lent a part of his substance to a friend at Nineveh, who had fled off
with it to the Ganges; that a whore of Babylon had swallowed his
best pearl, and anointed the whole city with his balm of Gilead; that
he had been sold by a man of honour for twenty shekels of silver to
a worker in graven images; that the images he had purchased produced
him nothing, that they could not be transported across the
wilderness, and had been burnt with fire at Shusan; that the apes
and peacocks which he had sent for from Tharsis lay dead upon his
hands; that the mummies had not been dead long enough which he
had brought from Egypt; that all had gone wrong from the day he
forsook his father's house?"

All this, it must be admitted, is pretty lively for a sermon. But hear
the reverend gentleman once more, in the same discourse, and observe
the characteristic coolness with which he touches, only to drop, what
may be called the "professional" moral of the parable, and glides
off into a train of interesting, but thoroughly mundane, reflections,
suggested--or rather, supposed in courtesy to have been suggested--by
the text. "I know not," he says, "whether it would be a subject
of much edification to convince you here that our Saviour, by the
Prodigal Son, particularly pointed out those who were sinners of the
Gentiles, and were recovered by divine grace to repentance; and that
by the elder brother he intended manifestly the more forward of the
Jews," &c. But, whether it would edify you or not, he goes on, in
effect, to say, I do not propose to provide you with edification in
that kind. "These uses have been so ably set forth in so many good
sermons upon the Prodigal Son that I shall turn aside from them at
present, and content myself with some reflections upon that fatal
passion which led him--and so many thousands after the example--to
gather all he had together and take his journey into a far country."