on their parents: they had been all their own, and now they have done
with them! Less or more, have we not all thus taken our journey into a
far country? But many a man of sixty is more of a son to the father gone
from the earth, than he was while under his roof. What a disintegrated
mass were the world, what a lump of half-baked brick, if death were
indeed the end of affection! if there were no chance more of setting
right what was so wrong in the loveliest relations! How gladly would
many a son who once thought it a weariness to serve his parents,
minister now to their lightest need! and in the boundless eternity is
there no help?

Walter was not a prodigal; he was a well-behaved youth. He was _only_
proud, _only_ thought much of himself; was _only_ pharisaical, not
hypocritical; was _only_ neglectful of those nearest him, always polite
to those comparatively nothing to him! Compassionate and generous to
necessity, he let his father and his sister-cousin starve for the only
real food a man can give, that is, _himself_. As to him who thought his
very thoughts into him, he heeded him not at all, or mocked him by
merest ceremony. There are who refuse God the draught of water He
desires, on the ground that their vessel is not fit for Him to drink
from: Walter thought his too good to fill with the water fit for God to
drink.

He had the feeling, far from worded, not even formed, but certainly in
him, that he was a superior man to his father. But it is a fundamental
necessity of the kingdom of heaven, impossible as it must seem to all
outside it, that each shall count other better than himself; it is the
natural condition of the man God made, in relation to the other men God
has made. Man is made, not to contemplate himself, but to behold in
others the beauty of the Father. A man who lives to meditate upon and