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Title: The Shepherd Of My Soul

Author: Rev. Charles J. Callan

Release Date: December 2, 2009 [Ebook #30579]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHEPHERD OF MY SOUL***





                         The Shepherd Of My Soul

                        By Rev. Charles J. Callan

                        Of the Order of Preachers

                     John Murphy Company, Publishers

                            100 W. Lombard St.

                              Baltimore, MD.

                         Printers to the Holy See

                                   1915





CONTENTS


Psalm of the Good Shepherd
Introduction.
I. Christ the Good Shepherd.
II. Shepherd Life in the Orient.
III. The Lord Is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want.
IV. He Maketh Me to Lie Down in Pastures of Tender Grass; He Leadeth Me
Beside the Waters of Quietness.
V. He Restoreth My Soul.
VI. He Leadeth Me in the Paths of Justice for His Name’s Sake.
VII. Yea, Though I Walk in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I Will Fear
no Evil, for Thou Art With Me.
VIII. Thy Rod and Thy Staff They Comfort Me.
IX. Thou Spreadest Before Me a Table in the Presence of Mine Enemies.
X. Thou Anointest My Head With Oil; My Cup Runneth Over.
XI. Surely Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow Me All the Days of My Life; and
I Shall Dwell in the House of the Lord Unto Length of Days.
Footnotes






Nihil Obstat:

M. A. WALDRON, O. P. S. T. M.

J. A. McHUGH, O. P. S. T. Lr.

Imprimi Potest:

J. R. MEAGHER, O. P. S. T. Lr.

Imprimatur:

++ J. CARD. GIBBONS.





PSALM OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD


The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in pastures of tender grass.

He restoreth my soul.

He leadeth me in the paths of justice for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil, for thou art with me.

Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou spreadest before me a table in the presence of mine enemies.

Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I
shall dwell in the house of the Lord unto length of days.





INTRODUCTION.


No types more beautiful could have been chosen under which to picture the
character of our Lord and the souls He came to redeem than those of a
shepherd and his flock. As nothing on earth could more fitly illustrate
the infinite love and sacrifice of the Saviour than the enduring labors
and tenderness of a shepherd, so nothing here below could better portray
the multiple wants of our spirits than the needful dependent nature of
sheep. After the knowledge we possess of our Redeemer, only a slight
acquaintance with the characteristics of pastoral life, as it exists in
oriental countries, is needed to discern the charming fitness of these
comparisons. The similarity is at once striking and most easily
understood. Hence it is that our Lord, as well as those who described Him
before He came, so often appealed to shepherd life when speaking of the
Messiah’s mission; hence, also, it is that He was so fond of calling
Himself the Good Shepherd, and of alluding to the souls He loved as His
sheep.

It is the purpose of the pages that follow to trace some of these
beautiful and touching resemblances of the shepherd and his flock, on the
one side, roaming over the hills and plains of Palestine, and the Saviour
of the World with the souls of men, on the other, pursuing together the
journey of life. We have taken as our guide, in noting these charming
likenesses, the Twenty-second Psalm, or the Psalm of the Good Shepherd,
every verse of which recalls some feature or features of pastoral life,
and sings of the offices, tender and varied, which the shepherd discharges
towards his flock.

As this shepherd song was composed and written in the Hebrew tongue, the
language of ancient Palestine, we have employed here a literal translation
from the original language, simply because it expresses much more
beautifully and more exactly than does any rendering from the Latin or
Greek the various marks and characteristics of the shepherd’s life and
duties. The oriental languages, like the people who speak them, are
exceedingly figurative and poetic in their modes of expression; and hence,
for our present purpose, it is only by getting back as closely as we can
to the original that we are able adequately to appreciate the beauty and
poetry of that simple but charming life about which the Psalmist is
singing.

Although the Shepherd Psalm refers, in its literal sense, to the human
shepherd attending and providing for his sheep, it has also another higher
meaning, which its author gave it, and this has reference to Christ in His
relations with the souls He has made and redeemed. It is by reflecting on
this sense of the psalm, and on all His gracious dealings with us, that we
are enabled to realize how rightly and justly our Saviour is called the
Shepherd of Our Souls, and how beautifully the Psalmist, in the shepherd
song, has depicted His relations with us. And how important this is! how
much it means for our spiritual welfare and spiritual advancement to
reflect on the many mercies of Christ and on the love He bears each one of
us! If the considerations that follow assist their readers to appreciate
more fully and love more ardently the Divine Shepherd of Souls, who daily
and constantly throughout our lives is ministering to our spiritual needs
and trying to further our eternal interests, the desire and aim which
prompted their writing will be fully and perfectly realized.

THE AUTHOR.





I. CHRIST THE GOOD SHEPHERD.


It was announced by the prophets of old that the Messiah, who was to come,
should bear the character of a good shepherd. He was to be a shepherd, and
His followers, the faithful souls that should believe in Him and accept
His teaching, were to be His sheep. It was foretold that He would select
and purchase His flock; that He would choose them from out the vast
multitudes of their kind and gather them into His fold, that He would
provide for them and guard them against every evil; that He would lead
them out to green pastures and refresh them with the waters of rest. “He
shall feed his flock like a shepherd,” sang the Prophet Isaias; “he shall
gather together the lambs with his arms, and shall take them up in his
bosom, and he himself shall carry them that are with young.”(1) In like
manner did Jeremias, referring to the comforting advent of Christ, liken
the offices which the Saviour would perform towards His people to those of
shepherds towards their flocks. “I will set up pastors over them,” said
the Prophet, speaking in the name of Jehovah, “and they shall feed them;
they shall fear no more, and they shall not be dismayed; and none shall be
wanting of their number.... Behold the days come, saith the Lord, and I
will raise up to David a just branch; and a king shall reign, and shall be
wise, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.”(2) The Prophet
Ezechiel also prophetically portrayed the Saviour’s character when he
pictured Him in the capacity of a shepherd visiting and feeding his sheep:
“For thus saith the Lord God: Behold I myself will seek my sheep, and I
will visit them. As the shepherd visiteth his flock in the day when he
shall be in the midst of his sheep that were scattered, so will I visit my
sheep, and I will deliver them out of all the places where they have been
scattered in the cloudy and dark day. And I will set up one shepherd over
them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them,
and he shall be their shepherd.”(3)

And when at length the Saviour did appear in the world, He declared, not
only by His life and example, but in explicit terms, that He was the
fulfilment of these prophecies—that He was, in truth, the Good Shepherd,
and that His followers were the sheep of His fold. In the tenth chapter of
the Gospel according to Saint John we have His own words to this effect.
There He tells us plainly that He has not come as a thief and a robber, to
steal, to kill, and to destroy; that He is not a stranger, at the sound of
whose voice the sheep are terrified and flee away; that He is not a
hireling, who cares not for the sheep, and who, beholding the approach of
the wolf and the enemy, fleeth and leaveth the sheep to be snatched and
scattered and torn. The Saviour is not any of these, nor like unto them.
He is the Good Shepherd who enters the sheepfold by the door, and not as
the thief and robber who climb up some other way. To Him the porter
openeth, and He calleth His sheep, and they know His voice and follow Him,
and He leadeth them out to pasture, to rest, and to abundant life. Nor is
this all, for He protects and guards His sheep. By day and by night He is
ever near them: when circling the green plains, or beside the still
waters, or when asleep beneath the silent stars, the sheep are protected
by their Shepherd. Faithfully He watches His dependent flock; and at the
end, as a proof of His love and fidelity, He generously lays down His life
for His sheep.





II. SHEPHERD LIFE IN THE ORIENT.


We cannot appreciate the beauty of this picture of our Saviour under the
symbol of a shepherd, nor can we later understand the detailed description
which is given of Him through the spiritual meaning of the Good Shepherd
Psalm without first taking into account some of the features of pastoral
life as it prevails in eastern countries. For us of the western world it
is difficult, and at times next to impossible, to represent to ourselves
the life and customs of the Orient; and in particular do we find it hard
to picture to our minds and to understand the simple poetry of that
shepherd life for which Palestine has always been known. Time has little
changed the scene of the Saviour’s earthly labors. The people, their
manners and customs, their life and occupations, remain much the same now
as when the land was graced by His sacred presence. Thus today, as in
those olden times, all the level country east of the river Jordan, as well
as the mountains of Palestine and Syria, serves as vast pasture lands for
innumerable flocks and herds. The country throughout is essentially
pastoral in its character, and the care and raising of sheep constitute
the chief industry of the people. From sheep the people are furnished with
nearly all the necessaries of life—with meat, clothing, milk, butter, and
cheese.

The care of sheep is a delicate and, in many ways, a difficult task. Not
that they are froward or hard to manage, for of all animals they are the
most tender and gentle; nor again, that they need abundant nourishment in
the way of food and drink, since they require water but once a day, and
can maintain life and strength on a plain which, to the naked eye, seems
little more than a barren waste of sand. But because, in other respects,
they are exceedingly timid and helpless creatures, especially in times and
places of danger, the burdens which their welfare and safety impose upon
the shepherd, while paternal and winning, are, nevertheless, arduous and
manifold. There are the changes and hardships of the climate—the cold and
frost in winter, and the heat and drought of summer; there are the long
rough walks, the steep and dangerous passes which they must climb and
descend; there are perils from robbers, from wolves and wild beasts, which
not infrequently demand the shepherd’s utmost watchfulness and care. The
oriental climate is such that they can graze nearly the whole year
through; and whether they be grazing on the wide open plains, or huddled
snugly within the sheepfold, it pertains to the shepherd to provide for
their varied needs. His vigilance can never cease. He must lead them out
to pasture and to water, he must guide and protect them, he must gather
them into the fold at night or into caves and enclosures, at times, during
the day, to shield them from great danger, whether from enemies or violent
weather; and upon all occasions he must be prepared to defend them, even
at the risk of his own life.

The folds or sheep pens, it must be observed, into which the sheep are
gathered for rest or protection are not roofed over or walled in like a
house. They are enclosures left open to the sky, and consisting simply of
a high wall of rough stone, to protect the sheep from the attacks of wild
beasts, and from prowling marauders who threaten their safety by night. It
often happens that several flocks, belonging to different shepherds, will
graze on the same pastures during the day, and will be penned in the same
sheepfold at night. While the sheep are sleeping, and the shepherds near
by are taking their needed rest, the door of the fold is carefully locked,
and another shepherd or porter is left on guard, lest perchance a hungry
bear or wolf might scale the wall and destroy some member or members of
the sleeping herds. Early in the morning the shepherds come in turn and
rap at the door, and to each the porter opens. Then each shepherd calls
his flock by name; and they, knowing his voice, follow him, and he leads
them out to their pastures. There is never any confusion, for each flock
knows its own shepherd and obeys him alone. Other shepherds they will not
heed; and from the voice of strangers they flee.

