That is the supreme wonder — the infinitely gracious God takes charge of thee and me ! We are neither of us overlooked in the vast crowd. "I know my sheep," "He calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out." So let me step out without fear, " Whither he doth lead — to the thirsty desert or the dewy mead."
II.
That We are Guided Aright.
" He guideth me in the paths of righteousness."
1. Here and there in the grazing country of Judaea the traveller will come upon narrow, well-worn paths. Generations of shepherds and myriads of flocks have trodden these old ways. They are the recognized highways, traversing the land from well to well and from fold to fold. To come upon one of these paths is to pick up a clue that leads out from the mazes of the wilder- ness to some familiar rendezvous. A competent shepherd has expert knowledge of all these paths. Only with this knowledge can he plan the day's pilgrimage with accuracy and preclude the danger of being overtaken with his flock by night in wild and undefended places.
The picture which we have before us now is that of the * Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, Verses Wise and Otherwise, 192.
436 GOOD GUIDANCE
shepherd guiding his rested and freshened flock along one of these old paths. It was a fortunate thing for the sheep that they had experienced the rest and refreshment of the well before they attempted the long strip of road that stretched before them now. Eestoration there has conditioned them for sturdy climb- ing here. For these paths are often steep and stony, severely testing the flock's strength. Before the day is done and the night fold reached, they must make heavy draught upon their stored-up energy.
^ A man in Glasgow translated the Psalms into broad Scotch, because he thought that broad Scotch had wonderful affinities in its idiom to simple, old-world Hebrew ; and I think he was right. He said here, " He leadeth me in richt roddins." There are little bits of country-road that seem to lead nowhere, but the farmer needs them all and uses them all. Tourists, if they struck them, would find that they led nowhere ; but the farmer uses them, and the shepherd uses them, and the dairymaid knows all about them for her charge. So with the Lord Jesus Christ. He leads us by little bits. He does not lay out a whole champaign of country, and cast us on the great highway. No ; but He leads us along this sheep-track to-day, and another sheep-track to-morrow. And these tracks never lose themselves in the moor, for He will always be with us, and it will always be found that there was a track and a path, and that it was the right path. Literally translated, it is, " He leadeth me in the straight paths." They have an expected end and termination because He is Leader and He is Guide.^
2. The paths of righteousness — that is an admirable phrase, and yet it blurs the edge of the Psalmist's meaning. It is an interpretation of his words — an excellent interpretation, as far as it goes — rather than a translation. The Psalmist was writing as a poet, and he expressed his thought in a metaphor ; the phrase strips off the imaginative clothing of the thought; explains the metaphor instead of reproducing it; and the explanation is in- complete. What the Psalmist says is that God will guide His flocks in the right paths, the direct paths, to their water and their pasture ; so that the sheep will not follow tracks which will bring them no nearer to what they want to reach ; they will not lose themselves and waste their strength. Or, dismissing the metaphor, he means that God will lead us by the surest and
1 John McNeiU.
PSALM xxm. 3 437
safest ways to the blessedness and honour to which He has destined us. Of course, these paths are righteous paths, or the righteous God would not lead us in them; and only righteous paths can bring us to where God desires us to come.
^ Righteousness has here 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.^
^ A mother, when teaching her little daughter the 23rd Psalm, was asked, " What are the paths of righteousness ? " "Well, dear, you know the little tracks up and down the hills where the sheep tread ? — those are called paths." One day, when out walking with her nurse, Muriel wandered away by herself up a hill. On being asked where she was going, she replied, " I'm walking in the paths of righteousness." ^
So many, many roads lie traced
Where wanderers may stray — Eoads twining, weaving, interlaced,
Eoads sorrowful and gay. Punning through countryside and town
They climb the mountain steep, Through storied realms of far renown