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Updated: June 29, 2025
The design of the parable was to illustrate on the one hand, the joy of God, as he beholds afar off, the returning sinner "seeking an injured father's face" who runs to clasp and bless him with an unchiding welcome; and on the other, the contrition of the penitent, turning homeward with tears, from his wanderings, his stricken spirit breaking with its ill-desert, he sobs aloud, "The lowest place, the lowest place, I can abide no other."
This world's evil and ill-desert made it but the better arena and theatre for the development and the display of His moral character; and the same instruments that fashioned Him into the perfect and express image He was and is, are still, happily, in full operation. Take that divinest and noblest of all instruments for the carving out and refining of moral character, the will of God.
For aught he knew to the contrary, she might have accepted his fiat as just, if not merciful, and not a dream of rebellion been fostered thereby. The grave tranquillity of her demeanor might arise from the chastening influences of the mortification she had sustained, and a consciousness of ill-desert that bred humility.
Thus, in the days of our Saviour's appearance upon the earth, the chosen guardians of this religion, which was intended to make men humble, and feel their personal ill-desert and need of mercy, had become self-satisfied and self-righteous. A religion designed to prompt the utterance of the greatest of its prophets: "Woe is me!
It is objected that the preventive theory is immoral, because it overlooks the ill-desert of wrong-doing, and furnishes no measure of the amount of punishment, except the lawgiver's subjective opinion in regard to the sufficiency of the amount of preventive suffering. /1/ In the language of Kant, it treats man as a thing, not as a person; as a means, not as an end in himself.
The design of the parable was to illustrate on the one hand, the joy of God, as he beholds afar off, the returning sinner "seeking an injured father's face" who runs to clasp and bless him with unchiding welcome; and on the other, the contrition of the penitent, turning homeward with tears from his wanderings, his stricken spirit breaking with its ill-desert he sobs aloud.
They strode rapidly past, within a furlong of our tents, not pausing or looking toward us, after the manner of Indians when meditating mischief or conscious of ill-desert. I went out and met them; and had an amicable conference with the chief, presenting him with half a pound of tobacco, at which unmerited bounty he expressed much gratification.
The design of the parable was to illustrate on the one hand, the joy of God, as he beholds afar off, the returning sinner "seeking an injured father's face," who runs to clasp and bless him with an unchiding welcome; and on the other, the contrition of the penitent, turning homeward with tears from his wanderings, his stricken spirit breaking with its ill-desert he sobs aloud, "The lowest place, the lowest place, I can abide no other."
The two first of our Lord's Beatitudes, as they are called, are 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, and 'Blessed are they that mourn. These two carry the conditions of entrance on the Christian life. There must be consciousness of our own emptiness, weakness, and need; there must be penitent recognition of our own ill-desert and lamentation over that.
There are very few men, in certain sections of the country, who will absolutely refuse to give a letter of introduction to a neighbor on the simple ground of ill-desert. Men dread the ill-will of their neighbor, and particularly the ill-will of an unscrupulous neighbor; so, when such a neighbor asks a letter, they give it.
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