We too often forget that a psalmist is a poet, and misunderstand his
spirit by treating his words as matter-of-fact prose. His imagination is
at work, and our sympathetic imagination must be at work too, if we
would enter into his meaning. Death a shepherd--what a grim and bold
inversion of a familiar metaphor! If this psalm is, as is probable, of a
comparatively late date, then its author was familiar with many sweet
and tender strains of early singers, in which the blessed relation
between a loving God and an obedient people was set forth under that
metaphor. 'The Lord is _my_ Shepherd' may have been ringing in his ears
when he said, 'Death is _their_ shepherd.' He lays hold of the familiar
metaphor, and if I may so speak, turns it upside down, stripping it of
all that is beautiful, tender, and gracious, and draping it in all that
is harsh and terrible. And the very contrast between the sweet relation
which it was originally used to express, and the opposite kind of one
which he uses it to set forth, gives its tremendous force to the daring
metaphor.
'Death is their shepherd.' Yes, but what manner of shepherd? Not one
that gently leads his flock, but one that stalks behind the huddled
sheep, and drives them fiercely, club in hand, on a path on which they
would not willingly go. The unwelcome necessity, by which men that have
their portion in this world are hounded and herded out of all their
sunny pastures and abundant feeding, is the thought that underlies the
image. It is accentuated, if we notice that in the former clause, 'like
sheep they are laid in the grave,' the word rendered in the Authorised
Version 'laid,' and in the Revised Version 'appointed,' is perhaps more
properly read by many, 'like sheep they are _thrust down_.' There you
have the picture--the shepherd stalking behind the helpless creatures,
and coercing them on an unwelcome path.
Now that is the first thought that I suggest, that to one type of man,
Death is an unwelcome necessity. It is, indeed, a necessity to us all,
but necessities accepted cease to be painful; and necessities
resisted--what do they become? Here is a man being swept down a river,
the sound of the falls is in his ears, and he grasps at anything on the
bank to hold by, but in vain. That is how some of us feel when we face
the thought, and will feel more when we front the reality, of that awful
'must.' 'Death shall be their shepherd,' and coerce them into darkness.
Ask yourself the question, Is the course of my life such as that the end
of it cannot but be a grim necessity which I would do anything to avoid?
This first text suggests not only a shepherd but a fold: 'Like sheep
they are thrust down to the grave.' Now I am not going to enter upon
what would be quite out of place here: a critical discussion of the Old
Testament conception of a future life. That conception varies, and is
not the same in all parts of the book. But I may, just in a word, say
that 'the grave' is by no means the adequate rendering of the thought of
the Psalmist, and that 'Hell' is a still more inadequate rendering of
it. He does not mean either the place where the body is deposited, or a
place where there is punitive retribution for the wicked, but he means a
dim region, or, if I might so say, a localised condition, in which all
that have passed through this life are gathered, where personality and
consciousness continue, but where life is faint, stripped of all that
characterises it here, shadowy, unsubstantial, and where there is
inactivity, absolute cessation of all the occupations to which men were
accustomed. But there may be restlessness along with inactivity; may
there not? And there is no such restlessness as the restlessness of
compulsory idleness. That is the main idea that is in the Psalmist's
mind. He knows little about retribution, he knows still less about
transmutation into a glorious likeness to that which is most glorious
and divine. But he conceives a great, dim, lonely land, wherein are
prisoned and penned all the lives that have been foamed away vainly on
earth, and are now settled into a dreary monotony and a restless
idleness. As one of the other books of the Old Testament puts it, it is
a 'land of the shadow of death, without order, and in which the light is
as darkness.'
I know, of course, that all that is but the imperfect presentation of
partially apprehended, and partially revealed, and partially revealable
truth. But what I desire to fix upon is that one dreary thought of this
fold, into which the grim shepherd has driven his flock, and where they
lie cribbed and huddled together in utter inactivity. Carry that with
you as a true, though incomplete thought.
Let me remind you, in the next place, with regard to this part of my
subject, of the kind of men whom the grim shepherd drives into that grim
fold. The psalm tells us that plainly enough. It is speaking of men who
have their portion in this life, who 'trust in their wealth, and boast
themselves in the multitude of their riches ... whose inward thought is
that their house shall continue for ever ... who call their lands after
their own names.' Of every such man it says: 'when he dieth he shall
carry nothing away'--none of the possessions, none of the forms of
activity which were familiar to him here on earth. He will go into a
state where he finds nothing which interests him, and nothing for him to
do.
Must it not be so? If we let ourselves be absorbed and entangled by the
affairs of this life, and permit our whole spirits to be bent in the
direction of these transient things, what is to become of us when the
things that must pass have passed, and when we come into a region where
there are none of them to occupy us any more? What would some Manchester
men do if they were in a condition of life where they could not go on
'Change on Tuesdays and Fridays? What would some of us do if the
professions and forms of mental activity in which we have been occupied
as students and scholars were swept away? 'Whether there be knowledge it
shall cease; whether there be tongues they shall vanish away,' and what
are you going to do then, you men that have only lived for intellectual
pursuits connected with this transient state? We are going to a world
where there are no books, no pens nor ink, no trade, no dress, no
fashion, no amusements; where there is nothing but things in which some
of us have no interest, and a God who 'is not in all our thoughts.'
Surely we shall be 'fish out of water' there. Surely we shall feel that
we have been banned and banished from everything that we care about.
Surely men that boasted themselves in their riches, and in the multitude
of their wealth, will be necessarily condemned to inactivity. Life is
continuous, and all on one plane. Surely if a man knows that he must
some day, and may any day, be summoned to the other side of the world,
he would be a wise man if he got his outfit ready, and made some effort
to acquire the customs and the arts of the land to which he was going.
Surely life here is mainly given to us that we may develop powers which
will find their field of exercise yonder, and acquire characters which
shall be in conformity with the conditions of that future life. Surely
there can be no more tragic folly than the folly of letting myself be so
absorbed and entangled by this present world, as that when the transient
has passed, I shall feel homeless and desolate, and have nothing that I
can do or care about amidst the activities of Eternity. Dear friend,
should _you_ feel homeless if you were taken, as you will be taken, into
that world?