This poem by Mary M. Redding, is based on an actual incident of one of
Dr. George Adam Smith’s Syrian journeys:
A traveler once, when skies were rose and gold
With Syrian sunset, paused beside the fold
Where an Arabian shepherd housed his flock;
Only a circling wall of rough gray rock--
No door, no gate, but just an opening wide
Enough for snowy, huddling sheep to come inside.
“So,” questioned he, “then no wild beasts you dread?”
“Ah, yes, the wolf is near,” the shepherd said.
“But”--strange and sweet the voice divine of yore
Fell on his startled ear--“I am the door!
When skies are sown with stars, and I may trace
The velvet shadows, in this narrow space
I lay me down. No silly sheep may go
Without the fold but I, the shepherd, know.
Nor need my cherished flock, close-sheltered, warm,
Fear ravening wolf, save o’er my prostrate form.”
O word of Christ--illumined evermore
For us His timid sheep--“I am the door!”
(Text.)--_Sunday-school Times._
(399)
* * * * *
Outside one of the beautiful gateways of the magnificent mosque
of St. Sophia, in Constantinople, there is a picture of an open
Bible with this inscription: “The Lord said, I am the door; by
me if any man enter in he shall be saved.” The Mohammedans left
this inscription when they took the beautiful temple from the
Christians; because they could see no reference in it to Jesus
Christ. Everything else that suggested Christianity or the
cross was obliterated. There is a twentieth-century spirit that
would obliterate Jesus Christ and the necessity of His saving
work. But meanwhile He, the strong Son of God, calmly waits
for the world’s recognition. He has presented His proofs, and
the responsibility is ours. There is no other gospel, no other
road, no other Christ. For his own convenience man has invented
a number of “short cuts.” But it remains as true to-day as when
Jesus Himself spoke the words, that he who climbs up some other
way is “a thief and a robber.”--JOEL B. SLOCUM.
(400)