It is a beautiful scene to see a shepherd with his flock. First, we must
remember that he never drives them, but leads them; and they follow him
with instinctive love and trust whithersoever he goes. He usually carries
a rod and a staff: the latter he uses, when need be, to assist the sheep
along dangerous paths and narrow passages; the former, to protect and
defend them, if assailed by enemies or beasts of prey. Another evidence of
their implicit love of their shepherd and trust in his goodness, as also
of their obedience to his voice and commands, is beautifully manifest when
several flocks are led to drink at the same stream or well. Although the
sheep need to drink but once a day, the shepherds never forget, throughout
the day’s roaming, that they must lead their flock to water. And as the
drinking places in Palestine are comparatively few, it often happens that
several herds, whether from the same or neighboring pastures, will arrive
simultaneously at the same spring. But here again, there is neither
trouble nor confusion. When they have drawn near to the place of water
each shepherd gives a sign to his flock, and obedient to his voice, the
respective flocks lie down and patiently wait their turn to drink. The
troughs are then filled with the refreshing water, and when all is ready a
shepherd calls and his flock at once rises and comes forward to drink. The
sheep being satisfied, the shepherd gives another sign, and they promptly
return to their previous place of rest, or move quietly away to their
pasture, as the shepherd may direct. Another flock is then called up,
watered and led away, and so on, in like manner, till all have been duly
satisfied.

With this passing glance at shepherd life, we can better understand and
better appreciate the likeness between the character of the Saviour and
that of the good shepherd. We can see how apt it was that our Redeemer
should choose a shepherd, with his multiple and tender cares and duties,
to illustrate His own watchfulness and loving kindness towards the many
wants and needs of our souls. For we are, indeed, His sheep. He has called
us, we have heard and understood His voice, and He has gathered us into
His flock and fold. He has literally vindicated for Himself in our regard
all the attributes and qualities of the good shepherd, so far as
described, and as still further depicted in every verse of the
Twenty-second Psalm. This is called the Psalm of the Good Shepherd,
because in it the Psalmist, under the symbol of a shepherd, prophetically
foretold the character of the Messiah, our Saviour. The psalm has,
therefore, a twofold meaning: in its literal sense it deals with the
faithful shepherd, ranging with his flock over mountains and plains, and
providing for their every want; and in its spiritual and prophetic meaning
it relates to our Creator and Saviour, caring for our spiritual
necessities. Let us see how this is; and that we may better perceive the
application in detail, let us take this shepherd song, part by part, and
see how beautifully it describes the whole person of Christ as God, and in
His capacity as Redeemer—in all His tender relations with us, and towards
the various needs of our souls.





III. THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD, I SHALL NOT WANT.


How full of meaning and how comprehensive are these simple yet beautiful
words which introduce the Good Shepherd Psalm! They at once sum up the
whole round of the shepherd’s life—his duties, his solicitude, his
ceaseless care of his sheep. But here, be it noted, in this opening verse,
the reference, so direct and unmistakable, is not to an earthly shepherd;
it is to the benign and constant Providence of Jehovah towards His
children, to the untiring love of God, our Father and Saviour, for the
souls He has created and redeemed. The Psalmist is looking back, in
grateful remembrance, upon the history of his race, and upon his own life
in particular, and he traces there at every step the goodness and
watchfulness of his Creator. He sees there has never been any want. Dark
days at times have come upon his nation, sufferings and trials there have
been; and in these, as in other respects, his own individual experience
has mirrored the history of his people; but throughout it all there has
never been any lasting want. As the shepherd is ever near his sheep,
whether at peace or in trouble, to provide for their needs, so, sings the
Psalmist in gratitude, has God been near him and his people. And his
confidence is unshaken; that which has been in the past will be in the
future; as sheep put their trust in their shepherd, so will he put his
trust in his Lord and God. Nor is this gratitude for past favors and this
unshaken trust for the future to be restricted to the Psalmist alone; his
words had meaning not only for himself; he knows the same Providence
provides for us all, and therefore he would have his words find an echo in
the hearts and sentiments of all.

The Lord is my shepherd; He ruleth me with the rod of gentleness. I am His
creation, He has bought me with a great price, He has set me a divine
example and taught me the way to life. There may be times of distress for
me, brief periods of temporal need; but surely, since I am the possession
of my God, and He is providing for me, nothing can long be wanting to
me—permanent want there can never be.

The Lord ruleth me, and all my kind, as a shepherd ruleth his flock. What
a consoling thought to each one of us, if only we be faithful souls! How
unspeakable the thought, how surpassing the privilege to know and to be
assured that we belong to God! that out of countless millions of
creatures, far nobler than we, to whom He might have given the joy of
life, He has chosen to select us; to think that He has allotted to us a
short period of existence here below, during which it is our privilege to
be able to merit and draw near to Him for eternity; and that after this,
our little time of trial, we are to reign with Him in everlasting glory!
Of a certainty we are a favored people and a royal race, for we belong to
God. He has purchased our souls by creating us, He has come down from
Heaven to redeem and buy us back from the enemy to whom our race in folly
had surrendered itself, He has borne our sorrows and our sufferings to
make amends for us and to teach us the way to life, and finally He has
given His own life for our salvation.

Since, then, God has created us, it follows that He must have had us in
His mind from everlasting, because nothing that is, or can be, is
unforeseen by Him. From the remotest dawn of eternity, therefore; from the
very beginning of the eternal years, He saw us as He sees us now, clearly,
distinctly, lovingly. We did not exist from eternity as we do now, but we
were present to God before we were to ourselves, He saw us mirrored in
Himself. And when, in time, He called our race into being and endowed it
with life, we know what happened. This human nature of ours which He had
loved from eternity, and favored in time with existence, turned its back
upon its God and strayed away to sin and death. This was the disobedience
of our first parents, and in their sin we all have shared, for the very
reason that they were our parents and responsible for us as well as for
themselves. We became a ruined race, deserving punishment, fit for
perdition; and yet God did not give us up. He followed after us, as it
were; He pursued us, as a shepherd pursues his chosen flock, until finally
He led us back to His fold, and to pastures of rest and plenty.

It was not enough for God’s goodness to give us the gift of life, and to
endow us with understanding, will, and freedom; it did not satisfy His
bountifulness to make our life fair here on earth, and to enable us to
reap much of the joys and pleasures with which even this world abounds—no,
far more than all this has He wished and prepared for His elect, for the
souls who belong to His flock. It was nothing less than Himself, Heaven
and its rewards, that the eternal Father had in store for us when He
called us into being. In order, therefore, that we should not lose our
destined crowns through the guilt and wounds of original sin, He provided
for us a remedy, He sent us a Saviour, who was His only son, our Lord
Jesus Christ.

Now since it is to Christ, the Saviour, that the spiritual meaning of the
Shepherd Psalm refers in a particular manner, it is in Him especially, and
in His earthly life, that we discern and find fulfilled the chiefest
qualities of the good shepherd. As God, we see, He has, indeed, been our
shepherd from the beginning, creating and endowing our nature, and
providing for us unnumbered benefits, temporal and eternal. But it is in
His human nature, in His character as God and man, that He draws nearest
to us and proves unto us in ways most gracious that He is, in truth, our
loving Master and the Shepherd of our souls. Marvelous, assuredly, has
been the goodness of God to create us at all; and still more marvelous
that He should have destined us for a participation in His own eternal
blessedness; but in no way has the heavenly Father so stooped to us, in no
way has He so manifested His utter condescension towards us, as in the
abasement of His Only-begotten Son, “who, being in the form of God,
emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.”(4) For let us reflect that
to raise our race from its fallen state and restore it to the divine
good-pleasure, it was not necessary that the Second Person of the Most
Holy Trinity should have come down to earth. Such extraordinary means were
not of necessity to bring us back to Heaven’s smile and favor. As by a
simple act of His omnipotent will God had called the world and us and all
that is out of nothingness in the beginning, so again by a single wish of
the same divine will He could have restored us, from a condition of
bondage and sin, to the realms of grace and peace. And even when the Son
of God did condescend, in accordance with the will of His Father, to
clothe Himself with our nature and visit our blighted sphere, how simple,
really, He could have made our redemption! How easily could He have
blotted out the handwriting that was against us, and presented our tearful
world, all smiling and glad, to the arms of His eternal Father! Yes,
Christ could have made our redemption easy. He could have paid our debt to
God in a thousand different, simple ways, had He wished it so. One drop of
His precious blood, one tear of His eye, one sigh of the Sacred Heart
would have sufficed to redeem innumerable worlds like ours.

But the Saviour wished it otherwise. He was our Shepherd and He loved us,
His deceived and wounded sheep. He was with the Father when we were
planned and made. He it was, in truth, who made us, for He and the Father
are one.(5) He, therefore, knew our nature, since He designed and gave it
to us. He foresaw our yearnings and aspirations; He knew the sublime,
transcendent possibilities of which, with His help and divine example, we
are capable; He understood the heights of love and worship to which the
human heart can ascend, when assisted from on high, and hence to awaken
and kindle on earth these all-consuming fires;(6) to stir the very depths
of our souls, and elevate and perfect our gifted nature; to afford us the
utmost inspiration to climb with Him the heights of Heaven. He stooped to
our own estate, in all things made like unto us, except, indeed, our
proneness and ability to sin. Since He loved us, He longed to be like us,
in as far as that was possible, and not even our sin-stained, wounded
nature could stay the force of His love.

There is another reason for the mysterious manner of our redemption, a
further explanation of the extreme condescension on the part of our Lord
towards the frail creatures whom He came to save. Had he come to us in a
foreign attire, with a nature unlike our own, would it not have been
difficult for us to approach Him, and to put our confidence and trust in
Him? If He had appeared like an angel, all bright and dazzling with glory,
if He had come as an earthly king and ruler, crowned and clad in regal
splendor, would it not have been hard for the poor ones of earth? would it
not have been a trial for those who were in need of a shepherd’s love and
care? Already sorely oppressed and trodden down by worldly pomp and power,
they could only have tried to shun His notice and draw back from Him with
feelings of fear and awe. But our Redeemer came not only to save, but also
to teach and to lead the way to life. As a shepherd He was not to drive,
but to lead His sheep; He does not point the direction, but goes before
His flock, and they follow Him, and He leads them out to living pastures
and to bright, sparkling, far-off waters.

Because He was God, as well as man, Christ knew that, as a result of our
sinful state, we should have to pass our earthly sojourn forever beneath
the shadow of the cross. When sin entered into the world by the
disobedience of the first man, the handiwork of the Creator was despoiled.
That which before had been a paradise of pleasure, replete with all
delights, was wrecked and ruined, and became a place of sorrow, suffering
and death. Thenceforth, pursuant to the divine decree, the lot of man was
to labor, to suffer, and to die.(7) Knowing, therefore, that this was to
be our portion, the Shepherd-Saviour of our souls must also teach us the
secret of pain and toil, and help us to bear our cross.

