bounties that the hired servants of his father's house freely
enjoyed, while he who had alienated himself from his father's house was
perishing with hunger. Humiliated through adversity, he decided to return to
his father by humble confession. He was a beggar, destitute of comfortable
or even decent clothing. He was wretched in consequence of privation and
was emaciated with hunger.
The Father's Love
While the son was at a distance from his home, his father saw the
wanderer, and his first thought was of that rebellious son who had left him
years before to follow a course of unrestrained sin. The paternal feeling was
stirred. Notwithstanding all the marks of his degradation the father discerned
his own image. He did not wait for his son to come all the distance to him,
but hastened to meet him. He did not reproach his son, but with the tenderest
pity and compassion, that, in consequence of his course of sin, he had
brought upon himself so much suffering, the father hastened to give him
proofs of his love and tokens of his forgiveness.
Although his son was emaciated and his countenance plainly indicated
the dissolute life he had passed, although he was clothed with beggar's rags
and his naked feet were soiled with the dust of travel, the 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 exacting. 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
286