View source for VIII OF SOME WHO WERE LOST, AND AFTERWARD WERE FOUND.

<CENTER><b>VIII<br><br>

OF SOME WHO WERE LOST, AND AFTERWARD
WERE FOUND</b></CENTER>

<br><br>I SOMETIMES wonder whether our Lord is altogether pleased at
the sense in which we use that phrase of His---&quot;lost sheep.&quot;
Disciples who have &quot;found salvation&quot; so often say &quot;lost&quot;
when they mean &quot;damned,&quot; and &quot;sheep&quot; when
they mean &quot;goats.&quot; Ask the average Christian to differentiate
between &quot;damnation&quot; and &quot;perdition,&quot; and ten
to one he will tell you that the words are synonymous; and yet
if derivations count for anything &quot;damnation&quot; means
a state of being condemned, and &quot;perdition&quot; means a
state of being lost. Are these words synonymous? Personally I
doubt it. For myself I am unable to believe that the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ condemns anyone simply because he has
lost his way. After all, so often it is not his fault if he has.

<br><br>One can't help being sorry for people who have lost themselves.
I am sure that the Good Shepherd is sorry for the lost sheep.
Did He not go and seek them with much pain and labor? But if there
are any damned souls I doubt if one could pity them. I fancy that
they would prove to be so loathsome, so poisonous, so unclean,
so utterly corrupt, that even the great Physician of souls diseased
Himself could do nothing for them, and that one could only feel
relief at seeing them burnt up in the unquenchable fire. And by
the way, surely they are destroyed. The idea of imperishable beastliness
writhing for ever in unquenchable fire were enough to disturb
the serenity of an archangel. Surely it is more biblical (not
to mention common sense) to suppose that fire is an instrument
of purification and destruction rather than of torture. Gehenna
in the neighborhood of Jerusalem was, if I mistake not, a place
where garbage was destroyed by fire, and surely if there is a
Gehenna for the New Jerusalem we may conclude that its function
is similar. But all this is a digression. In this article we would
speak of some who were lost, and afterward were found.

<br><br>They were lost; but not necessarily damned. They were lost;
but they were not poisonous. That was the trouble. They were so
lovable. We could not help loving them, however little we felt
that they deserved it. They gave us endless trouble. They would
not fit into any respectable niche in our social edifice. They
were incurably disreputable, always in scrapes, always impecunious,
always improvident. When they were out of sight we hardened our
hearts and said that we had done with them; but all the time we
knew that when it came to the point we should forgive them. They
were such good fellows, the rascals! If they did fly in the face
of the conventions, well, we sometimes felt that the conventions
deserved it. It is not good for anybody or anything to be always
taken seriously, whether an archbishop or a convention. If they
offended us one day, we forgave them the next for the way in which
they shocked uncle Adolphus. They were extravagant and ran up
debts. It was most reprehensible. Yet somehow even their creditors
could never impute intention to defraud. And their very recklessness
in spending what they had not got seemed<I> </I>in a way but the
balance against our careful reluctance to spend what we had got.
They were drunken and loose in morals) so we heard. Yet we could
never believe that they deliberately harmed anyone. Even in their
amours there was always a touch of romance, and never the taint
of sheer bestiality. They had their code, and though God forbid
that it should ever be ours, it did somehow seem to be a natural
set-off to the somewhat sordidly prudent morality of the marriage
market.