According, then, to our present state, suffering and sorrow are
inseparable from us, because we are born into the world with sin upon our
souls, and in the wake of sin follow all the evils to which the world is
heir. And, moreover, under existing conditions, it is necessary for our
future happiness that our earthly life be largely spent amidst toil and
pain and tears. It is only through these that we shall be able to atone
for the injuries sin has done, and hold in check the disorders of our
nature. The cross is before us and we cannot escape it. It is ready for us
when we enter the world, it follows us throughout the length of our days,
and finally bears us down in death to our graves. This does not mean that
life on earth is entirely made up of pain and sorrow, for the divine mercy
has mitigated even the stroke of sin, and has caused the world, in spite
of all its wounds, to bloom with many delights. Nevertheless, our sojourn
here below shall always be fraught with diverse ills, and we at last must
yield to death. In spite of all the world can afford us, in spite of its
pleasures and joys, its sunshine and pleasing pastimes, real, though
fitful and fast-flying as they are; in spite of health and wealth and fame
and honor; in spite of all the goods that life contains, it still is ever
true that we live in a region of tears, and that death and sorrow are sure
to follow upon the footsteps of joy and mirth. It must be so, for the
stains of sin are indelibly upon the world; and not until the final
renovation comes can life on earth be made entirely happy.

All this our Saviour knew when He chose our human nature and embraced a
life of labor and sorrow. His divine foreknowledge took in our lives, and
the lives of all our kind, until the end of all shall be. Our infant
tears, our trials and pains of body, the ceaseless pangs of mind and heart
that pursue us throughout life, were all before Him as in a mirror, and He
must needs instruct and assist us to fight this battle and walk this way
of earth, lest all should perish before the journey’s end. Since we were
to suffer, then He would suffer also; since our lives were to be amidst
labors and trials, then He would labor and travail also; since we were to
feel the sting of pain, be subject to heat and cold, be in want, in
poverty, and in distress, be misunderstood, be thwarted, be cast down from
our highest hopes, and broken, at times, in every cheerful prospect—since
these and other countless ills were to be woven in our web of earthly
life, He, the divine Master, who came to save, to teach a lesson, to
suffer and die, would assume a body so sacred, so delicate, so pure and
sensitive that, when exposed to the rough and ruthless ways of life, He
could truly cry out from the depths of His anguish: “O all ye that pass by
the way, attend and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow!”(8)

How comforting, then, it is for us to feel that we are not alone in
suffering, and to know that, while all we suffer is but just and due to
our sinful state, we can nevertheless make use of all our ills to attain
to joys unending in Heaven! If we must toil and struggle while on earth,
it is because these things are a result of our state; if we must be
subject to sickness, to weakness and fatigue, to cold and hunger, to
weariness and pain, it is not because God is pleased at the misery of His
creatures; neither does He rejoice on account of our misfortune. We are
simply reaping the harvest of sin and transgression, and sin is the work
of our own free choice and that of our ancestors. And even though it be
objected that we are born into this inevitable condition, and are made the
unconsulted heirs of a heritage we loathe but cannot escape, the solution
of our difficulty is not far to seek. We need but hearken to the
promptings of reason, and lift our sorrowing eyes to the realms of faith
to be convinced that God’s mercy and goodness are above all His works,(9)
and that for reasons not less benevolent than holy He has called us into
life and permitted all our woes. God could not have created us for
suffering and punishment, because He is infinite goodness; He cannot be
pleased at our misfortunes, since He Himself has borne our sorrows and
carried all our pains.(10) If He Himself had not come into the world in
visible human form; if He had not explained our purpose and destiny, and
led the way to Heaven; if He had not, by His words and divine example,
provided us with the solution for all life’s difficulties, then, in truth,
we might object, and sit and grieve and wonder. But in the light of the
life of Christ all this is altered; the picture takes on a different
coloring. Who now can rail at the crosses of life and think of the
sufferings of Christ? Who can murmur at the injustice of pain, and
remember the passion of Jesus? Who can say that God is deaf to our
pleading and unmoved at our tears, and look upon the Saviour dying? Who
can believe that our lives are of little worth, or of no account with the
Almighty, and recall the price that was paid for our souls and ponder the
death of our God?

Thus it is with a bountiful goodness that the Saviour has purchased His
sheep. By His own free choice, by a life of suffering entirely voluntary,
endured for our salvation and instruction, through a bitter, but willing
agony and death, He has provided the means to free us from sin, and has
bequeathed to us every blessing. Now we can truly say: the Lord is my
shepherd, and I shall not want. If only we can look into that divine life
which has been given as our model, if only we can ponder it, and read in
it the lessons, the hopes, the inspirations it contains for us, we shall
not be weary of our burdens and cares, we shall not falter in any of
life’s battles. Rather, rejoicing at our opportunities, eternal as they
are, and with feelings of exultant gratitude over our condition, as heirs
with Christ to the kingdom of Heaven,(11) we shall bravely welcome all the
conflicts of life, being assured with St. Paul that “that which is at
present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above
measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.”(12)





IV. HE MAKETH ME TO LIE DOWN IN PASTURES OF TENDER GRASS; HE LEADETH ME
BESIDE THE WATERS OF QUIETNESS.


Our attention is now directed to a particular phase of the shepherd’s
life, and here we see some of the ways in which he actually provides for
his sheep day by day. For it is not enough that the shepherd has purchased
his flock, by means however difficult and labors however loving; it is not
sufficient that he have procured for them, in a general manner, all that
they need for their life and safety, he must also arrange for their daily
care and provide for their separate wants. Sheep, as we know, are delicate
creatures, and they must be directed in their roamings, and sustained by
sufficient nourishment. Accordingly, we have said that it belongs to the
duties of a good shepherd to lead them out to pasture, and to provide for
them every day adequate food and drink.

Here again we behold the infinite kindness of the Shepherd of our souls.
Not alone has He deigned to stoop to our fallen state and restore us from
death to life, not only did He take upon Himself our infirmities and bear
our woes, but tenderly also has He provided for our constant direction,
and for the daily needs of our lives.

The level to which the Saviour raised our lives and the dignity to which
He invites us are far, indeed, above our natural powers. Left to
ourselves, we could never attain the heavenly heights to which, in His
goodness, He has called us. Through the infinite merits of His life and
sacrifice we have been redeemed and reclaimed from the enemy of our souls;
the gates of Heaven, closed against us before, have been opened wide; and
our wayward race is again restored to the road that leads to our immortal
home. But just because our celestial destiny is of so high and sublime a
character, it is impossible, if left to our own abilities, that we should
be able long to pursue it, and vastly beyond our sublimest hopes that we
should ever finally attain it. We have, it is true, ever before us, the
life and example of Him who has saved us; we know that His cross and death
have delivered us from the wrath that frowned upon us. But we are weak and
fragile mortals. With respect to things of the higher life—of the
supernatural world—we, of ourselves, shall always remain as helpless and
frail as infants. Not less unable is the babe of yesterday to traverse
unaided and explore the material world, than the wisest of men would be to
know and grasp by his natural powers the unrevealed good of the immortal
human spirit. And as, in our natural state, we could not know the true end
of our existence, without a divine revelation, so likewise, we could not
pursue and attain our spiritual destiny without special assistance from on
high.

How well all this was known to our kind and kingly Shepherd! How keenly
did He appreciate our frailty and inability to walk alone the paths which
He had trodden! Not unmindful, therefore, was He constantly to teach and
direct the way which leads to unending life. When going before his flock
and teaching them by force of example, He did not omit to give them that
saving doctrine which, when He had disappeared, would be their guide, and
the guide to their future shepherds in the direction of safety and truth.
Hence He propounded a teaching which should be to its obedient followers a
realization at once of all He had promised them, and of all their heart’s
desires. Not that it would make them rich or great in the eyes of the
world and according to human standards, but that it would confer a truer
and a higher greatness by lifting them above their weak and natural level
and preparing them for eternal blessedness.

Men had the Law before the coming of Christ; they knew the ten
commandments. But the state to which the God-man called them, and the
eminence to which they were raised, were quite beyond anything the world
till then had ever been able to conceive. Human nature, under the New
Covenant, was invited to attain to perfection. Things which before were
thought impossible, were now to be the objects of our daily strivings. It
was no longer an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; now not only was
good to be done to those who were good to us, but to those also who did us
evil; not only were we to love our friends, but to love and assist our
enemies also; not only should evil deeds be avoided, but evil thoughts
were likewise forbidden—yea, we were asked to be, in all our thoughts and
deeds, imitators of the Shepherd who leads us.(13)

Poor human nature, when raised so high above its natural powers, stood in
perilous need of a shepherd’s tender care. The new demands of every day
made indispensible new and special daily helps. While our spirits can see
and know the way, under the light of heavenly teaching, yet how weak and
faltering is our flesh! We have the will to do; but to accomplish, we
alone are not able. Therefore our Saviour said, “Of yourselves, you can do
nothing, but in me all things are possible to you. The branches are
nothing unless they abide in the vine; I am the vine, you the
branches.”(14) Thus He is our Leader, our divine Teacher and our source of
strength. Without Him we can do nothing, but in Him we are strong. And
daily and constantly He is near us, though we see Him not. It is He who
sustains our very life and moves us to all that is good. Like an
ever-present friend, He offers us constant assistance: He instructs and
guides and helps us, and this is the strength and food of our souls. God’s
grace it is, always ready for our use, which makes possible all the high
demands put upon our nature. Without it we should faint and starve on our
journey, and hence He who has planned our high perfection, has provided
the help to attain it. What are those seven wonderful sacraments which He
has left us, but perennial channels of grace, constant fountains from
which stream the life-giving waters that nourish our weary souls and make
them strong for life eternal! Through these sacred means we are brought
into contact with the life and merits of our Shepherd-Redeemer. They
prolong His life and labors among us, they continue in our midst the
strength of His sacred presence.

In a manner altogether special is this true of the Holy Sacrament of the
altar. By the Holy Eucharist, Christ still is with us, and will so remain
till the end of time, as really and as truly as He dwelt on earth in the
days of His mortal life. Bound down as we are by the things of sense, we
may, at times, be tempted to complain that Christ in this sacrament is all
invisible to us. We can not see Him directly and immediately. His voice is
silent and we do not hear Him; we do not feel the caress of His hand. But
nevertheless we know He is present, for He has said it, and His word must
remain, though heaven and earth should pass away. Even were we privileged
to see the sacred humanity as it was seen of old in Palestine, we should
not then, more than now in this sacrament, directly see the divinity
concealed by the human frame. Faith then was required as well as now—faith
in His sacred words, made evident by His sacred deeds. This is not
strange; it is not too much to ask. The same demand of faith is daily made
upon us in much of our intercourse with our fellow mortals. Much that we
do not clearly see we must perforce believe, else life would be
impossible. The same, in a measure, is also true in all our human
friendships. That which is most precious in our friends, that which is the
source of life and beauty, of holy words and loving actions, of all we
love and cherish in them, is the soul, the spirit that quickens and moves;
and this we do not see.

