The Shepherd Psalm

In issuing this new and beautiful edition of “The Shepherd Psalm,” my publishers ask me to write a few additional prefatory words. I do so with the greater pleasure as its issue affords me the opportunity of greeting my many readers across the Atlantic.

Among the happiest reminiscences of my life are the visits already paid to America; among the pleasantest anticipations, the hope of again ministering to God’s children there. And it is good to know that, in whatever country we are found, under whatever sky, we are, through faith in the divine Saviour, members in the same body, sheep in the same flock, children of the one home. In this sense, already there is “no more sea.”

This little treatise has been specially 5 used of God to comfort and help multitudes, largely, as I believe, because it lays so much stress on what the living Saviour is prepared to be to tose who know His voice and follow HimT^^^K There is too great a tendency among us to introspection, the minute scrutiny of motive and emotion, the effort at self-mortification and self-adjustment. In this there is great peril and much discouragement. It is happier and better far to look away from ourselves to Him on whom, as the divinely constituted Shepherd, the entire responsibility rests of bringing the weakest and most erring of the flock through the perils of this mortal life to the land where there is neither drought, nor thirst, nor overshadowed gorge.

f. ft. ynjuifiA.

Christ Church,

Westminster Bridge Road, London

October i, 1895. *.-,<*- =

To see a masterpiece of painting on the walls of an art-gallery while a throng of conventional sight-seers is pressing past is a very different matter to seeing it quietly on the walls of some stately mansion, when there is time to sit down and drink in the artist’s thought, or catch the different lights of early morning, of noon, or of the fading da)’.

Perhaps the enjoyment is the more complete when some devoted lover of the work stands beside, telling the story of its daily effect upon his mind, and indicating subtle beauties which had escaped the first superficial gaze. 7

8 preface

It is with some such intention that this book is sent forth — that, in the quiet of the sick-chamber or of the prayer-closet, attention may be again concentrated on this inimitable psalm; that the familiar words may be considered in the light of growing Christian experience; and that perchance some unnoticed beauty may be suggested by one who seldom comes to it without discerning some fresh reason to thank the Spirit of Inspiration that He ever led the sweet minstrel of Scripture to indite the Shepherd Psalm.

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This psalm has sometimes been called the Psalm of the Crook. It lies between the Psalm of the Cross and the Psalm of the Crown. If the Twenty-second tells of the Good Shepherd, who died, and if the Twenty-fourth tells of the Chief Shepherd, who is coming again, the Twenty-third tells of the Great Shepherd, who keeps His flock with unerring sagacity and untiring devotion. No hireling is He. He asks no wage; He takes no reward. He counts not the cost. The sheep are His own. And in these sweet words we learn*- what He is toward them to-day, in all His shepherd tenderness and love.

Some have spoken of this psalm as a creed. I have it on good authority that one thinker at least, wearied with the perplexing questions that agitate so many hearts and brains in this strange questioning age, and pressed to give some positive affirmation of his creed, began reciting these words with solemn pathos of voice and kindling rapture of eye. And when he had finished the whole psalm he added: “That is my creed. I need, I desire no other. I learned it from my mother’s lips. I have repeated it every morning when I awoke for the last twenty years. Yet I do not half understand it; I am only beginning now to spell out its infinite death will come on me with the task unfinished. But, by the grace of Jesus, I will hold on by this psalm as my creed, and will strive to believe it and to live it; for I know that it will lead me to the cross, it willguide me to glory.”

Yes, the testimony is true. And as’ one looking into some priceless gem may see fountains of color welling upward from its depths, so, as we shall gaze into these verses, simple as childhood’s rhymes, but deep as an archangel’s anthem, we shall see in them the gospel in miniature, the grace of God reflected as the sun in a dewdrop, and things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived. Read into these words the meaning of the Gospels, and you have an unrivaled creed, to which all Christians may unhesitatingly assent.

Others have spoken of it as a minstrel.

f / Before me lies a page that describes it in some such terms as these: that it is a pilgrim minstrel commissioned of God to travel up and down through the world, singing so sweet a strain that none who hear it can remember whatsoever sorrow has been rending and tearing at the heart! This, too, is true. This psalm speaks in language that the universal heart of man can comprehend. It exercises a spell that can charm away the griefs that bid a bold defiance to philosophy and mirth.

“It has remanded to their dungeon more felon thoughts, more black doubts, more thieving sorrows, than there are sands on the sea-shore. It has comforted the noble host of the poor. It has sung courage to the army of the I disappointed. It has poured balm and // /(/consolation into the heart of the sick. h.^

K’Hl It has visited the prisoner and broken his chains, and, like Peter’s angel, has led him forth in imagination, and sung him back to his home again. It has made the dying Christian slave freer than his master, and consoled those whom, dying, he left behind mourning, not so much that he was gone as because they were left. Nor is its work done. It will go singing on through all the generations of time, and it will not fold its wings till the last pilgrim is safe and time ended; then it shall fly back to the bosom of God, whence it issued, and sound on, mingled with all those harmonies of celestial joy which make heaven musical forever.”

But it may also be compared to the holy of holies of old — the inner shrine of that splendid temple which rose, noiseless as some tall palm, at the bidding of Solomon. However eager or noisy might be the tide of human life that throbbed and surged through the narrow streets of the Holy City, or even pulsed in the temple courts, yet there was always one quiet and undisturbed inclosure where angel guardians stretched out their wings in calm repose over the ark of God. There at least was rest; and if the priestly occupants had only been allowed to tarry in that secret place of the Most High, surely they had forgotten the fret and rush of life under the spell of that unutterable repose. Dusty haste and restless anxiety must doff their garments and shoes ere they could enter there.

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