to the method of employing a hired servant to keep a flock of sheep,
without giving him a material interest in the prosperity of his
charge. Such is the nature of the occupation, and such its sphere,
that the servant is necessarily far and long removed from the
master's inspection, and if suspicion should arise, proof of
unfaithfulness could hardly be brought home to the accused. It is
the interest of the owner to contrive some method of linking the
profit of the shepherd to the prosperity of the flock. It was by
attempting to accomplish this object by a defective plan, that Laban
afforded to Jacob the opportunity of prosecuting his subtle policy.
While conversing lately with some shepherds on the Scottish
Cheviots, I learned that masters and servants in that district
arrange the matter easily to their mutual profit and satisfaction.
The wages of the shepherd are not paid in money; a certain number of
the sheep, between forty and fifty according to circumstances, are
his own property, and their produce constitutes his hire. Thus his
own interest is an ever present motive pressing the man to do his
best for the flock, and so to do his best for the master.
We assume, therefore, according to the terms of the narrative in their
literal acceptation, that this is a man "having an hundred sheep,"--that
the sheep are his own. He is feeding them on pasture land far from
cultivated fields and human dwellings. Hills impervious to the plough,
and patches of vegetation interspersed through rugged stony tracts, have
in all countries and ages constituted the appropriate pasture for flocks
of sheep. These are indicated here by one word, "the wilderness." The
term is obviously used not in a strict but in a free popular sense; it
means simply the region of pasturage, consisting generally of hills and
moors, not suitable for being ploughed and sown.
A flock of a hundred sheep, although small, is yet sufficiently
considerable to render it impossible for the shepherd to detect the
absence of one by merely looking to them in the lump and from a
distance; he must have minutely inspected them ere he discovered that
one was amissing. Knowing them all individually, he knows the one that
has strayed; he loves them all as his children, and grieves when one
goes out of sight.
It was no mark of carelessness in the shepherd, as some have erroneously
imagined, to leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness while he went
to seek the one that was lost. The main body of the flock was left in
its own proper place, where it is often left from morning till night by
the most careful shepherd, even when he is not employed on the urgent
duty of recovering wanderers.
The shepherd knows the nature of the country in which the sheep is
straying; and also the nature of the sheep that is straying there. He
knows the roughness of the mountain passes, and the silliness of the
solitary truant sheep; he divines accordingly what track it will take.
He conjectures beforehand, with a considerable measure of accuracy, the
pit in which it will be found lying, or the thicket in which it will be
seen struggling. He follows and finds the fugitive. Wearied by its
journey, and perhaps wounded by its falls, the sheep, when discovered,
cannot return to the fold even under the shepherd's guidance; he takes
it on his shoulders and bears the burden home. He does not upbraid it
for its straying; he does not complain of its weight. He is glad that he
has gotten his own again, after it was "ready to perish." Happy while he
bears it homeward, and happy when he has gotten it home, he invites all
his neighbours to share in his joy.
Such is the simple and transparent outline of this ancient eastern
pastoral scene; let us now endeavour to see in the symbol those lessons
which it at once veils and reveals.
The parable is spoken expressly for the purpose of determining and
manifesting the character and work of the Son in the salvation of sinful
men; it declares the design, the method, and the terms of the incarnate
Redeemer in his intercourse with the creatures whom he came to save. But
in the fact of accomplishing this its immediate object, it strikes also
a chord which runs through the centre--constitutes, as it were, the
medulla of the divine government in all places and all times. The
parable spoken in order to afford a glance into the heart of Jesus,
incidentally at the same time sketches the outline of God's universal
rule; as in drawing the figure of a branch you necessarily exhibit, in
its main features and proportions, an image of the tree. This wider
subject, certainly and accurately outlined, although incidentally
introduced, demands some notice at our hand.