Thus Christ in the Eucharist is truly present, though faith alone can
apprehend Him. He requires of us this faith—this humble subjection of our
sensible faculties to the power and truth of His words. It is all for our
good that now He is hidden from our sight. He is not the less truly
present, not less truly kind, not less loving, not less merciful and
forbearing; but He wishes to exercise our faith, to prove our fidelity and
trust in His teaching and promises, and hence He is hidden from the powers
of our senses.

In the sacrament of the Eucharist the gracious Shepherd of our souls
performs in particular three offices for us: He is our sacrifice, our
silent patient friend, and in communion He becomes the actual spiritual
food of our souls. As a victim He is daily and constantly, from the rising
to the setting of the sun, lifted up for us in the holy sacrifice of the
mass. The mass is the perpetuation of the sacrifice He offered long ago
for our redemption. All the altars throughout the world, on which He is
ever born and dies again in mystic repetition, are but an extension of the
one great altar of Calvary, where first He gave His life for our
salvation. And in this real and awful sacrifice, forever repeated in our
midst, He pleads again our cause with God, the eternal Father. Again in a
mystic manner He suffers for us, again He bleeds, again He is nailed to
the cross and raised on high, and in that same abandoned, pitiable state,
to which His love for His flock has reduced Him, ever and anon in our
behalf He pleads: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they
do!(15) Holy Father, Powerful God, stay Thy avenging hand! and save the
souls which Thou hast created for Thyself, and for which till the end of
time I die!” He lifts, as it were, before the great white throne, His
bruised and blood-stained hands, He shows those wounded feet, the scar of
the spear in His sacred side; He points again to the agony in the garden,
to the scourging at the pillar, to the cruel crown of thorns, to the weary
way of the cross, and exclaims to Him who sits upon the throne, “Behold,
my Father, and see the price of my sheep, the tears and sorrow and blood
they have cost me! and spare them and save them for the sake of Thy Son!”

Through the holy sacrifice of the mass, identical as it is with the
sacrifice of Calvary, all the merits of Christ’s life and death are
applied to our souls. By His physical and bloody immolation on Calvary,
Christ purchased for us infinite treasures of grace, and it is His will
that these graces shall be dispensed to us, even till the end of the
world, through the august sacrament of the altar. Moreover, except for the
mass, we should not be blessed with the abiding actual presence of our
divine Shepherd among us—that is, we should not possess Him in that
special, intimate manner in which we now have Him in the Eucharist. For it
is only in the mass that the sacred species are consecrated; and
consequently it is through the mass alone that He takes up His sacramental
presence in our midst and becomes our food in holy communion. He could,
indeed, have ordained it otherwise, but such has been His blessed will,
and such the condition in which we are placed by the direction of His holy
Church.

Besides being our daily sacrifice, then, under the appearance of bread and
wine, besides ever prolonging in our midst that wondrous act of Calvary by
which at once He liberated our race and reopened to us the gates of
Heaven, the bounteous Shepherd of our souls enters into the tabernacles of
our churches, and there in silent patient waiting He craves the love of
our hearts and longs for our intimate friendship. He is not content alone
to plead for us with God, His Father; He is not content continually to
renew in our presence the tragic mystery by which at the end of His
earthly labors, He procured us every blessing—no, over and above these
sovereign acts of kindest benediction, He wishes to remain among us, and
to converse with us, each and all, as a friend would converse with his
friend. This is what He meant when He said by the mouth of His inspired
writer, “my delights are to be with the children of men.”(16) As a
Shepherd, His chiefest pleasure, as well as His supremest care, is to be
with the flock He has purchased and loves. Yet it is a lonely life for our
Shepherd-King, this abode in the silent tabernacle; but it is all for love
of us. He wishes to be there where we can find Him, where we can come to
Him at any hour and speak to Him, to praise and thank Him for all His dear
and endless gifts, to tell Him our needs and our sorrows, to open our
breaking hearts to Him and reveal the secrets of our souls. This it is
that He desires from us—the outpouring of our hearts and souls in His
presence. This it is which renders unto Him that homage of faith and love
and devotion that He came into the world to inspire. It will not do to say
that, being God, He is acquainted with all our thoughts and aware of all
our wants, for it is intimacy and confidence that He desires, the intimacy
and confidence which alone can create a true and noble friendship. “I will
call you no longer servants,” He said to His disciples, “but I have called
you friends; the servant knoweth not what his Master doth, but a friend is
admitted to confidence.”(17) Christ in the tabernacle is our friend; He
has loved us unto the end, and He yearns for our love in return. Why is
this? Why are we so precious in His eyes? What are we that the great
Creator should at all be mindful of us?(18) We must remember and ever bear
in mind the lofty purpose which the Creator had in view when first He
called us into being—the same purpose it was which prompted our redemption
and all the gracious dispensations that have followed thereupon—namely,
that God, while achieving His own eternal honor and glory, might
communicate to us a portion of His own ineffable blessedness. We were made
for God, and not for the world, or for creatures, or for ourselves. And
precisely because we are the possession and property of God, He wants us,
soul and body, for Himself; and in this blessed sacrament He calls to us
individually, “Son, give Me thy heart;”(19) “come to Me, all you who are
burdened, and I will refresh you.”(20) “come to Me and find rest for your
souls, I will lead you beside the waters of quietness.”

But the excesses of our Shepherd’s love and care do not stop with the
altar and with the tabernacle. He is not satisfied with being our daily
sacrifice and our abiding friend, not satisfied until He enters into our
very bosom and unites us to Himself. Union with the beloved object and
delight in its presence are characteristic of all true friendship, whether
human or divine. That which we really love we desire to have, to possess,
to be united with; and hence it is that Christ, the lover of our souls,
has not only given His life to purchase us for Himself and Heaven, but has
so extended His loving-kindness as to become Himself our actual food.

It is incomprehensible, in a human way, that the love of a shepherd for
his flock, the love of God for His creatures, should be so extraordinary
as to provide the wondrous benefits which Christ in the Eucharist has
wrought for us. We simply cannot grasp with our feeble minds the
prodigality of such enduring love. But the Saviour knew His purpose with
us, and He knew the needs of our souls. As guests destined for an eternal
banquet, and as heirs to celestial thrones, it is needful for us, amid the
rough ways and perils of life, to be constantly reminded of our royal
destiny and strengthened against our daily foes. This world of ours is an
arena in which each one must contend for his eternal prize; and it is not
possible, considering our natural frailty and the enemies that oppose our
forward march, that we alone, without an added strength, should ever be
able to win the battle of life.

Hence, as the body, to maintain its vigor and perform its work, needs its
material and earthly food, so the soul, to live and be strong, must be
nourished with the bread of Heaven. “The bread that I will give,” said our
Lord, “is my flesh for the life of the world ... unless you eat of this
bread you cannot have life in you ... and he that eateth my flesh and
drinketh my blood hath life everlasting, and I will raise him up on the
last day.”(21)

In order, then, to sustain our spiritual life on earth and to make us
strong for our daily conflicts, our heavenly Shepherd has left us a food
which is none other than His own body and blood. What a prodigy of love!
What could He do for us that He has not done? But, besides giving us
strength, He had another purpose in becoming our food. Since He has chosen
us for Himself, and has provided, in another world, eternal mansions for
our souls,(22) He wishes to make certain, not only the happy issue of our
lives, but our ever-increasing resemblance to Himself. He is therefore
preparing us, He is fitting us, through communion in the Holy Eucharist,
for our celestial home, and for visible companionship with Himself.
Intercourse, communion, intimate relationship produce likeness, even here
on earth, and it is a singular effect of Holy Communion that, unlike
earthly food, it changes into itself all those who partake of it.
Material, natural food becomes the substance of our flesh and blood, but
frequent participation in the heavenly nourishment of Christ in the
Eucharist transmutes our whole being—our lives and thoughts and
actions—into its own supernatural character.

Thus by living much with Christ on earth, by intimate converse with Him,
by allowing Him to enter into our lives and thoughts, and shape our
conduct and actions; and above all, by frequent and fervent communion with
Him in the sacrament of His love, we become like unto Him, even here in
our state of exile. And this likeness to Christ, which His faithful
servants assume here below, is a forestate of future blessedness; it is a
preparation for the great reunion and the eternal banquet which await us
in Heaven. Already we are led beside the waters of rest; we are directed
to pastures of sweetest nourishment; and through the calm and vigor that
reign in the soul we experience even now a taste of joys unseen.





V. HE RESTORETH MY SOUL.


Throughout the pastoral country of the Orient there are numerous places of
great peril for sheep. There are also, here and there, private fields and
vineyards and gardens into which, if a member of a flock should stray and
be caught, it is forfeited to the owner of the land. Strange as it may
seem, the sheep never learn to avoid these dangerous spots and forbidden
places, and it behooves the shepherd to be ever on his guard for them, and
to rescue them when wandering.

Here we cannot fail to observe the striking resemblance between this
wayward tendency of the shepherd’s flock and our own inclination and
propensity to wander from God and things eternal. The world is full of
occasions to evil; at every turn of the road on our journey through life
there are fierce and crouching enemies who are waiting the chance to
capture and bear us away. We know this; we have often been warned of the
danger; too many sad experiences and breathless escapes have convinced us
of the sundry perils to soul and body that lie along the way of life. But
we, like senseless, erring sheep, if bereft of the Shepherd’s guiding
care, do not learn, in life’s sad school, the way to keep free from harm.
Though wounded repeatedly, and scarred and worn, and left, perhaps,
without human aid, to waste and bleed our life away, we do not see the
lurking evils; we do not discern beneath the mask the enemy whose purpose
is ruin and death.

