Returning on our way.
"By the way that he came, by the same shall he return."
I. THE RETURN WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE. Our departure from this world is often spoken of as a return. We "return to the grave." We ascend and descend the hill of life; but we go down that hill on the other side. Old age is indeed "a second childhood;" but how different a childhood it is!—with the experience, and the carefulness, and the sad consciousness of failure which childhood has not, but without the eager-heartedness, buoyancy, simplicity, trustfulness, which childhood has. It may be said of every part and passage of our human experience, "Thou hast not gone this way heretofore." We never live over again even a single day of our life.
II. THE RETURN WITH WHICH WE ARE THREATENED. God, in his holy and wise providence, may defeat our purpose, as he did that of Sennacherib, and in this sense may cause us to return on our way. Again and again is this the case with:
1. Unrighteous aggression, or some other design which is positively sinful.
2. Unhallowed ambition; when men set themselves to achieve some great thing for their own enrichment or aggrandizement, and God breaks their schemes. He sends them back to the starting-point of emptiness or poverty from which they set out. When God thus interposes, men may well ask what it is that he me, his them to learn.
3. Unwise endeavour; as when men offer themselves for the work of teaching, or preaching, or labouring in the field of foreign missions, when they are unfitted lop the post.
III. THE RETURN WHICH IS OUR DUTY.
1. That which awaits the Christian man,
2. That which belongs to the unchristian man. To him, in the "far country" of estrangement, comes ever the commanding, but yet. the entreating voice of the heavenly Father, saying, "Return unto me, and I will return unto you." Well is it, indeed, when the heart's response is found in the heaven-gladdening words, "I will arise, and go to my Father."—C.