* * * * *
Ever since scientific observation discovered the true system of the
material universe, and so, as it were, changed those twinkling sparks of
light into central suns, the rulers of tributary worlds, philosophy
apart from faith has been, more or less articulately, scattering the
question, at once a fruit and a seed of unbelief, How could the Creator
of so vast a universe bestow so much of his care on one small spot? Some
have been disposed to say, and perhaps more have been disposed to think,
with fear or joy according to their predilection, that modern discovery
is gradually putting the Bible out of date. A feeling, if not a
judgment, has in some quarters arisen, that in view of the vastness of
creation, the Scriptures ascribe to this globe and its concerns a share
of its Maker's interest disproportionately great.
This phase of unbelief is refuted both by the necessary attributes of
God and by the written revelation of his will. What relation, capable
of being appreciated or calculated, subsists between material bulk and
moral character? The question between great and small is totally
distinct from the question between good and evil. Number and extension
cannot exercise or illustrate the moral character either of God or of
man. We should ourselves despise the mischievous caprice which should
give to the biggest man in the city the honours that are due to the
best. Right and wrong are matters that move on other lines and at higher
levels than great and small, before both human tribunals and divine.
There is, perhaps, as much reason for saying that this earth is too
large, as for saying that it is too small, for being the scene of God's
greatest work. The telescope has opened a long receding vista of
wonders, where the observer is lost in the abyss of distance and
magnitude; the microscope has opened another long receding vista of
wonders, where the observer is lost in the abyss of nearness and
minuteness equally beyond his reach. Between the great and the small,
who shall determine and prescribe the centre-point equidistant from both
extremes, which the Infinite ought to have chosen as a theatre for the
display of His greatest glory?
In the divine government generally, as well as in revealed religion
particularly, the aim is not to choose the widest stage, but on any
stage that may be chosen to execute the Creator's purpose, and achieve
the creature's good. A battle is fought, an enemy crushed, and a kingdom
won on some remote and barren moor: no man suggests, by way of
challenging the authenticity of the record, that a conflict waged
between hosts so powerful, and involving interests so momentous, could
not have taken place on an insignificant spot, while the continent
contained many larger and more fertile plains: neither can the loss
incurred by the sin of men, and the gain gotten through the redemption
of Christ, be measured by the size of the world in which the events
emerged. It is enough that here the first Adam fell and the second Adam
triumphed;--that here evil overcame good, and good in turn overcame
evil. There was room on this earth for Eden and for Calvary; this globe
supplies the fulcrum whereon all God's government leans. The Redeemer
came not to the largest world, but to the lost world: "even so, Father."
"He took not on him the nature of angels." In aggregate numbers they
may, for aught we know, be the ninety and nine, while we represent the
one that strayed; but though all these shining stars were peopled
worlds, and all their inhabitants angels who kept their first estate, he
will leave them in their places in the blue heaven afar, like sheep in
the wide moorland, and go forth in search of this one shooting star, to
arrest and bring it back. It is his joy to restore it to law and light
again. Rejoice with great joy, O inhabitants of the earth! the Saviour
Almighty has passed other worlds and other beings, some of whom do not
need, and some of whom do not get, salvation,--has passed them and come
to us. He has taken hold of the seed of Abraham, that we who partake of
Abraham's sinful flesh may partake also of Abraham's saving faith. There
is much in this mystery which we do not know, and in our present state
could not comprehend; but we know the one thing needful regarding
it,--that "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners."[76]
[76] "Should not that great and glorious Shepherd, whose millions of
bright sheep fill the universe, leave these millions in order to
seek the slightest, poorest, most infirm of those who need his care,
and without that care would utterly perish; does not his boundless
love require him to go after it?" Stier, after quoting this sentence
in reference to the parable from Kurz, _Bibel und Astronomie_,
remarks, "This is a thought quite permissible in itself, but as an
exposition of what Eternal Wisdom has spoken, it is not valid."