The creatures of the world, the things of sense take vicious hold of us,
and often drag us to the very verge of perdition before we are aware. They
come to us unprepared, and seek entrance into our lives and thoughts, and
allure us by deception. They tell us that the world is fair and beautiful
and full of promise; that God, for the moment, is not concerned; that the
soul is secure and safe, and the body and its needs the only object of
present solicitude. The process is gradual. The turning away and the loss
are not at once and from the beginning of seductive influences, but slowly
and unobtrusively in the guise of hope and high expectation. There is
Ambition, with its glittering prospects, with its proffered rewards and
castles of air. To the young man and young woman, just entering the arena
of life, Ambition says, “Come and follow me, and I will crown you with
glory and honor. I will lift you above the common, beaten paths of men and
seat you on a gilded throne. I will introduce you to my sister Pride, and
we two will make you happy. Pride will teach you your true dignity, your
place and position in the universe; she will remind you of your gifts and
faculties, and enable you to battle with the weak and the strong; she will
give you the secret of knowledge and train you to soar above your
fellow-creatures and probe the mysteries of God and Heaven.” Then
Pleasure, with dimpled cheeks and laughing eyes, and words that sound like
music to the ears, hurries out to greet the passers-by, and charms them by
her shining gifts. “Make me your object and your end,” she says, “and I
will make you blessed. Forget your troubles and your cares, your fears of
present and future ills; rejoice and be glad, eat, drink and be merry;
indulge and drain to dregs the cups of sense, for this is all there is.”
Philosophy comes with another hope. “Drink deeply,” she counsels, “at the
spring of wisdom, and fear not God nor man; believe and trust in me, and I
will steal away the sting of sorrow and pain; I will restore you to man’s
primeval state and land you safe on the shores of rest.”

And when these deceivers—Ambition, Pride, Pleasure, and the like—have
plundered and sacked their victim’s goods, when these painted idols of a
passing world have led away their worshippers as slaves, and stripped them
of all they possessed, they give them over to evil habits and to masters
that scourge and tear them. Like other prodigals, these pursuers of
earthly phantoms take leave of their Father’s house of comfort and plenty,
they give up virtue, innocence, honesty, purity; they go into a far
country to waste their substance living riotously, only to awake, soon at
latest, to a land of famine, and to find themselves alone and in want.
Instead of the honor and fame and high estate they sought to gain, instead
of the escape from evil and pain and labor they hoped to find, they are
sent into fields to minister to swine—the swine of their own degradation.

So, to a degree, it is with us, each and all, who listen to other voices
and heed other calls than the voice and the call of God. If we prefer to
stray to other fields and desert the pasture of our Shepherd, if we prefer
a far country to our Father’s home, if the world and its fleeting
pleasures are more to us than God and His paternal rewards, then we must
of necessity find ourselves at length in utter want and penury. It is this
possibility of deserting God, of seeking happiness outside of Him, of
overturning the plans which He has made for our salvation, that gives us a
vision of the awful failure of human life. The gifts of this world are by
nature fleeting and fast-flying, and if we allow them to take the place of
Him who made them, no matter how great our present boons, in spite of
wealth and friends and all success, we have missed our chance and our
purpose in the world, and can only have at last a desolate and a ruined
life.

But how is it, then, one may ask, that man can be so deceived? How is it
that we do not learn from others’ disasters to avoid, every one of us,
those deceiving, ruinous masters, those false gods that can lead us away
from the one true Shepherd of our souls? It is, indeed, a curious fact
that our deception is so easy. Surely a rational, intelligent being, who
stops to consider, ought easily to distinguish between the great God of
Heaven and the creatures of His hands. It ought not to be difficult for us
to see the transient vanity of human things when compared with the eternal
mansions. But the truth of the matter is, that we _are_ deceived, we do
not at all times see the objects of our choice as they really are
objectively. Our vision is defective and blurred. If God stood out in our
lives as He really ought to stand, if He occupied that place in our
thoughts and plans which belongs to Him by right, it would not be possible
that we should ever be led astray. And that God does not always hold in
our lives the place which is His due is partly the result of our fallen
nature; partly, therefore, in a way, excusable; but more frequently and
chiefly from our own perversity—from wilful neglect of our highest duties.

The blindness and perversity of our nature, which have come from the
wounds of original sin, make it easy for us, if we are neglectful and
careless of our higher spiritual obligations, to mistake the false for the
true, evil for good, the creature for the Creator. In the midst of the
world and its allurements, it behooves us to be ever watching, if we are
never to stumble and to fall. Had our nature never been corrupted by
original unfaithfulness, had our first parents never turned away from God
and transgressed His sacred precept, all our present ills would never have
existed. But now it is different. We are born into the world a weakened
people; each one of us has had an implicit part in the first
transgression; we all, like erring sheep, have gone astray. And while this
tendency to evil is part of our natural condition, and therefore less
imputable to us, it nevertheless is true that our actual sins and
evil-doing are the work of our deliberate choice. If, at any time, we
really turn away from God and break His law, it is because we have freely
chosen so to act. The native perversity of nature in a normal man can
never explain and excuse the grievous sins which he deliberately commits.
It is only true that a weak and wounded nature leaves one less able to
choose what is right, and more disposed to wrong. And since we know the
state of things, since we know that the fault is really ours when we dare
to stray to forbidden deeds and places, how constant and unrelenting, if
we are truly wise, should be our efforts to keep our vision unobscured and
our ears attuned to the voice and call of our heavenly Shepherd! We know
that by following Him our way will be certain and clear. Howsoever
enormous the evils of life, and notwithstanding all our weakness, we know
that in Him we are safe and strong. But we must hear Him to follow Him, we
must be guided and directed by His gracious commands.

This failure to hear and obey the voice of God it is which more explains
the falls and sins of men than all their inherited frailty. So long as His
words are heard and directions heeded, mistake and error are impossible.
We see, therefore, why it is that so many actually do desert Him and are
led by evil voices. The cause chiefly lies in the wilfulness of human
nature and in the abuse of human liberty. We cannot stand unless God
support us, and we shall surely fall if He withdraws His supporting hand.
But the choice of evil, the beginning of unfaithfulness comes from
ourselves; for Almighty God will never forsake us unless we first forsake
Him.

If, ever, then, we find our lives to be at variance with God, whether in
lesser or in greater matters, if it should ever be our unhappy fortune to
wander from Him, like another prodigal, and waste our lives with the
enemies of our souls, we can be assured that the desertion is all our own.
We forget God, we deliberately wander from His sight and care, and then we
fall. Engrossed in worldly affairs, taken up with present vanities, with
ourselves, our ease, our temporal advancement, we begin to neglect prayer
and communion with God, we begin to rely on ourselves and to forge ahead
of our own accord, only to encounter complete defeat and be shorn of all
our strength. The secret of our power and success is to keep close to Him,
to speak to Him lovingly and often, to seek guidance and protection from
Him, and habitually to live in His comforting presence.

But such is the boundless kindness of our heavenly Shepherd that, no
matter how often we may have wandered from Him, or how seriously we may
have grieved Him, He is ever ready to pursue our wanderings, and to seek
until He finds us. He does not stop to consider the enormity of our guilt,
or our unreasonableness, or our ingratitude, but He seeks us. He does not
pause to take an account of all He has done for us, of the many graces He
has given us, of the tears and blood He has shed in our behalf; but He
goes after our straying souls, and He will not be appeased until He
restore us. God does not will the death of the sinner, but that he be
converted and live.(23) He knows all our frailties and our diverse
temptations; He knows how alluring are the things of sense to a nature
perverted like ours; He knows how easy it is for us, blind and ignorant as
we are, to forget Him and our dearest interests, and to obey the call of
other voices; all this He understands, and He has pity on us. “He knoweth
our frame, He remembereth that we are dust.”(24)

To bring us back, therefore, when wandering, and to restore us to the
circle of His chosen flock, our Saviour has made ample provision. Through
those divine mediums of grace—the sacraments of His Church—He has arranged
to succor all our wants and to cure our various infirmities. The
sacraments of Baptism and Penance, in particular, were instituted to raise
our souls from death to life, and to heal our spiritual wounds. Baptism
may be aptly compared to the door of the sheepfold. It is the gate through
which men must enter into the fold of Christ, it is the entrance to His
Church. It clears away the guilt and stain of original sin, and restores
the soul from a state of enmity to the friendship and grace of God. None
can really belong to Christ, none can be of His true fold who have not
entered by way of the door, who have not been baptized. Many there are who
pretend to belong to Him and think themselves of the number of His flock;
they speak of Him as their Master and Shepherd; they pretend to be doing
His work; they call Him Lord and preach in His name; but they have not
entered by the door of the sheepfold, and He knows them not. Like thieves
and robbers, they have climbed up some other way, and they neither know
Him, nor does He know them, neither can they understand His voice. Baptism
is the entrance, it is the door, to the fold of Christ.

And as it is through Baptism that our bountiful Lord first recalls us from
the ways of sin and makes us members of his flock, so in the sacrament of
Penance He has provided a means by which we may at all times be recalled
from our wanderings and restored to His friendship. Penance is an
inexhaustible means of reconciliation between the erring soul and God. It
lasts throughout our lives, it stretches even to the end of time. If only
we are men of goodwill and have at heart our eternal interests, we need
not be disturbed at our frailty, or at repeated lapses into sin. There is
no sin which cannot be forgiven by the sacrament of Penance. Not that
anyone, knowing that he can be forgiven, should presume to abuse God’s
gracious sacrament, and yield freely and without restraint to the voice of
sin; nor that we are not to be truly sorry to the end of our days for
having even once offended our benign Maker and Redeemer; but we must be
confident that, whatever may have been our faults and failings, however
prolonged and extraordinary our transgressions, if we approach the
sacrament of Penance with sincere sorrow and a firm purpose of amendment,
God will always lovingly receive us back to Himself, and remember no more
our unfaithfulness. God hates sin, because it is opposed to Himself and is
the only evil in the world, but He loves the wounded sinner who is made in
His own image and likeness. Precious in the sight of God is the penitent
sinner. Does He not tell us Himself that, like a good shepherd, He leaves
ninety-nine just to go in search of one lost sheep? Yea, He assures us
that there is rejoicing among the angels of Heaven over one sinner who
does penance.(25)

To make worthy use of the sacrament of Penance we must be truly sorry for
having offended God, and be resolved, at the time of confession, to do
what lies in our power never again to turn away from Him. To these
dispositions must also be joined the intention of doing something to
repair the injury which sin has done to God. Given such conditions, and we
need only speak the word to God’s duly appointed minister and our sins are
no more. The dark veil which hung around the soul like a cloud is lifted,
and we again rejoice in the smile of our heavenly Father. How simple, yet
how potent are the means provided for our salvation! None but God could
have thought of them, nothing but the love of God could have arranged
them!

But even before the sinner is brought to penance, even while he is
wandering and reveling afar off in the vile delights of sin, God is
pursuing him, God is seeking after him, calling him by name, whispering to
his heart, disposing him for repentance. We cannot return to God, once we
have deserted Him, without His help. It is our awful power to be able to
leave Him, but to return alone we are not able. Wherefore He comes after
us when we have wandered into the wilds of sin; He pleads as it were, with
our souls, and offers us the grace to repent. Oh privileged are our souls
to be thus appraised by God, and happy those who hear and heed the
appealing voice of His grace!





