associations. A life we fancy it of serene retirement and repose, where, far from the stir and strife, the mingled smoke and glare of the city's feverish existence, the soul is nursed with quiet thoughts and tranquil feelings, with kind employments and innocent delights,—a life perpetually spent in an elevating and refining intercourse with nature in her purest forms, and her most sacred haunts, where, rejoicing in her untamed and chainless freedom, she plays at will her virgin fancies, and imbues her votaries' mind with her purest and selectest influence. But, while all nations, out of such elements as these, have framed and embodied in their pastoral poetry a beautiful ideal of the shepherd's contemplative and tranquil life, the image must have been peculiarly interesting to the Hebrew fancy, not only from the circumstance that their country and their climate were specially adapted for this kind of rural occupation, that theirs was a land of flocks, and herds, and bees," a land flowing with milk and honey," but from its association with all which was most venerable and sacred in their ancestral history, -with the recollections of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarch-founders of their race, who, long of old, had fed their flocks amidst the very landscape which now was given to their children to inhabit,of the twelve, in whose transmitted names the tribes of Israel gloried, whose answer to Pharaoh inquiring of their occupation you may perhaps re

member:-"Thy servants are shepherds from their youth up even until now, both they and also their fathers;"—and of Moses, their illustrious lawgiver, who was tending the flocks of Jethro on the plains of Midian when the Glorious Presence appeared before him in the burning bush,-the presence of him who afterwards led his people along that very desert "with his glorious arm,”-guiding "his people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron." But if ever there was one to whose taste and feelings the image of the shepherd and his flock was fitted to prove expressive and delightful, it must have been the author of this psalm,-he whom Jehovah "took from the sheep-fold, from following the ewes with young, and brought him to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance." Often, we may well believe, amidst the cares and perils, the toils and trials, of that more arduous charge to which he was thus advanced, would his imagination recur to the scenes of his early youth,-when in the valley of Bethlehem he guided his fleecy care to the green laps of pasture that lay bosomed among the hills, or the springs that trickled from the living rock, feeding the still waters that shone along the vales,-when he made proof of his youthful heroism against the assaults of the desert-prowlers,-when he seized the savage by the beard, and "slew both the lion and the bear," and when, on some more peaceful evening, he awakened all the echoes of the hills with the

minstrelsy of his soft harp,—a sweet and holy minstrelsy, worthy to be breathed among the scenes which afterwards resounded to angelic songs, announcing that in the city of David, and of David's house, a Saviour had been born, who was Christ the Lord. Oh! well may we conceive the peculiar charm and fragrancy with which memory, and poetry, and devotion, would all combine to embalm the imagery of the text to David's heart, when, amidst the height of his kingly triumph and prosperity, the sweet singer of Israel breathed forth this most beautiful fragment, which all literature, sacred or profane, can offer of pastoral song:-"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through 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.'

First of all, then, we find the Psalmist expressing in general the idea which he then proceeds to expand in detail. "Jehovah," he says, "is my shepherd;" that is, he performs and he secures, on my behalf, all that a shepherd, worthy of the name, does and secures on behalf of a valued and favoured flock. The image is one of familiar use in all languages, to describe one who presides over any society for a gracious and benignant purpose,-who governs, keeps, protects,

defends, sustains it,-whose office is to consult in any way, or to provide for its safety and welfare as one who hath authority. Thus, in the most ancient poetry of Greece, one of the commonest of all appellations ascribed to the chieftains who led her various tribes, is that of shepherds of the people; while the books of the Old Testament, in numerous passages, denominate those who presided over either the ecclesiastical or the civil affairs of the chosen people, faithful or unfaithful, good or evil, shepherds, according as they discharged their offices in conformity with Jehovah's will and for the benefit of his people, or the reverse. In the same sense, as denoting gracious sovereignty, kind authority, we find the name ascribed to Jehovah in many passages of Holy Writ besides the present, as in the prayer of the afflicted Church :-"Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock;" or in the answer with which the God of Israel commanded his prophet to speak comfortably to Jerusalem :-"Behold the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him; behold his reward is with him, and his work before him; he shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that give suck." The part of the general idea, however, expressed by the symbol of the pastoral office, on which the Psalmist chiefly dwells at present, is the benignity

and kindness by which it is characterized, and its consequent blessed effects on the condition of those who are its subjects. In this reference, you know that it is the good shepherd's part to nourish the flock,-to provide for it sufficient pasture,-to guide it in a right path,-to guard it from the assaults of enemies, the hand of the midnight robber, and the paw of savage beasts,-to search out and bring back the wandering and the lost, to cherish the tender and the feeble,-to heal the wounded and diseased, and by all variety of methods suited to the particular circumstances of each individual of the flock, to provide for the health, the comfort, and the happiness of all. In this sense, therefore, the Psalmist, knowing that though, like all the brethren of his race, he had once been as a sheep going astray, yet he had now "returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of souls,"-having the evidence within himself of his reconciliation to God, and his interest in his almighty and eternal love,-claims the Immortal Shepherd as his own, and deduces from the sense of this relation the encouraging assurance, which pertains not merely to him, but to all who hold the same relation as he to the Almighty,-to every genuine Christian, every converted man,-"I shall not want," that is,―for the Psalmist specifies nothing as the exclusive subject of his assurance of sufficiency,-I shall lack nothing that is really necessary to my true enjoyment and felicity. Even in regard to the means

VOL. II.