Here, however, the learned critic has incorrectly apprehended the
state of the question. A secondary relation is as real in its own
place as a primary. It is quite true that the parable, under the
picture of the one sheep that strayed and the ninety-nine that
remained on the pasture, points directly and immediately to two
distinct classes of human kind; but it brings up as legitimately,
although more remotely, the distinction, governed by the same
principle, which has in God's universal sovereignty been made
between the human race on the one hand, and angelic spirits on the
other. One expositor may legitimately confine his view to the more
immediate and narrower sphere; but another may as legitimately take
a wider range, provided he make and mark the necessary distinctions
as he proceeds; as one inquirer in physics may limit his speculation
to the solid body of this globe, while another, under the same
general designation, may, with perfect logical exactness, include
also the atmosphere that surrounds it.
Having noticed cursorily that grand characteristic feature of God's
universal government to which the principle of the parable is
applicable, we proceed now to examine more particularly the recovery of
lost men by the Lord our Redeemer, to which the lesson of the parable
is, in point of fact, specifically applied.
1. The shepherd misses one when it has strayed from the flock. The
Redeemer's knowledge is infinite; He looks not only over the multitude
generally, but into each individual. When I stand on a hillock at the
edge of a broad meadow, and look across the sward, it may be said in a
general way that I look on all the grass of that field; but the sun in
the sky looks on it after another fashion,--shines on every down-spike
that protrudes from every blade. It is thus that the Good Shepherd knows
the flock. Knowing all, he misses any one that wanders. He missed a
world when it fell, although his worlds lie scattered like grains of
golden dust on the blue field of heaven,--the open infinite. When the
light of moral life went out in one of his worlds, he missed its wonted
shining in the aggregate of glory that surrounds his throne. With equal
perfectness of knowledge he misses one human being who has been formed
by his hand, but fails to hang by faith upon his love. The Bible speaks
of falling "_into_ the hands of the living God," and calls it "a fearful
thing" (Heb. x. 31); but an equally fearful thing happened before
it,--we fell _out of_ the bosom of the living God. He felt, so to speak,
the want of our weight when we fell, and said, "Save from going down to
the pit." But the omniscience of the Saviour does not stop when it
passes through the multitude, and reaches the individual man; it
penetrates the veils that effectually screen us from each other, and so
knows the thoughts which congregate like clouds within a human heart,
that he misses every one that is not subject to his will. When the
mighty volume is coursing along its channel towards the ocean, he marks
every drop that leaps aside in spray. It is a solemn thought, and to the
reconciled a gladsome one, that, as the shepherd observed when one sheep
left the fold, the Shepherd of Israel, who slumbers not nor sleeps,
detects every wandering soul, and in that soul every wandering thought.
The Physician's thorough knowledge of the ailment lies at the very
foundation of the patient's hope.
2. The shepherd cared for the lost sheep; although he possessed ninety
and nine, he was not content to let a unit go. A species of personal
affection and the ordinary interest of property, combine to cause grief
when the sheep is lost, and to contribute the motive for setting off in
search of the wanderer.
