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What I propose for our meditation is the truth here expressed, that a life separated from God is a life of bitter hunger, or even of spiritual starvation.

I. To exhibit THE TRUE GROUNDS OF THE FACT STATED; for, as we discover how and for what reasons the life of sin must be a life of hunger, we shall see the more readily and clearly the force of those illustrations by which the fact is exhibited. The great principle that underlies the whole subject and all the facts pertaining to it is, that the soul is a creature that wants food, in order to its satisfaction, as truly as the body. No principle is more certain, and yet there is none so generally overlooked or hidden from the sight of men. Job brings it forward, by a direct and simple comparison, when he says, "For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat"; where he means by the ear, you perceive, not the outward but the inward ear of the understanding. So the psalmist says, "My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness." And so also the prophet, beholding his apostate countrymen dying for hunger and thirst in their sins, calls to them, saying, "He, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, come ye, buy, and eat. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness." In the same way, an apostle speaks of them that have tasted the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come; and another, of them that have tasted that the Lord is gracious, and therefore desire the sincere milk of the Word, that they may grow thereby. True, these are all figures of speech, transferred from the feeding of the body to that of the soul. But they are transferred because they have a fitness to be transferred. The analogy of the soul is so close to that of the body that it speaks of its hunger, its food, its fulness, and growth, and fatness, under the images it derives from the body. Hence you will observe that our blessed Lord appears to have always the feeling that He has come down into a realm of hungry, famishing souls. Apart from God, the soul is an incomplete creature, a poor, blank fragment of existence, hungry, dry, and cold. And still, alas! it cannot think so. Therefore Christ comes into the world to incarnate the Divine nature, otherwise unrecognized, before it; so to reveal God to its knowledge, enter Him into its faith and feeling, make Him its living bread, the food of its eternity. Therefore of His fulness we are called to feed, receiving of Him freely grace for grace. When He is received, He restores the consciousness of God, fills the soul with the Divine light, and sets it in that connection with God which is life — eternal life. Holding this view of the inherent relation between created souls and God as their nourishing principle, we pass —

II. To a consideration of THE NECESSARY HUNGER OF A STATE OF SIN, AND THE TOKENS BY WHICH IT IS INDICATED. A hungry herd of animals, waiting for the time of their feeding, do not show their hunger more convincingly by their impatient cries, and eager looks and motions, than the human race do theirs in the works, and ways, and tempers of their selfish life. I can only point you to a few of these demonstrations. And a very impressive and remarkable one you have in this — viz., the common endeavour to make the body receive double, so as to satisfy both itself and the soul, too, with its pleasures. The effort is, how continually, to stimulate the body by delicacies, and condiments, and sparkling bowls, and licentious pleasures of all kinds, and so to make the body do double service. Hence, too, the drunkenness, and high feasting, and other vices of excess. The animals have no such vices, because they have no hunger save simply that of the body; but man has a hunger also of the mind or soul when separated from God by his sin, and therefore he must somehow try to pacify that. And he does it by a work of double feeding put upon the body. We call it sensuality. But the body asks not for it. The body is satisfied by simply that which allows it to grow and maintain its vigour. It is the unsatisfied, hungry mind that flies to the body for some stimulus of sensation, compelling it to devour so many more of the husks, or carobs, as will feed the hungry prodigal within. There is no end to the diverse acts men practise to get some food for their soul; and to whatever course they turn themselves you will see as clearly as possible that they are hungry. Nay, they say it themselves. What sad bewailings do you hear from them, calling the world ashes, wondering at the poverty of existence, fretting at the courses of Providence, and blaming their harshness, raging profanely against God's appointments, and venting their impatience with life in curses on its emptiness. All this, you understand, is the hunger they are in. Feeding on carobs only, as they do, what shall we expect but to see them feed impatiently? This also you will notice as a striking evidence that, however well they succeed in the providing of earthly things, they are never saris. fled. They say they are not, have it for a proverb that no man is, or can be. How can they be satisfied with lands, or money, or honour, or any finite good, when their hunger is infinite, reaching after God and the fulness of His infinite life — God, who is the object of their intelligence, their love, their hope, their worship; the complement of their weakness, the crown of their glory, the sublimity of their rest for ever. Such kind of hunger manifestly could not be satisfied with any finite good, and therefore it never is.

(H. Bushnell, D. D.)

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KJV: And he said, A certain man had two sons:

WEB: He said, "A certain man had two sons.