Millions have lived and died in faith in that word, The Lord is my
Shepherd; nations have sung its strain into the strength of their
being. The picture of the one who leads His flock, who carries the
lambs in His arms, appeals to all; yet who has not some time, perhaps
often, questioned: After all, is there any one who cares; is there any
eye to see or heart to heed if I--or, indeed, all men--should faint or
fall by the way?
Perhaps there are some who no longer find aught beyond an imagery of
poetic beauty in the old strain, who even feel that it would be
retreating intellectually to conceive of an infinite heart that broods
over men or a hand that helps. They tell us that science has wiped out
the possibility of such an one as this great Shepherd of the flock of
humanity. Yet even they are not dead to this great thought that so
long stirred men's souls and made them brave, ready to sacrifice, to
die.
The truth is, the singer of long ago was but giving expression, in
figures familiar to him, of a truth we all apprehend with greater or
less clearness, one that alone gives strength, hope, and faith to our
hearts, the conviction that back of all the warring purposes and
jangling discords of our lives and our world there is reason, and
order, and beneficence.
The science that seemed to wipe out the conception of a mighty Creator
who fashioned the first man with His fingers, but emphasizes with a
stress that grows from day to day the fact that this universe is not
without order, its forces as sheep without a shepherd; that the stars
are not wandering, nor the least atom without guidance; that, as one
put it long ago, all things work together for good.
If the remotest particle of matter is bound up with the mighty laws of
the universe, guided, governed, led to its appointed end, bound to
serve its purpose, shall we not have faith that the law that guides the
atom and holds the planet, pervades all the universe and takes us in
its mighty grasp?
Not with doubt but with larger meaning and deeper assurance may I sing,
"The Lord is my shepherd," thinking not only of one who takes up my
little life and carries it, but of the great fact of all life under
law, law divine, all pervading, moving in majesty on to the completion
of its purposes. I may not know what the Shepherd looks like; I may
have lost my old simple pictures of personality and appearance; the
larger fact grows too great for fixed words.
This is to see the guidance of the Shepherd in the great things of our
world as well as in the little. It is a strange, a poor religion that
believes that providence will send a man his dinner but never gives a
thought to the great purposes working out through all the strife of our
common life, through our industrial, social, and political problems,
nor remembers that life is more than meals or millinery.
There is the large faith which we need for all times, to believe that a
plan is being wrought out behind all the seeming chaos, that there is a
purpose even though we cannot yet trace its lines, to be willing to go
on doing our work, laying down our lives, because the great world needs
us; the Shepherd cannot bring His flock to the green pastures and the
still waters unless we live and labour and die.
There is only one solution to all the mystery of our lives, the riddle
of history and the universe; it is the spirit solution, that we are but
the offspring, as all things are but the creation of Spiritual forces;
that we are working out spiritual destinies, the green pastures and the
still waters are but emblems of felicities and beauties beyond our
tongue, the full orbed glory of the soul to which the Shepherd leads by
toilsome mountain ways or dreary desert trails; but at last we come to
the house of the Lord, where we may dwell forever.