In attempting to apply the lesson at this point, we very soon go beyond
our depth. Our own weakness warns us not to attempt too much; but the
condescending kindness of the Lord, in speaking these parables,
encourages us to enter into the mystery of redeeming love on this side
as far as our line can reach. In that inscrutable love which induced the
Owner of man to become his saviour when he fell, there must be something
corresponding to both of the ingredients which constituted the
shepherd's grief. There was something corresponding--with such
correspondence as may exist between the divine and the human--to the
personal affection, and something to the loss of property. When we think
of the Redeemer's plan and work as wholly apart from self-interest, and
undertaken simply for the benefit of the fallen race, we form a
conception of redemption true as far as it goes, but the conception is
not complete. The object which we, from our view-point, strive to
measure, has another and opposite side. For his own sake as well as for
ours, the Redeemer undertook and accomplished his work.[77] "For the joy
that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame." When
he wept over Jerusalem, mere pity for the lost was not the sole fountain
of his tears. Those tears, like some great rivers of the globe, were
supplied from two sources lying in opposite directions. As the
possession of the ransomed when they are brought back affords the
Redeemer joy, the want of the lost, while they are distant, must cause
in his heart a corresponding and equivalent grief. It is true, that if
we too strictly apply to the divine procedure the analogy of human
affairs at this point we shall fatally dilute our conception of the
generosity displayed in the Gospel; but on the other hand, if do not
apply this analogy at all, we shall inevitably permit some of our
sweetest consolation to slip from our grasp. To be merely pitied does
not go so kindly or so powerfully about our hearts as to be loved;
Christ's regard for fallen men is not merely the compassion of one who
is loftily independent. When an infant is lost in a forest, and all the
neighbours have, at the mother's call, gone out in search of the
wanderer, it would be a miserably inadequate conception of that mother's
emotion to think of it as pity for the sufferings of the child: her own
suffering for want of her child is greater than the child's for want of
his mother; and by the express testimony of Scripture, we learn that the
Saviour's remembrance of his people is analogous to the mother's
remembrance of her child. If you press the likeness too far, you destroy
the essential character of redemption, by representing it as a
self-pleasing on the part of the Redeemer; but if you take away the
likeness altogether, you leave me sheltered, indeed, under an Almighty
arm, but not permitted to lie on a loving breast. My joy in Christ's
salvation is tenfold increased, when, after being permitted to think
that he is mine, I am also permitted to think that I am his. If it did
not please him to get me back, my pleasure would be small in being
coldly allowed to return. No: the longing of Christ to get the wanderer
into his bosom again, for the satisfaction of his own soul, is the
sweetest ingredient in the cup of a returning penitent's joy.[78]
[77] You may measure a square surface and find it to contain so many
feet of superficial area: suppose you discover afterwards that it
has depth as well as length and breadth; to take in also this new
measurement does not diminish the old. If we discover that, for his
own sake, the Redeemer accomplished his saving work, it was not on
that account less for our sakes.
[78] "In the centre of all lies the profound thought, that in God
and Christ love is one with self-interest, and self-interest one
with love; no such contrariety existing between them as is found in
the case of man."--_Stier, Words of the Lord_.
3. The shepherd left the ninety and nine for the sake of the one that
had wandered. I find no difficulty in the interpretation of the parable
here. The doctrinal difficulty which some have met at this point, has
been imported into the field by a mistake in regard to the material
scene. The leaving of the ninety and nine in the wilderness, while the
shepherd went out to seek the strayed sheep, implied no dereliction of
the shepherd's duty,--no injury to the body of the flock. In this
transaction neither kindness nor unkindness was manifested towards those
that remained on the pasture;--it had no bearing upon them at all. Nor
is it necessary, at this stage, to determine who are represented by the
ninety and nine. Be they the unfallen spirits, or the righteous in the
abstract, or those who, in ignorance of God's law, count themselves
righteous, the parable is constructed for the purpose of teaching us
that the mission of Christ has for its special object, not the good, but
the evil. As the specific effort of the shepherd, which is recorded in
this story, had respect not to the flock that remained on the pasture,
but to the one sheep that had gone away, the specific effort of the Son
of God, in his incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection, has
respect, not to the worthy, but the unworthy.
Thus the Pharisees were entirely at fault in regard to the first
principle of the Gospel. They assumed that, because the publicans and
sinners had gone astray, Jesus, if he were the true Messiah, would not
have any dealings with them; without either conceding or expressly
denying their assumption of superior righteousness--that being precisely
the point on which he determined that then and there he would give no
judgment--he intimates that the strayed sheep is the peculiar object of
his care, and that because it is the strayed sheep, and he is the Good
Shepherd;--he intimates, taking the Pharisees at their own word, that
the sinners are the objects whom a Saviour should follow, and seek, and
find, precisely because they are sinners. It concerns us more to know
who are represented by the strayed sheep, than to know who are
represented by the sheep that did not stray, for to the former class,
and not to the latter, we most certainly belong.