VI. HE LEADETH ME IN THE PATHS OF JUSTICE FOR HIS NAME’S SAKE.


The shepherd country of the East is full of walks and pathways, some
leading this way, some that. Some lead to dangerous precipices over which
the sheep might fall and be lost, others would expose them to the attack
of wild beasts, while still others would lead them so far astray that they
could not find their way back. It is, therefore, always needful that the
shepherd go ahead of his flock and lead them in the right path. The
Psalmist, in the title of the present chapter, is applying this
carefulness of the shepherd for his sheep to our Lord, in His regard for
our spiritual welfare. The Saviour goes before us with the blessings of
His goodness to help and lead us aright, lest perchance we become lost and
perish in our journey.

This solicitude of our Redeemer in providing for the various needs of our
souls is characteristic of Him as Saviour. It is implied in the meaning of
his name. Before He was born, before He was conceived in His Mother’s
womb, it was foretold of Him that He should be called Jesus, which means
Saviour, for He would save His people from their sins.(26) He exercised,
as we know, this mission of saviour throughout His earthly career. It was
for this that He came into the world, for this that He was born in
Bethlehem with a manger as His cradle, for this that, at the age of
twelve, He was found teaching in the Temple, for this that He retired to
Nazareth and was subject to Mary and Joseph, for this that He labored and
suffered and bled and died. And with His passing from this visible scene
to the bosom of His Father, He did not cease to be that for which He had
been eternally anointed—the great High Priest, the Mediator between God
and man, the Saviour of the world. His work is everlasting; and now that
He has gone up on high, He pleads for us ever more with the Father. We
belong to Him, He has purchased us with His blood, and He must needs care
for our safety to the end.

Inasmuch as we are heirs, according to divine decree, to thrones beyond
the skies, it was necessary, as we have seen, that He who is our Saviour
and Shepherd should have left behind Him in this world of ours a doctrine,
a code, or system of instructions and laws, which should safely direct and
guide us to our royal destiny. Those who lived with Him on earth, those
who heard His assuring, life-giving words, and felt the inspiration of His
example and visible presence needed not to fear for the direction or
safety of their course. The divine, living voice and sacred presence of
their Lord and Master they enjoyed, and care and anxiety fled from their
souls. But not for these alone had the Redeemer come, but for all mankind,
for all who in future were to breathe the breath of human life. He came to
save all, He died for all; and thus the teaching which He gave to the
world, and which He committed to His chosen followers, was for every human
being, even to the end of the world, that through it all might live and
attain to life everlasting.

The doctrine which the Saviour left us, and the laws which He prescribed
were vastly different from the teachings of men. Guiding, saving words of
a Shepherd to his flock, they engendered safety, comfort, peace. Free from
error or mistake, sealed with the seal of Heaven, holding out a promise of
future glory, they exhaled the perfumes of the eternal city, they told of
mansions not built with hands. And since this immaculate doctrine, given
for the souls of men, was to last till the end of time, there was need
that it should be shielded against the assaults of the world and protected
from the influence of our changing human teachings. It could not be
corrected, because it contained no mistakes; it could not be changed or
altered, because it came from the changeless God; it could have no
substitute from the part of men or creatures of any kind, because it was
given by Him who alone was the way, the truth, and the life. Consequently
the truths which the Saviour declared to the world as the only means by
which we can be saved, were at once infallible in themselves, and so
provided for that no human agency, no lapse of years or revolutions of
time and place should ever be able to infringe on their eternal,
changeless character. It was to preserve these truths in their integrity
and freshness that He founded His unerring Church and committed to it the
office of custodian and expounder, under the guidance of His Holy Spirit,
of all He had revealed for the salvation of human kind. Hence to hear our
Shepherd’s voice, to understand what He says to us, to know what we must
do to obey His laws and save our souls, we need but listen to the voice of
His Church. Before it was established He declared that He should build His
Church upon a rock, and that no enemy, or group of enemies, not even the
gates of hell should ever prevail against it.(27) He established the
Church as His mouthpiece, and He said to the little band that constituted
it in the beginning, “he that heareth you, heareth me, and he that heareth
me, heareth Him that sent me;”(28) and, as if to emphasize this
declaration, He added that any one who would not hear and obey the Church
should be considered as a heathen and a publican—types of all that was
bad.(29) The Church, therefore, is the oracle of God, it is His
mouthpiece; it possesses and guards the only revelation which God has made
to His rational creatures; it alone has the words of eternal life.

Thus it is that our divine Shepherd goes before us, leading us in the
paths of truth and justice, preserving us from danger and error with
respect to our spiritual destiny. We cannot go astray if we listen to Him
speaking to us through His church. In all our perplexities and
uncertainties, when confronted by any doubt, or confused and distracted by
the wrangling voices and conflicting opinions of men, we can be calm and
at peace, assured in our inmost souls that the voice which guides us
cannot err, that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for
one word of His to fail.(30)

He leadeth me in ways of justice, in the ways of holiness, in the ways
which the saints have walked. How exceeding great, indeed, is our
privilege, and how certain and individual our election! All that remains
to us is to listen to His words and to follow Him, and present peace will
attend our labors, while future glory waits upon our end.

But in the midst of abundant blessings and spiritual favors which have
surrounded and sheltered us from infancy, we are apt to be unmindful of
our state of plenty and forgetful of the duty of gratitude. We are apt to
venture out like thoughtless children, trusting in our own strength to
battle with the foe; or else, on the contrary, we sluggishly presume that
a bountiful Providence will provide for us regardless of our own
co-operation. We have never known what it is to want for spiritual food
and spiritual direction, except when indolence, careless indifference, and
our own folly have led us astray. These are evils which continually assail
us, and we often make friends with them, not knowing what we are doing for
the most part, until the blood of life has almost ebbed away. We are not,
indeed, removed from a world where sin abounds and where deceiving voices
may allure us this way and that. Like the pastoral country of the Orient,
the walks of life are fraught with perils: false teachers, false
doctrines, false prophets, pseudo-christs;(31) “perils from our own
nation, and perils from abroad, perils in the city and perils in the
wilderness, perils in the sea and perils from false brethren”(32)—all
trying to attract and lead us away from the paths of justice and deliver
us to the enemy of our souls.

It is necessary that we should know that wolves are abroad in sheep’s
clothing; “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into
the apostles of Christ.”(33) They come to us with winning words and easy
teachings, with new creeds, new forms of belief, new ways to the promised
land.

The doctrine and truths which Christ taught and which He entrusted to His
Church are set aside or explained away by these modern teachers, and the
novel and the strange are made to assume the role of the old, the familiar
and the true. The harm done is incalculable. How many innocent and unwary
sheep have been lost to the fold of Christ by following the call of these
unworthy preachers and false shepherds! What multitudes of precious souls
have been deceived by their polished words and led away into paths of
error, into deadly ways of thinking, believing, and acting, never to
return to the path that leads to life!

This poisoning of the soul and the heart by erroneous doctrines is
effected in many and diverse ways; the victims of falsehood are variously
captured. There are the wisdom and sagacity of men, there are the
conquests of science and the learning of the philosophers, the discoveries
of our day, the strides of history, the breakdown and overthrow of many
things held sacred by our forefathers—and all these changes and ruptures
in the order of a former generation are now used to beguile the flock of
Christ and sway them from the paths of truth and righteousness. But amid
all this din and uproar of conflicting voices, amid the wrangling tumult
and confusion of converging opinions, those who will may hear and discern
the loving voice of the true Shepherd speaking to the world through His
Church with the same calm, assuring words which He uttered to living
witnesses two thousand years ago. He has not changed, neither has His
teaching; He has not deserted His chosen flock, but is with it all days,
even to the end of the world.(34) His love for us, His watchfulness for
our needs, His enduring care for our interests, in spite of our enemies,
can never fail.

And while assured of this, it behooves us also, as appealing to our sense
of gratitude, and as inducing to greater love of Him, to reflect that this
abiding faithfulness of our Saviour in caring for our wants is not from
any worthiness of ours, or because of our merits, but only for His Name’s
sake, because He is Saviour. It was His love for us that prompted our
creation, His love that provoked His passion and redeemed us, His love
that made Him suffer for us, His love that teaches and shall guide us to
life everlasting, for His love endureth forever.





VII. YEA, THOUGH I WALK IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH, I WILL FEAR
NO EVIL, FOR THOU ART WITH ME.


Besides the paths and dangerous walks in the shepherd country that would
lead the sheep to destruction and death, there are other paths all
encompassed with evils through which, nevertheless, they are at times
obliged to make their way. Safety from all harm there cannot be for the
shepherd’s flock. They must in their journeys encounter many perils, even
while pursuing the proper paths. There are deep and darksome valleys,
walled round on all sides by towering rocky hills, which at times the
shepherd cannot easily escape. And within these shadowy valleys and somber
ravines there dwell not infrequently wild and ferocious animals that will,
if aroused, attack and kill the tender sheep. The utmost care and caution
of the shepherd are called into service safely to conduct his dependent
flock through these places of deepest peril. But in spite of all his
watchfulness it sometimes happens that a wolf will get into the very midst
of the sheep. The timid, terrified animals become wild with fright, and
are scattered, running this way and that, until the shepherd calls and
bids them collect together. No sooner do they hear his voice, than they
all rush swiftly together in a solid mass, and either drive the enemy from
their midst or cripple and crush him to death.

Thus in times of greatest peril the shepherd protects his sheep, and
wrests them from the jaws of harm. The sheep know this, and they fear no
evils; they know that their master is with them. Yea, though they walk in
the shadow of perils and dwell in the midst of the valley of death, they
faint not, neither do they fear, for they know that the shepherd is near.

The case of the sheep in the valley of perils is not unlike our own in the
midst of the evils of the world; and the peace and safety which we enjoy
should be similar also to theirs. We are assured, first of all, by an
unflinching faith in God and our Redeemer that, if we trust our Master and
obey Him, we shall be led aright throughout our lives, even to the kingdom
of Heaven. We shall be led in the paths of justice and love, and crowned
at length with the crown of glory, if we but follow the voice of our
Shepherd-King, and avoid the walks of disaster and ruin. And to hear His
voice and to know it we have but to listen to the teachings of His Church,
which will hush to silence our troubled hearts, and direct our wayward
feet into the paths of heavenly peace.

But, like the shepherd’s flock, we have to avoid in our journey through
life, as perils to our safety and spiritual welfare, not only the false
shepherds and teachers and doctrines that surround us on all sides; but we
must also, to pass to our reward, actually encounter inevitable evils and
fight many necessary battles. Many of the paths of life through which we
must of necessity pass are hard and difficult, and full of deadly perils.
We must remember that sin has ruined the primeval beauty of our earthly
habitation and made our life here below a labor and a toil to the end.

