urn, but He invites
us back. By all His words in His threatenings and in His commandments,
as in the acts of His providence, we can hear His call to return. The
fathers of our flesh never cease to long for their prodigal child's
return; and their patient persistence of hope is but brief and broken
when contrasted with the infinite long-suffering of the Father of
spirits. We have heard of a mother who for long empty years has nightly
set a candle in her cottage window to guide her wandering boy back to
her heart; and God has bade us think more loftily of the
unchangeableness of His love than that of a woman who may forget, that
she should not have compassion upon the son of her womb.

II. Man's answer to God's invitation.

It is a refusal which is half-veiled and none the less real. There is
no unwillingness to obey professed, but it is concealed under a mask of
desiring a little more light as to how a return is to be accomplished.
There are not many of us who are rooted enough in evil as to be able to
blurt out a curt 'I will not' in answer to His call. Conscience often
bars the way to such a plain and unmannerly reply; but there are many
who try to cheat God, and who do to some extent cheat themselves, by
professing ignorance of the way which would lead them to His heart. Some
of us have learned only too well to raise questions about the method of
salvation instead of accepting it, and to dabble in theology instead of
making sure work of return. Some of us would fain substitute a host of
isolated actions, or apparent moral or religious observance, for the
return of will and heart to God; and all who in their consciences answer
God's call by saying, 'Wherein shall we return?' with such a meaning are
playing tricks with themselves, and trying to hoodwink God.

But the question of our text has often a nobler origin, and comes from
the depths of a troubled heart. Not seldom does God's loving invitation
rouse the dormant conscience to the sense of sin. The man, lying broken
at the foot of the cliff down which he has fallen, and seeing the
brightness of God far above, has his heart racked with the question: How
am I, with lame limbs, to struggle back to the heights above? 'How shall
man be just with God?' All the religions of the world, with their
offerings and penances and weary toils, are vain attempts to make a way
back to the God from whom men have wandered, and that question, 'Wherein
shall we return?' is really the m