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There is nothing like hunger to take the energy out of a man. A hungry man can toil neither with pen nor hand nor foot. There has been many an army defeated not so much for lack of ammunition as for lack of bread. It was that lack that took the fire out of this young man of the text. Storm and exposure will wear out any man's life in time, but hunger makes quick work. The most awful cry ever heard on earth is the cry for bread. I know there are a great many people who try to throw a fascination, a romance, a halo, about sin; but notwithstanding all that Lord Byron and George Sand have said in regard to it, it is a mean, low, contemptible business, and putting food and fodder into the troughs of a herd of iniquities that root and wallow in the soul of man, is a very poor business for men and women intended to be sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty; and when this young man resolved to go home, it was a very wise thing for him to do, and the only question is, whether we will follow him.

I. THIS RESOLUTION WAS FORMED IS A DISGUST AT HIS CIRCUMSTANCES. If this young man had been by his employer set to culturing flowers, or training vines over an arbour, or keeping account of the pork market, or overseeing other labourers, he would not have thought of going home. If he had his pockets full of money, if he had been able to say, "I have a thousand dollars now of my own; what's the use of my going back to my father's house? Do you think I am going back to apologize to the old man?" Ah! it was his pauperism, it was his beggary. A man never wants the gospel until he realizes he is in a famine-struck state.

II. THIS RESOLUTION OF THE YOUNG MAN OF THE TEXT WAS FOUNDED IN SORROW AT HIS MISBEHAVIOUR. It was not mere physical plight. It was grief that he had so maltreated his father. It is a sad thing after a father has done everything for a child to have that child be ungrateful.

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is,

To have a thankless child."That is Shakespeare. "A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother." That is the Bible. Well, my friends, have not some of us been cruel prodigals? Have we not maltreated our Father? And such a Father!

III. THIS RESOLUTION OF THE TEXT WAS FOUNDED IN A FEELING OF HOMESICKNESS. I do not know how long this young man had been away from his father's house, but there is something about the reading of my text that makes me think he was homesick. Some of you know what that feeling is. Far away from home sometimes, surrounded by everything bright and pleasant — plenty of friends — you have said, "I would give the world to be home to-night." Well, this young man was homesick for his father's house. Are there any here to-day homesick for God, homesick for heaven?

IV. THE RESOLUTION WAS IMMEDIATELY PUT INTO EXECUTION. The context says, "He arose and came to his father." There is a man who had the typhoid fever, he said: "Oh! if I could get over this terrible distress; if this fever should depart; if I could be restored to health, I would all the rest of my life serve God." The fever departed. He got well enough to go over to New York and attend to business. He is well to-day — as well as he ever was. Where is the broken vow?

(De W. Talmage, 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.