We not only come into the world with sin on our souls, and are thereby
exiles from the city of God, but even when our sin is forgiven us the
remains of the malady continue as wounds in our nature as long as we live
on earth. The deadly guilt is wiped away, but the effects of the evil
remain. And it is chiefly these wounds of our nature, in ourselves and in
others, that render life’s journey, even when pursued in accordance with
the law of God, at times truly difficult and perilous. Fidelity to God and
to His law is not always a safeguard against the wickedness of the world
and of men; at times, in fact, it is just the contrary. Indeed, is it not
a truth that many, perhaps the majority, of those who endeavor sincerely
to please and to serve God must often suffer severely for their very
goodness and faithfulness? Are they not misunderstood, and criticised, and
censured? Are they not frequently accused of all manner of wrong, their
work disparaged, and their motives impugned? Are not persecution, and even
martyrdom, often their portion? Now all this is the result of sin. Those
who call into question the deeds and motives of God’s saints; those who
upbraid, and criticise, and impute evil to the sincere, faithful servants
of God, inflicting upon them dire evils, are but showing the effects of
sin in themselves, are but giving exercise to the evil that rules within
them. Their particular acts and words may be without present malice, they
may be inwardly persuaded that in reviling and condemning their neighbor
and doing him harm, they are rendering a service to God Himself; but in so
doing they but manifest the effects of earlier sin, personal, perhaps, and
original, which has darkened their understanding and made perverse their
moral vision, so that, having eyes, they see not, having ears, they hear
not, neither do they understand.(35) Following the corruption of their own
nature, bleeding from the wounds of original sin, they are prone to
blaspheme whatsoever they fail to comprehend;(36) and thus it is that they
often make life and the world for the servant of God a truly perilous
sojourn, a veritable valley of death.

This failure to be understood, this misjudgment of actions, motives,
deeds, are doubtless common evils from which, in a measure, we all must
suffer. But it is also true that the more elevated the life, the higher
its aims, the loftier the spiritual level on which it proceeds, the
greater the difficulty of its being understood and appreciated by the
majority, who always tread the common paths of mediocrity. A saint is
nearly always a disturbance to his immediate surroundings, he is
frequently an annoyance and an irritation to the little circle in which
his external life is cast, simply because he really lives and moves in a
sphere which the ordinary life cannot grasp. Like a brilliant, dazzling
light that obscures the lesser luminaries, and is therefore odious to
them, the man of God is frequently a disturber to the worldly peace of
common men, his life and works are a living reproach to their life and
works; and hence, without willing it, he becomes a menace to their society
and is not welcome in their company. Worldly, plotting minds cannot
understand the spiritual and the holy; sinful souls are out of harmony
with the virtuous; the children of darkness cannot find peace with the
children of light. And not only is there a lack of sympathy in the
worldly-minded for the men and women who are led of God, but there is
often positive hatred for them—a hatred which spends itself in actual,
persistent persecution. To be devout, to refrain from sinful words and
sinful deeds, to shun the vain and dangerous amusements of worldlings, to
attend much to prayer and recollection, to love the house and worship of
God, to be seen often approaching the sacraments and partaking of the
bread of life at the communion rail—even these holy acts are sufficient
frequently to draw down on the servants of God the curse and persecution
of a world which knows not what it does.

And that which happens individually to the faithful children of God takes
place on a larger scale with respect to God’s Church. The children of this
world, those who have set their heart on temporal things, or who, through
wilful error have deviated from the right path to things eternal, never
cease from pursuing and persecuting the Church of God. They hate the
Church and attack it unceasingly. Like the perverse and blinded Jews of
old who reviled the Saviour and His words and deeds, who pursued Him and
put Him to death, these ever-living and ever-active enemies of light and
truth never abate in their fury against the chosen friends of Christ, and
against His holy Church. But need we be surprised at this? Was it not
foretold? Did not our blessed Shepherd, speaking in the beginning to His
little flock, warn them that men would deliver them up in councils and
scourge them? Did He not say to them plainly, “And you shall be hated by
all men for my name’s sake; but he that shall persevere unto the end, he
shall be saved. And when they persecute you in this city, flee into
another.... The disciple is not above the master, nor the servant above
his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the
servant as his lord. If they have called the good man of the house
Beelzebub, how much more them of his household.”(37)

It happens, therefore, that fidelity to God, and careful adherence to the
paths of justice and holiness, can frequently be the occasion of perils
and sufferings for us individually, as they also are the excuse for a
vaster persecution of the Church in general. All holy persons and holy
things are signs of contradiction. They are not of the world, they do not
fit in with it; and between them and the world there will be strife and
contention until the renovation comes.

But the enemies that lie along the ways of life, that beset and threaten
even the most righteous paths of our pilgrimage, are not all from
without—the most numerous and menacing are perhaps from within. “The
enemies of a man,” says the inspired writer, “are those of his own
household.”(38) That is to say, the most potent evils which we suffer, the
chiefest foes to our present and future welfare are from ourselves—our own
waywardness, our tendencies to evil, our wilfulness, our self-love and
self-seeking, our own sins. It is from these and like causes that we
suffer most. Hard and trying it surely is to bear persecutions and
contradictions from others; severe is the strain to nature when, in the
face of our noblest efforts, proceeding from noblest motives, we meet with
misunderstanding and even condemnation; but to the upright, religious
heart that is sincerely and truly seeking God amid the shadows and
pitfalls of life, the sorest of all trials and the fiercest of all enemies
are one’s own temptations and passions and inclinations to evil. Easier it
were to conquer the whole external world of foes, than to reign supreme
over the little world within. Of Alexander the Great it is said, that
while he actually subdued the whole known world of his time, he
nevertheless yielded in defeat before his own passions. He could overcome
his external enemies, but surrendered miserably in the battle with self.

This, then, is our greatest warfare, the struggle with ourselves; and this
our greatest victory, a triumph over self. “If each year,” says the
Imitation, “we could uproot but one evil inclination, how soon we should
be perfect men!”(39) But it is not for us to be free from enemies and
perils, both from without and from within, during our earthly sojourn.
They are a part of our lot here below, they are necessarily bound up with
the darkened regions through which the Shepherd must lead his flock; and
hence, entire safety there shall never be before the journey’s end, until
we say farewell to present woes, and hail “the happy fields, where joy
forever dwells.”

In our present state, therefore, it is important for us to realize our
dangers and to be prepared for conflict. There is no way of escape from
crosses, and perils, and dreadful battles for all those who wish to win
the crown of victory. They must follow the Shepherd as he leads the way,
and hence our Lord has said, “if any man will come after me, let him take
up his cross daily and follow me.”(40) Yes, it is the following of the
Shepherd, it is his leadership, his constant presence, that give comfort
to the sheep, and dispel the dread and fear of perils. And though we pass
through the valley and shadow of death, we need fear no evil, for He is
with us. At times, frequently perhaps, as we sail the sea of life, the
waves roll over and deluge us so completely that we are all but smothered.
The clouds gather, thick and black, and overcast the sky of our souls; the
sorrows of death surround us, and the pains of the pit encompass us;(41)
we are overwhelmed with sadness and plunged in darkness. We think of God,
we remember Him, but He seems afar off. The evil which weighs us down—the
pain of body, the agony of soul, the sadness and dejection of heart and
mind, “the madness that worketh in the brain,” muffle the voice and all
but still the trembling pulse, and we are not able so much as to lift our
drooping heads and tear-dimmed eyes to see the gentle Shepherd standing
faithfully at our side. It is our failure to discern and apprehend Him
that causes extreme agony. If at these times of utter desolation, when the
soul is swept by the winds of sorrow, we could only raise our eyes and
thoughts to Him, with faith and hope and child-like trust, the spell would
be broken; and we should see the clouds lift and part and float away on
the wind, only to let in God’s cheerful sun to raise the drooping spirit,
and warm and soothe the troubled soul.

But it is difficult, when oppressed by sorrow and affliction, to lift the
heart and mind to things above. Nature of itself tends downward, and
unless it has learned to discipline itself and to engage with the enemy in
sturdy battle, it is not yet prepared for life. For the world is a
battlefield and life a warfare, even from a natural point of view, and
only they can hope to win in life’s hard contest who have learned to brave
the battle, who have prepared themselves for conflict. But who is ready
for the struggle, and how shall we be able to encounter our foes? Left to
ourselves and to our own resources, we shall surely go down in defeat. The
opposing forces are too gigantic, too numerous. They throng from near and
from afar. They swarm from within and from without; from our own nature
and from others, from the world around, and from our own household; from
those at home, and from them that are abroad. Frequently during life we
are, of a certainty, encompassed round with perils; we hardly know where
to turn or what to do, we are breathless with fright; but even then, if we
have proper faith, we shall grow calm, like the shepherd’s flock in the
midst of devouring animals and beasts of prey, for our Saviour and
Shepherd is with us, and no evil can befall us. Even when we think Him
farthest, He is often nearest; when we think Him sleeping, His heart is
watching. He loves us, His weak and timid sheep; we are the objects of His
heart’s affection and ever active solicitude; He will not let perish, if
we trust Him, the price of His precious Blood.

And the training we are to receive, and the preparation we are to make, in
order worthily and victoriously to engage in the battle of life are
nothing, therefore, but lessons of love and trust in the constant goodness
and faithfulness of our divine Saviour. Unless we viciously drive Him away
by deliberate, grievous sin, He is really never absent from us, and least
of all when we need Him most. It is our fault, if we do not by faith
discern Him, if we do not feel His ever-gracious presence. We need to
discipline ourselves in acts and deeds of faith and love, and then we
shall realize that He is always near us, even in the darkness of the
shadow of death.

We must try to know our Shepherd, first of all; we must endeavor
intimately to understand Him. For to have faith in Him, to trust Him, to
believe in His power and goodness, in His overruling care for us and our
interests, presuppose a knowledge of Him, just as faith and confidence in
an earthly friend follow upon an intimate acquaintance with that friend.
But this close knowledge of our Master, so necessary to our present peace
and future happiness, will never be ours unless we make Him our confidant,
unless we accustom ourselves to live in His presence, to look to Him, to
speak to Him often, to listen to His gracious direction. And this intimate
relationship with our Saviour, this habitual communion with Him, will
enkindle in our souls the fire of love. Once we know Him, we will trust
Him, and having faith and confidence in Him, we will link our poor lives
to His divine life by the strong cords of heavenly charity. Fear and
uncertainty will then be impossible, even in the darkest hours.