4. How does the shepherd act when he overtakes the wanderer? He does not
punish it--he does not even upbraid it for straying; his anxiety and
effort are concentrated on one point--to get it home again. Would that
guilty suspicious hearts could see through this glass the loving heart
of Jesus, as he has himself presented it to their view! He takes no
pleasure in the death of them that die. His ministry in general, and
this lesson in particular, proclaim that Christ's errand into the world
is to win the rebellious back by love. You may suppose the truant sheep
to have dreaded punishment when it was overtaken by the injured
shepherd; but his look and his act when he came must have immediately
dispelled the helpless creature's fears. The Lord has held up this
picture before us that in it we may behold his love, and that the sight
of his love may at length discharge from our hearts their inborn
obdurate suspiciousness.
5. The shepherd lays the sheep upon his shoulders. This feature of the
picture affords no ground for the doctrine which has sometimes been
founded on it, that the Saviour is burdened with the sinners whom he
saves. His suffering lies in another direction, and is not in any form
represented here. He weeps when the sinful remain distant and refuse to
throw their weight on him; he never complains of having too much of
this work in hand. The parable here points to his power and victory, not
to his pain and weariness.
The representation that the shepherd bore the strayed sheep home upon
his shoulder, instead of going before and calling on it to follow, is
significant in respect both to this parable and its counterpart and
complement, the Prodigal Son. In as far as the saving of the lost is
portrayed in this similitude, the work is done by the Saviour alone.
First and last the sinner does nothing but destroy himself: all the
saving work is done for him, none of it by him. This is one side of
salvation, and it is the only side that is represented here. It seems
hard to conceive how any converted man can be troubled by doubt or
difficulty concerning this doctrine. Every one whom Christ has sought
and found, and borne to the fold, feels and confesses that, if the
Shepherd had not come to the sheep, the sheep would not have come to the
Shepherd. If any wanderer still hesitates on the question, Who brought
him home? it is time that he should begin to entertain another question,
Whether he has yet been brought home at all? The acknowledgment of this
fundamental truth, that salvation is begun, carried on, and completed by
the Saviour alone, does not, of course, come into collision with another
fundamental truth, which expatiates on another sphere, and is
represented in another parable, that except the sinful do themselves
repent, and come to the Father, they shall perish in their sins.
6. Far from being oppressed by the burden of his strayed sheep, the
shepherd rejoices when he feels its weight upon his shoulder. His joy
begins not when the work is over, but when the work begins. While the
lost one is on his shoulder, and because it is on his shoulder, the
shepherd is glad. The doctrinal equivalent of this feature is one of the
clearest of revealed truths, and yet it is one of the last that a human
heart is willing to receive. The work of saving, far from being done
with a grudge in order to keep a covenant, is a present delight to the
Saviour. This lesson falls on human minds like a legend written by the
finger on dewy glass, which disappears when the sun grows hot; but when
it is graven on the heart as by the Spirit of the living God, it is
unspeakably precious. When I habitually realize not only that Christ
will keep his word in receiving sinners, but that he has greater delight
in bearing my weight than I can ever have in casting it on him, I shall
trust fully and trust always. There is great power in this truth, and
great weakness in the want of it. Let even an experienced Christian
analyze carefully the working of his own heart, not in the act of
backsliding towards the world, but in its best efforts to follow the
Lord, and he will discover among the lower folds of his experience a
persistent suspicion that the great draft which a sinner makes on the
Saviour's mercy will, though honoured, be honoured with a grudge because
of its greatness. Look on the simple picture of his love which Jesus has
in this parable presented--look on the words, "He layeth it on his
shoulders rejoicing,"--look till you grieve for your own distrust, and
the distrust melt in that grief away.