^ An evangelical hymn from this Psalm by Sir Henry W. Baker, the editor of " Hymns Ancient and Modern," is among the most generally appreciated in that collection. The Kev. J. Julian {Dictionary of Hymnology, v. " Baker ") says : The last audible words which lingered on his dying lips were the third stanza of his exquisite rendering of the 23rd Psalm, " The King of Love my Shepherd is " : —
Perverse and foolish oft I strayed ;
But yet in love He sought me, And on His shoulder gently laid,
And home rejoicing brought me.^
^ A. r. Manneov, A Day with the Good Shejfherd, 68. "J. Eaile, The Psalter of 1539, 267.
PSALM XXIII. 2, 3 415
^ What a beautiful, comforting gospel that is in which the Lord Christ depicts Himself as the Good Shepherd, showing what a heart He has towards us poor sinners, and how we can do nothing towards our salvation ! The sheep could not defend nor provide for itself, nor keep itself from going astray, if the shepherd did not continually guide it: and when it has gone astray and is lost, cannot find its way back again, nor come to its shepherd ; but the shepherd himself must go after it and seek it until he find it ; otherwise it would wander and be lost for ever. And when he has found it, he must lay it on his shoulder and carry it, lest it should again be frightened away from himself, and stray or be devoured by the wolf. So also is it with us. We could neither help nor counsel ourselves, nor come to rest and peace of conscience, nor escape the devil, death, and hell, if Christ Himself, by His Word, did not fetch us, and call us to Himself. And even when we have come to Him, and are in the faith, we cannot keep ourselves in it, except He lift and carry us by His Word and power, since the devil is everywhere, and at all times on the watch to do us harm. But Christ is a thousand times more willing and earnest to do all for His sheep than the best human shepherd.^
(2) But it seems more in keeping with the language used to understand restoration to be revival of fainting life. It may then be regarded as an anticipation of that profound saying of Jesus concerning His sheep : " I am come that they might have life, and that they miglit have it more dbundantly " — a life ever enlarging in strength and depth and fulness and joy. The hot sun has been beating down upon the flock, and they are sorely exhausted ; their " soul " is faint and weary, and the shepherd uses suitable means to refresh and restore them ; and then he leads them in the right ways, known to himself, whither he would have them go.
^ Christ shelters us from the heats of life in the shade of His own majestic Personality. The thought of restoration in the protecting shade of the Divine presence occurs repeatedly through- out the Scriptures. It strikes the keynote of the Ninety-first Psalm. " He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most Hicrh shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." It is the central idea in Tsalm One Hundred and Twenty-One. " The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand." It is in view of this that the promise follows : — " The sun shall not smite thee by day." Isaiah
^ Martin Lutlier.
4i6 REST, REFRESHMENT, RESTORATION
dwells upon the thought with evident delight. " For thou hast been a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat." Again, with the thought of the Divine presence in his mind he sings, " And there shall be a pavilion for a shadow in the daytime from the heat." ^
2. Our Psalm is deepening in spirituality and becoming more inward as it proceeds. Hitherto the shepherd-care of Jehovah has been viewed merely in its relation to bodily needs. But man is something more than a body with a set of physical desires and appetites. He is a soul. There is that within him to which the temporal and material order is not correlated. There are sides of his being that Nature cannot touch. There are mountain peaks upon which her sunlight never falls, and slopes which all her verdure cannot clothe. There are spaces that her fulness cannot fill, and depths which her deepest plummet cannot sound. The eye wearies for sights more beautiful, and the ear for harmonies more sweet, and the heart for friendships more abiding and for joys more deep and full, than those of time. Man has a set of faculties which are accommodated with a merely temporal residence in the body, in order that they may find a preparatory school for the earlier stages of their development before being launched on the timeless ranges of the life to come. No view of life can be complete which does not take this side of man into account, and no provision can be regarded as complete which does not meet its needs. Nature is too poor to meet our deepest necessities. We possess a life higher and nobler than that which can be sustained by meat and drink. AVe hunger for bread that Nature never breaks to us. We thirst for waters that never gush from her springs.