The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in pastures of tender grass. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of justice for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou spreadest before me a table in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my l

It was announced by the prophets of old that the Messiah, who was to come, should bear the character of a good shepherd. He was to be a shepherd, and His followers, the faithful souls that should believe in Him and accept His teaching, were to be His sheep. It was foretold that He would select and purchase His flock; that He would choose them from out the vast multitudes of their kind and gather them into His fold, that He would provide for them and guard them against every evil; that He would l

And when at length the Saviour did appear in the world, He declared, not only by His life and example, but in explicit terms, that He was the fulfilment of these prophecies—that He was, in truth, the Good Shepherd, and that His followers were the sheep of His fold. In the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John we have His own words to this effect. There He tells us plainly that He has not come as a thief and a robber, to steal, to kill, and to destroy; that He is not a stranger, at

With this passing glance at shepherd life, we can better understand and better appreciate the likeness between the character of the Saviour and that of the good shepherd. We can see how apt it was that our Redeemer should choose a shepherd, with his multiple and tender cares and duties, to illustrate His own watchfulness and loving kindness towards the many wants and needs of our souls. For we are, indeed, His sheep. He has called us, we have heard and understood His voice, and He has gathered u

It was not enough for God's goodness to give us the gift of life, and to endow us with understanding, will, and freedom; it did not satisfy His bountifulness to make our life fair here on earth, and to enable us to reap much of the joys and pleasures with which even this world abounds—no, far more than all this has He wished and prepared for His elect, for the souls who belong to His flock. It was nothing less than Himself, Heaven and its rewards, that the eternal Father had in store for us when

Men had the Law before the coming of Christ; they knew the ten commandments. But the state to which the God-man called them, and the eminence to which they were raised, were quite beyond anything the world till then had ever been able to conceive. Human nature, under the New Covenant, was invited to attain to perfection. Things which before were thought impossible, were now to be the objects of our daily strivings. It was no longer an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; now not only was goo

And when these deceivers—Ambition, Pride, Pleasure, and the like—have plundered and sacked their victim's goods, when these painted idols of a passing world have led away their worshippers as slaves, and stripped them of all they possessed, they give them over to evil habits and to masters that scourge and tear them. Like other prodigals, these pursuers of earthly phantoms take leave of their Father's house of comfort and plenty, they give up virtue, innocence, honesty, purity; they go into a fa

The doctrine which the Saviour left us, and the laws which He prescribed were vastly different from the teachings of men. Guiding, saving words of a Shepherd to his flock, they engendered safety, comfort, peace. Free from error or mistake, sealed with the seal of Heaven, holding out a promise of future glory, they exhaled the perfumes of the eternal city, they told of mansions not built with hands. And since this immaculate doctrine, given for the souls of men, was to last till the end of time,

This failure to be understood, this misjudgment of actions, motives, deeds, are doubtless common evils from which, in a measure, we all must suffer. But it is also true that the more elevated the life, the higher its aims, the loftier the spiritual level on which it proceeds, the greater the difficulty of its being understood and appreciated by the majority, who always tread the common paths of mediocrity. A saint is nearly always a disturbance to his immediate surroundings, he is frequently an

It is something, indeed, to feel in our suffering that we are paying the debt of our sins, whether personal, or original, or both; it is much to know that our crosses, severe and inevitable as they are, are a curb to our wayward nature, and a restraint against further sins; it is assuredly a great privilege and a high honor that we, unworthy and unfaithful servants of our Master, should, through our tears and sorrows and sufferings, be enabled to conform our poor lives to the tearful and sorrowf

The spiritual meaning of this, like the other verses of the Shepherd Psalm, is peculiarly descriptive of our Lord, the Good Shepherd of human souls. He, in a manner altogether divine, precedes His elect, and prepares them the way of salvation. He does not deliver them from enemies and dangers, which would be unnatural in the present state, but He makes use of evils, as said before, to increase the perfection of His chosen souls. Gradually, step by step, from a natural He leads them to a higher s

For each and all of these how important it is that the Shepherd should stand at the door of the fold and bind up their wounds with His tender grace before they pass through the portals of death! Scarred and wayward children, victims of evil circumstances, creatures of vanity and of folly, they realize at the end how impotent they are, how helpless in the presence of the coldness of death to redeem or make sure the years that are fled, unless He draw near and assist them who has sustained them in

Nor is it wonderful that this should be so. The higher gifts of the spirit come from God, and hence the good fruit which the spirit yields is also traceable back to Him. “We do not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from thistles; and as a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, so neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit.” 82 And just because the abundance of the harvest of the spiritual life is dependent upon God as its giver, is it strange that any distrust of Him and His Providence s