ground. Notwithstanding the shepherd's presence, sometimes they boldly attack before his very eyes and endeavour to make way with the hapless victim.

And the City of Mansoul is besieged by many enemies. Without and within, they gnash their teeth upon us. The snake, the wolf, the jackal, the hyena, the lion, and the bear-ah! how cunningly they disguise themselves in "silver skin laced with golden blood," walk on two feet instead of four, only to prove that the animal is less cruel than the man because less ingenious! And then those subtle enemies within us-those smiling, smirking, insinuating little devils of slander, envy, impurity, and ease-how they whip us away from God's great outspread table of goodness, beauty, holiness, and peace! Yet doth God come out into the open and fight for us. Gethsemane, Calvary, and the Despoiled Tomb-these things were not done in a corner, but out under the wide-open gaze of the worlds. Therefore, let enemies gather from the four quarters of the universe, our Lord goes right on preparing our table in their snarling, howling, hissing presence. Like Dante, in the midst of this our mortal life, we are still met in the way by the Spotted Panther of Worldly Pleasure, "light and swift exceedingly "; by the Lion of Ambition, with uplifted head and ravenous hunger, so that the very air seems afraid of him; by the She-wolf of Avarice, gaunt with all hungerings, and who hath

.

caused many folk to live forlorn. But no matter! Let the heathen rage, let kings and kaisers imagine vain things, let hell turn itself upside down and empty fumes of the pit upon the green pastures discovered unto men by the Good Shepherd! Yet will we not fear, because the pastures are more vital and vernal than the fumes are poisonous and deadly. He who out of the fire-mist prepared a planet for man to get a start up the Hills of Eternity, is now upon those high hills of life preparing a place for man to work forever on and never grow weary, preparing a home in which man shall live and love forever and a day and still go on forever wondering at love's inexhaustible fulness.

Finally, there are just two more of these bejewelled orientalisms. "He anointeth my head with oil." The shepherd and the sheep are back from the fields, and he is standing at the door of the sheepfold. For it is evening now, and the sheep are being folded for the night. Witness now the rodding of the sheep! As the sheep pass into the fold, the shepherd holds each one back with his rod, inspecting every one. Here is his horn filled with olive oil, and here, also, is his cedar-tar. There comes a sheep with a bleeding head or a bruised knee or a thorn-pricked side. Oh, the soothing touch of the oil and tar! But it seems to me that the exceeding tenderness of the shepherd is pictured in the words: "My cup runneth over." For here comes a sheep that is neither torn nor

bleeding nor bruised. The poor thing is just tired out, exhausted, and panting for water. First of all, the shepherd tenderly bathes the tired sheep's face and head with the invigorating olive-oil. Then, plunging his large two-handled cup into a nearby vessel of water, he brings it up overflowingly full and lets the tired, thirsty sheep drink until it wants

no more.

Thus, in the light of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Shepherd Psalm is one of the greatest, richest, and simplest interpretations of life and the universe in the possession of the race. David looked into his own heart, heard the music of memory playing there, felt that the Supreme Being who shepherds the worlds through space cannot be less wise and kind than the shepherd who leads forth his flock into green pastures. After looking and hearing and feeling, he sang this song which, if it had power to die, would in the act of death pass into larger life, and go right on singing through the applausive halls of time and eternity. "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

XII

THE LARGER EDUCATION

"But go ye and learn what this meaneth."-ST. MATT. IX: 13.

W

HEN our Lord speaks, the universities of

the world may becomingly stop, look, and listen. For, if men are not in His path of truth, they are in peril; if they see not with His sun-glorious vision, they are blind; if they hear not His soulful symphonies of spiritual reality, they are deaf indeed. Now, spiritually speaking, these Pharisees were blind enough and deaf enough. What a pity that they were not dumb enough! Yet the secret of religious deafness and blindness is its monumental loquacity. Usually, men are diffident in expressing opinions on subjects with which they are unfamiliar. Is it not so of the wise doctor, lawyer, scientist? In chemistry, men listen to Levoisier; in astronomy, to Herschel; in pottery, to Wedgewood; in poetry, to Shakespeare; in philosophy, to Plato; in music, to Beethoven. Each science, each branch of learning, has its recognized authority.

But in the imperial subject of religion, every man has his fling. Pathetic and foolish as it often is, the situation is at least suggestive. It asserts, in

the first place, that man is “incurably religious.” Aristotle called man a political animal; but it were far truer to say that man is a religious being. And this, I take it, is why men who are loath to express opinions upon subjects they know nothing about, are quite willing to speak freely and foolishly upon the synthetic interest of our lives-religion.

But the second and deeper thing of this propensity to discuss religion comes very close to the innermost secret of Christianity. Being constitutionally religious, Christ proposes to make every man an authority on His religion. Not, mark you, an authority on theories, or ethics, or philosophies about His religion—interesting and worthful as they undoubtedly are—but upon the thing itself; upon the vital, pulsing, quivering reality, which beats its music out in manifold expressions, yet rests its throbbing activities down upon the central, basic, elemental life of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Can you imagine a finer, vaster, more glorious, more satisfying freedom than that? Freed by Christ's truth, man's soul transmutes the flames of hell into perfume. Knowing Christ's truth, and the consciousness of ultimate reality He gives, man has the freedom of the universe. All goodness, all beauty, all hope, all love, all high and sweet societies, all time, all space, all worlds are his, though the ages to come may be necessary to bring their complete realization.