“O man, be not deceived by saffron and sapphire and vermilion. They are just my splendour-tinted children. They are, because I am; I have sent them; it is I myself who give them being." And so a man's thoughts, words, and actions are the children of his own creation. He may stand below the horizon now while his spiritual progeny but half reveal and half conceal his true self. But he is rising with all the force of gravity to the inevitable hour of self-publication. God will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of all hearts; and then shall each man have his praise from God. For nothing is hid, that shall not be made manifest; nor anything secret that shall not be known and come to light. Wherefore, let us be sons of the morning, walking in the light as He is in the light, and when the shadows are fled and the night is gone, we shall see face to face, know as we are known, and all the hushed voices of the heart will break into full-throated song.

B

XI

THE SHEPHERD GOD

Psalm xxiii.

LESSED is the man who writes a worthy national song! The hearts of all true

patriots are grateful to him who expresses their love for their native land. But what shall we say of a poet who writes a song uttering the deepest sentiment of all nations? And yet, by universal consent, David accomplished this high service in the Twenty-third Psalm. Variously have men attempted to voice their appreciation of this masterpiece of the soul. But there is in it a quality which subtly eludes the descriptive power of all high and noble words. One has likened it unto a nightingale, because it sings so sweetly in the valley of shadows; another has compared it unto a lark, because it soars so high into the skies of divine love. My own comparison, I think, should be that of a winged minstrel, soaring over all seas, flying through all lands, entering all palaces, all hovels, all dungeons; standing beside all graves, all sick bodies, all wounded hearts, all little children, all men and all women of high and low degree-singing-singing to all the happy and sad folk in the

wide, wide world, a song of immortal good cheer and sweet good will. But no matter unto what we liken this fragile 118-word heart-chant, there is ever and always something which refuses to be caught and expressed in words. For the incomparable cannot yield its total self to inadequate comparisons.

I

The first figure under which David thinks of God is that of a Shepherd: "The Lord is my shepherd." How many millions, out of countless generations of young and old, of happy and sad, of healthy and sick, of victor and vanquished, have uttered the words-uttered them out of hearts hushed by a sense of "stilled singing," out of souls made strong by simple trust in the Everlasting Goodness. Evidently this man has thought his way in beneath the foundations of the universe; he has broken through into the heart of being, into the soul of reality, and finds it very good. For what has he discovered in his vast adventure? Just this: All-power and All-tenderness are as wondrously interwoven as the sun and the sunbeam! "Jehovah "—"The Lord"-Omnipotence, that wears the worlds as lightly as a rose wears a dewdrop; Wisdom, that calls the constellations by name and all make answer, "Here we are "; Mind, that knows the career of every sea and every raindrop;

Heart, that keeps the address of every angel and every mortal-this Immeasurable Strength is synonymous with Infinite Tenderness. The boundlessly great is the fathomlessly gentle: "The Lord is my shepherd."

Here, indeed, is the superlative genius of spiritual appropriation. First, it manifests itself in the heart's present tense of vision and insight. "The Lord is "-not the Lord was, or the Lord will be! Half the meaning of religious values is swallowed up in abysmal past tenses and future speculations. Let no man belittle the past or curtain off the future; for the soul that fails to reverence the one and draw hope from the other is a spiritual infant, bound about by religious swaddling bands. Nevertheless, to hark back or leap forward is so strong in human nature, that there is grave peril of overlooking the present, active, guiding, living God. The past is great and sacred, but no past can ever be as great and sacred as the God that is-the loving, righteous Father now abroad on His mission of recovery. The future, also, must be increasingly more splendid and glorious, but no future must be allowed to eclipse the splendour of the God that is" the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus."

The second way in which the genius of spiritual appropriation asserts itself breaks out, like a

spiritual fountain, in that golden little possessive pronoun, "My shepherd." "But is not that rather presumptuous?" inquires an inhabitant of the polar regions of religion. "How could any one dare say that the God of All-wisdom and All-power cares for an infinitesimal me?" After all, that is not a very brilliant question, though skepticism stupidly overworks it, even on the basis of common sense and observation. Look about you these May days. The grass is exceedingly busy. Every blade works from dawn to dark making the earthcarpet a trifle greener; and then every blade sits up all night, threading dewy necklaces that would grace the throat of a queen. And every blade is also a practical philosopher, a disciple of common sense out there in the big June-coming world of nature. For this is what I hear each sprig of green saying: The sun is my sun; yes, the sun is my sun." "How dare you be so presumptuous?" I argue with the frail blade. "Why, the sun is sunk ninety-five millions of miles in space; the sun is the centre of the solar system; the sun is so busy looking after planets that he has no time for a sprig of grass." And so, having pronounced such a destructive intellectual broadside, I strut away, convinced that wisdom will die with me and my ilk! But faintly, sweetly, trustingly, the blade of grass calls: "O, Mr. Wise Man, if the sun has no time for a blade of grass, will you please explain how I came to be?" Unable to answer so simple