<br><br>They were perplexing. We could not but condemn them. Indeed
they condemned themselves with the utmost good humor. Yet we could
never altogether feel that we should like them to be exactly as
we were. Their humility disarmed our self-satisfied judgments.
They had the elusive charm of youth, irresponsibility, and vagabondage.
We could not fit them in, and somehow we felt that this inability
of ours was a slur on society. We felt that there ought to be
a place for them in the scheme of things. It made us angry when
they cast their pearls before swine; yet somehow there didn't
seem to be anywhere else for them to throw them. We had a feeling
that they ought to have been able to lay their pearls at the feet
of the great Pearl Merchant, and yet His Church seemed to have
no use for them, and that we felt was a slur on the Church. As
we read the Gospel story we thought that there must have been
men very like them among the &quot;lost sheep&quot; whom the Lord
Jesus came to seek. Some of those Publicans and sinners with whom
the Lord feasted, to the great scandal of the worthy Pharisees,
must have been very like these wayward vagabonds of ours. That
woman taken in adultery, and that other harlot, they had their
pearls and alabaster cruse of ointment very precious. They had
not known what to do with them. Society in those days had found
no legitimate use for their gifts. They were lost, sure enough.
And then came the Lord, and they were found. The swine no longer
got their pearls. They were bought by the great Pearl Merchant,
and full value given. And be sure that those women had their male
counterparts in the crowd of sinners who followed the Lord, and
resolved to sin no more.

<br><br>Once more the Lord has walked our streets. Once more He has
called to the lost sheep to follow the Good Shepherd along the
thorny path of suffering and death. As of old He has demanded
of them their all. And as of old He has not called in vain. Whatever
their faults these beloved lost sheep do not lack courage. When
they give they give recklessly, not staying to count the cost.
They never bargain, estimate the odds, calculate profit and loss.
With them it is a plunge, a blind headlong plunge. They venture
&quot;neck or nothing; Heaven's success found, or earth's failure.&quot;
When the call came to face hardship and risk life itself in the
cause of freedom, we stolid respectable, folk paused . We waited
to be convinced of the necessity. We calculated the loss and gain.
We sounded our employers about the keeping open of our job. Not
so they. They plunged headlong. It was their chance. For this,
they. felt, they had been born. Their hearts were afire. They
had a craving to give their lives for the great cause. They had
a hunger for danger. And what a nuisance they were in that first
weary year of training!

<br><br>They plunged headlong down the stony path of glory; but in
their haste they stumbled over every stone! And when they did
that they put us all out of our stride, so crowded was the path.
Were they promoted?. They promptly celebrated the fact in a fashion
that secured their immediate reduction. Were they reduced to the
ranks? Then they were in hot water from early morn to dewy eve,
and such was their irrepressible charm that hot water lost its
terrors. To be a defaulter in such merry company was a privilege
rather than a disgrace. So in despair we promoted them again,
hoping that by giving them a little responsibility we should enlist
them on the side of good order and discipline. Vain hope! There
are things that cannot be overlooked, even in a Kitchener battalion.

<br><br>Then at last we &quot;got out.&quot; We were confronted with
dearth, danger, and death. And then they came to their own. We
could no longer compete with them. We stolid respectable folk
were not in our element. We knew it. We felt it. We were determined
to go through with it. We succeeded; but it was not without much
internal wrestling, much self-conscious effort. Yet they, who
had formerly been our despair, were now our glory. Their spirits
effervesced. Their wit sparkled. Hunger and thirst could not depress
them. Rain could not damp them. Cold could not chill them. Every
hardship became a joke. They did not endure hardship, they derided
it. And somehow it seemed at the moment as if derision was all
that hardship existed for. Never was such a triumph of spirit
over matter. As for death, it was, in a way, the greatest joke
of all. In a way, for if it was another fellow that was hit it
was an occasion for tenderness and grief. But if one of them was
hit., O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?
Portentous, solemn Death, you looked a fool when you tackled one
of them! Life? They did not value life! They had never been able
to make much of a fist of it. But if they lived amiss they died
gloriously, with a smile for the pain and the dread of it. What
else had they been born for? It was their chance. With a gay heart
they gave their greatest gift, and with a smile to think that
after all they had anything to give which was of value. One by
one Death challenged them. One by one they smiled in his grim
visage, and refused to be dismayed. They had been lost, but they
had found the path that led them home; and when at last they laid
their lives at the feet of the Good Shepherd, what could they
do but smile?
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