And there is the boy's father's partner, down in the home town. "Well," he soliloquizes, "it is too bad about Collins' boy. He is all broken up over it, and no wonder. Doesn't it seem queer? That boy has as good blood as there is: good father, lovely mother, and yet gone clean to the bad, and so young. It is too bad! I am awfully sorry for Collins." And in the busy round of life he forgets, save as a bad dream which will come back now and then.
But down in that boy's home there is a woman--a mother, heart-broken--secretly bleeding her heart out through her eyes. She goes quietly, faithfully about her round of life, but her hair gets thinner, and the gray streaks it plainer, her form bends over more, and the lines become more deeply bitten in her face, as the days come and go. And if you talk with her, and she will talk with you, she will say, "Oh, yes, I know other mothers' boys go wrong; some of them going wrong all the time; but to think of _my Jim_--that I've nursed, and loved so, and done everything for--to think that my Jim--" and her voice chokes in her throat, and she refuses to be comforted. _She grieves at her heart._ Ah! that is the picture of God in that Genesis chapter. He saw that the world He had made and lavished all the wealth of His love upon had gone wrong, and it grieved Him at His heart.
This world is God's prodigal son, and He is heartbroken over it. And what has He done about it. Ah! what has He done! Turn to Mark's twelfth chapter, and see there Jesus' own picture of His Father as He knew Him. In the form of a parable He tells how His Father felt about things here. He sent man after man to try and win us back, but without effect, except that things got worse. Then Jesus represents God talking with Himself. "What _shall_ I do next, to win them back?--there is My son--My only boy--Jesus--I believe--yes, I believe I'll send Him--then they'll _see_ how badly I feel, and how much I love them; that'll touch them surely; I'll do it." You remember just how that sixth verse goes, "He had yet one, a beloved Son; He sent Him _last_ unto them, saying, they will _reverence_ my Son." And you know how they treated God's Son, His love gift. And I want to remind you to-night that, speaking in our human way--the only way we can speak--God suffered more in seeing His Son suffer than though He might have suffered Himself. Ask any mother here: Would you not gladly suffer pain in place of your child suffering if you could? And every mother-heart answers quickly, "Aye, ten times over, if the child could be spared pain." Where did you get that marvelous mother-heart and mother-love? Ah, that mother-heart is a bit of the God-heart transferred. That is what God is like. Let me repeat very reverently that God suffered more in giving His Son to suffer than though He had Himself suffered. And that is the God of the Old Testament! Let me ask: Is _He_ to blame? Has He not done His best?
