id="id00044">There are many in our day who sneer at that kind of theology—pretty, indeed, as the pearl or the tear, but like tear or pearl a natural and partly a morbid deposit—a mere human process which, according to them, pretty well explains all religion; the result of man's instinct to see himself reflected on the cloud that bounds his view; man's honest but deluded effort to put himself in charge of the best part of himself, filling the throne of an imaginary heaven with an impossible exaggeration of his own virtues.

But it is far better to hold with Jesus Christ than with such reasoners. Jesus Christ tells us that a man cannot be wrong if he argues towards God from what he finds best in himself. If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? … Likewise, I say unto you, There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

That is a true witness, and strikes Amen out of every chord of our hearts. The Power, so evident in nature that He needs no proof, the Being so far beyond us in wisdom and in might, must also be our great superior in every quality which is more excellent than might. With thoughts more sleepless than our thoughts, as the sun is more constant than our lamps; with a heart that steadfastly cares for us, as we fitfully care for one another; more kingly than our noblest king, more fatherly than our fondest fatherhood; of deeper, truer compassion than ever mother poured upon us; whom, when a man feels that he highest thing in life is to be a shepherd, he calls his Shepherd, and knows that, as the shepherd, whose the sheep are, shrinks not to seek one of his lost at risk of limb or life, so his God cannot be less in readiness of love or of self-sacrifice. Such is the faith of strong and unselfish men all down the ages. And its strength is this, that it is no mere conclusion of logic, but the inevitable and increasing result of duty done and love kept pure—of fatherhood and motherhood and friendship fulfilled. One remembers how Browning has put it in the mouth of David, when the latter has done all he can do for 'Saul,' and is helpless:

  Do I find love so full in my nature,
  God's ultimate gift,
  That I doubt His own love can
  compete with it? …
  Would I fain in my impotent yearning
  do all for this man;
  And dare doubt he alone shall not
  help him, who yet alone can?
  Could I wrestle to raise him from
  sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
  To fill up his life, starve my own out,
  I would—knowing which
  I know that my service is perfect.
  Oh, speak through me now!
  Would I suffer for him that I love?
  So wouldst thou—so wilt thou!

Thus have felt and known the unselfish of all ages. It is not only from their depths, but from their topmost heights—heaven still how far!—that men cry out and say, There is a rock higher than I! God is stronger than their strength, more loving than their uttermost love, and in so far as they have loved and sacrificed themselves for others, they have obtained the infallible proof, that God too lives and loves and gives Himself away. Nothing can shake that faith, for it rests on the best instincts of our nature, and is the crown of all faithful life. He was no hireling herdsman who wrote these verses, but one whose heart was in his work, who did justly by it, magnifying his office, and who never scamped it, else had he not dared to call his God a shepherd. And so in every relation of our own lives. While insincerity and unfaithfulness to duty mean nothing less than the loss of the clearness and sureness of our faith in God; duty nobly done, love to the uttermost, are witnesses to God's love and ceaseless care, witnesses which grow more convincing every day.

The second, third and fourth verses give the details. Each of them is taken directly from the shepherd's custom, and applied without interpretation to the care of man's soul by God. He maketh me lie down—the verb is to bring the flocks to fold or couch—on pastures of green grass—the young fresh grass of spring-time. By waters of rest He refresheth me.[1] This last verb is difficult to render in English; the original meaning was evidently to guide the flock to drink, from which it came to have the more general force of sustaining or nourishing. My life He restoreth—bringeth back again from death. He leadeth me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake, not necessarily straight paths, but paths that fulfil the duty of paths and lead to somewhere, unlike most desert tracks which spring up, tempt your feet for a little, and then disappear. Yea, though I walk in a valley of deep darkness, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff are not synonymous, for even the shepherd of to-day, though often armed with a gun, carries two instruments of wood, his great oak club, thick enough to brain a wild beast, and his staff to lean upon or to touch his sheep, while the ancient shepherd without firearms would surely still more require both. They will comfort me—a very beautiful verb, the literal meaning of which is to help another, choked with grief or fear, to breathe freely, and give his heart air.

[Footnote 1: The Greek reads: epi hudatos anapauseôs exethrepse me]

These simple figures of the conduct of the soul by God are their own interpretation. Who, from his experience, cannot read into them more than any other may help him to find? Only on two points is a word required. Righteousness has no theological meaning. The Psalmist, as the above exposition has stated, is thinking of such desert paths as have an end and goal, to which they faultlessly lead the traveller: and in God's care of man their analogy is not the experience of justification and forgiveness, but the wider assurance that he who follows the will of God walks not in vain, that in the end he arrives, for all God's paths lead onward and lead home. This thought is clinched with an expression which would not have the same force if righteousness were taken in a theological sense: for His name's sake. No being has the right to the name of guide or shepherd unless the paths by which he takes the flock do bring them to their pasture and rest. The other ambiguous phrase is the vale of deep darkness. As is well known, the letters of the word may be made to spell shadow of death; but the other way of taking them is the more probable. This, however, need not lead us away from the associations with which our old translation has invested them. It is not only darkness that the poet is describing, but the darkness where death lurks for the poor sheep,—the gorges, in whose deep shadows are the lairs of wild beasts, and the shepherd and his club are needed. It stands thus for every dismal and deadly passage through which the soul may pass, and, most of all, it is the Valley of the Shadow of Death. There God is with men no less than by the waters of repose, or along the successful paths of active life. Was He able to recover the soul from life's wayside weariness and hunger?—He will equally defend and keep it amid life's deadliest dangers.

II. But the Psalm is not only theology. It is personal religion. Whether the Psalmist sang it first of the Church of God as a whole, or of the individual, the Church herself has sung it, through all generations, of the individual. By the natural progress of religion from