It is love, above all, that directs our life—love, indeed, which is born
of knowledge. We do not, it is true, love anything before we have some
knowledge of it; this would be an impossibility; but once the soul has
caught the vision, it is love that drives the life and stimulates and
enriches the knowledge. The objects of our affections are the interpreters
of our life and actions. If we love the world, we are led by the world; if
we love God, it is God that leads and directs us. Where the treasure is,
there will the heart be also;(42) and where the heart is, thither will the
life make its way. But if God is the object of our love, we shall fear no
evil; for “God is charity,” says St. John, “and he that abideth in
charity, abideth in God, and God in him ... Fear is not in charity; but
perfect charity casteth out fear, because fear hath pain.”(43)

It is only the love of God, therefore, that will steady our lives, and
bear us up in the thick of tribulations. It is the confident assurance
that we, although so unworthy, are the objects of divine complacency that
awakens in our hearts a return of burning charity, and enables us to say,
with the Psalmist, when the day is darkest “The Lord is my light and
salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life; of
whom shall I be afraid?”(44) We are not to fear men, said our Lord, who,
when they have destroyed the body, can do no more;(45) neither shall we be
in dread of our Master, if armed with the gift of His love, “for fear hath
pain, but love casteth out fear.” Rather shall we, like the martyrs of
old, mindful of the gift of God, go bravely forth to the battle of life,
or to the slaughter, calmly, hopefully, cheerfully. While humbly, but
steadfastly trustful of the Shepherd that leads us, we shall not be
disturbed or troubled; the present shall be shorn of its terrors, the
future of its forebodings. This truly is the triumph of life, when love,
not fear, has come to rule us. This is the broader, larger life—the
forerunner of life eternal in which our days are passed in calm
serenity—in which we press on with undaunted tread, alike under frowning
clouds, or under a star-lit sky; alike with the joys of friendship around
us, or alone amidst the graves of the dead.

We must not infer from this that the love of God which is our strength,
the source of our courage, will blunt our feelings or harden our lives. It
does not seal up the fountain of tears, or make us insensible to the pains
and sorrows of life, which belong to the lot of all. In a certain sense it
is likely true that those suffer most in life who are most united to God;
for they feel most the coldness of the world and its desolation, its want
of love and sympathy, its degradation and its misery. Hence it would be a
mistake to think that the friends of God in this life are either exempted
from pain and sorrow, or made insensible to them, either in themselves or
in others. Of these and other evils they are truly more keenly aware than
worldly men, if for no other reason than because of the superior
refinement of their nature and the spiritual outlook of their vision. It
is sin, after all, that hardens while it weakens. Sin closes the heart to
love, it renders its victims cold, unsympathetic and selfish; whereas the
gifts of grace and holiness are tenderness, mercy, strength. But though
all have to suffer, both the holy and the unholy, the difference between
them is this, that the ungodly are borne down and overcome by their
sorrows and crosses, while the spiritual are always triumphing even in the
midst of apparent defeat. To the foolish they seem to be vanquished, yet
they conquer; often they seem on the verge of surrender, when they emerge
in victory; they seem to die, when behold they live!(46)

The spiritual man, then, does suffer; he suffers in the cause of God; he
suffers for others and for himself. More than this, it is doubtless true
that he feels his crosses more keenly, he grieves more profoundly, than do
the children of the world; but through it all he remembers his Saviour and
is comforted. He knows that the tribulations of the just are many, and
that from all these the Lord will soon deliver him,(47) and he shall not
be confounded forever.





VIII. THY ROD AND THY STAFF THEY COMFORT ME.


It is already plain to us that the sorrows and sufferings of the present
life are, without doubt, the result and consequence of sin. That we should
pass our mortal days so full of pain and tears, that our fellow-man, that
the beasts of the field and the elements, which we need and use as helpers
and servants, and most of all that our own nature, with its passions and
evil tendencies, should rise up against us and oppose us, was assuredly
not a part of the original plan. As a wise and all-powerful Designer and
Creator, God founded the world after a masterful fashion—devoid of evil,
free from defect, perfect according to the plans framed in Heaven. The
hills and mountains He founded and set on their bases; the streams and
rivers and valleys He formed, all rich and lovely, intended for the
comfort and happiness of man; the blue deep He constructed and beautified
with its millions of shining wonders; and in all these stupendous
creations, in all the diverse works of His mighty, omnipotent hands there
was in the beginning no trace of fault, of defect, of error or sin. The
upheaval came when man disobeyed and wrought the commencement of all our
woe. And hence it is to man’s first disobedience and the fruit of that
forbidden tree, that we owe all the evils from which our nature suffers
and to which our flesh is heir.

But although we know the source of our sorrows and feel the guilt of our
sins, this does not make our burden lighter or shorten the path of our
pilgrimage. We are confronted by the problem of labor and suffering as
soon as we enter the world. No one is entirely exempted; and, strange as
it is, we see that it frequently happens, that those are most afflicted
who are farthest removed from the wickedness of the world and purest in
the sight of God. “Many are the tribulations of the just;” and how true is
it that the very fidelity of the servants of God is often an occasion of
their sufferings! It is not wonderful that sorrow and fear should be the
portion of sinners throughout the length of their days, for “contrition
and unhappiness are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not
known;”(48) but that all, even the saints of God, should suffer alike and
be oppressed with miseries is, at first sight, a problem and a baffling
mystery.

It is something, indeed, to feel in our suffering that we are paying the
debt of our sins, whether personal, or original, or both; it is much to
know that our crosses, severe and inevitable as they are, are a curb to
our wayward nature, and a restraint against further sins; it is assuredly
a great privilege and a high honor that we, unworthy and unfaithful
servants of our Master, should, through our tears and sorrows and
sufferings, be enabled to conform our poor lives to the tearful and
sorrowful life of our Saviour; it is a comfort that words cannot tell to
be assured by our faith that in the midst of pains and perils the Shepherd
of our souls is ever near to shield, to guard, and to save—all this is
surely much—enough to encourage and strengthen us daily to take up our
cross and joyfully follow our Redeemer, even to the hill of Calvary, even
to the death of the cross. But this is not all. A deeper meaning lies
hidden behind the veil of tears, beneath the cloak of pain and sorrow. The
miseries of life are not a mere inheritance, neither is their value of a
purely negative character. We instinctively feel that somehow, somewhere
beyond the scope of mortal ken, there is a higher explanation and a more
valid justification for all the failures and pains and sorrows of life,
than that which appears on the surface of things, or issues in results
that are only negative. Suffering for its own sake was never intended; and
we were not made to suffer. We were not created for misery, but for
happiness; not for failure, but for victory; not for death, but for life;
not for time, but for eternity. And hence there is a deeper meaning, a
higher explanation for all the failures and miseries of the present life
than those that are apparent to the casual observer.

In the title of this chapter the Psalmist, referring to the shepherd’s
care for his sheep, says: “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” The
staff the shepherd uses, as already explained, is to assist the sheep
along their perilous journeys, and the rod to protect them in case of
attack. The rod and the staff are necessary for the welfare of the flock,
necessary to guide and shield them in their wanderings, and to bring them
safely home. So too, it is with us, the children of God. To be properly
protected and guided to our happy end we have need of the rod of
affliction and adversity, and likewise of the staff of mercy.

Although human miseries—pain, poverty, suffering and death—are, as we
know, the consequences, just and equitable, of original sin, it is a
shortsighted faith and a defective vision that find in these crosses only
chastisement for sin. Truly, they should not have been, had we never
sinned; but as God, in His mercy, draws good out of evil, so has He made
these inevitable results of our transgression serve a higher purpose and
minister to noble ends. The Saviour came that we might have life, that we
might progress and advance to ever fuller and more abundant life.(49) His
aim, and the aim and purpose of His heavenly Father, since the very dawn
of our creation, has been to lead us to happiness—to perfect, abundant,
eternal happiness. It would be of little account to be happy here, unless
we are also to rejoice eternally. It would be a poor exchange and a paltry
satisfaction, to be present at the feasts of men, only to forfeit our
place at the banquet of angels. But our heavenly reward and our celestial
crown are to be merited and won here below; they are to follow upon our
earthly labors. “Only he shall be crowned,” says St. Paul, “who has
legitimately engaged in the battle.”(50) And did not the Master say
Himself, “Let him who wishes to come after me deny himself and take up his
cross and follow me?”(51) Did He not declare that we must die to live?
that we must surrender our life here, if we would keep it eternally?
“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falling into the
ground die, itself remaineth alone. But if it die it bringeth forth much
fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life
in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal.”(52) We cannot serve two
masters, we cannot serve God and mammon. If we would seek to avoid all
pain and sorrow, and spend our lives in the pleasures of sense, we must be
prepared to forego the future joys of the soul; if we would pass our days
indulging the flesh and chasing the phantoms of time, we must needs make
ready for the death of the spirit and the forfeit of all that is lasting.

We have no choice, then; if we would succeed eternally, we must follow the
way of the cross. This is the only way to life—to that abundant, celestial
life which our Creator has wished us to live. And it is the bearing of our
cross, patiently and resignedly to the will of God, together with our
other good works, that enables us to merit, in so far as we can, the joys
of the kingdom of Heaven. But the sufferings and labors, so inevitable and
necessary to our earthly state, which serve as a means to supernal
rewards, have still another, deeper meaning, and serve another purpose. We
cannot evade them, we must encounter them. They are not only unavoidable,
but necessary to our dearest interests, as we see, since they are strewn
as thorns and brambles all along the narrow way that leads to eternal
life. We cannot choose them or lay them aside at will. We may, indeed, if
we be foolish and impious enough, refuse to walk the narrow way of the
just and choose the broad road that leadeth to destruction; but we shall
not even thus escape the pains and perils inseparable from this mortal
life. Or again, we may, in our folly, rebel against the crosses and labors
that confront and pursue us; but whether we go this way or that, whether
we will it or not, we can no more eschew all the evils of life than escape
from the air that we breathe. The pressure, it is true, is not always upon
us; we are not, without ceasing, weighed down by our labors and groaning
to be delivered from the body of this death. There is interruption, there
is passing pleasure, a rift in the clouds and a smile of the sunshine even
for the darkest and poorest life. And yet withal, we know and we are
conscious that we are ever under the sentence of death, that life is a
fleeting shadow, that like


    “A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
    Man passes from life to his rest in the grave.”


There is no evading the conclusion, therefore, that the days of man in
this world are few and full of miseries. “The life of man upon earth is a
warfare, and his days are like the days of a hireling. He cometh forth
like a flower, and is destroyed, and fleeth as a shadow.”(53) “For all
flesh is as grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of grass. The
grass is withered, and the flower thereof is fallen away.”(54) To the
natural man all this is appalling, and how frequently it finds its
solution in unbridled self-indulgence, in mental unbalance, and
self-destruction! But the saints, and all the truly wise, have viewed the
problem of human suffering in a vastly different light. They have
discerned it, first of all, as really distinctive of the road to Heaven,
and as essentially pertaining to the royal way of the cross. They have
understood that it extinguishes the wrath of the heavenly Father, that it
atones for sin and makes the soul conformable to our suffering Saviour,
and therefore have they loved it. And more than this, those who have been
led by the wisdom of God have found, not only that the crosses of life are
essentially connected with the way of salvation, but that by them and
through them alone we are often _positively driven_ to God. We may try to
avoid them, and at times, perhaps, succeed; we may flee from them or
endeavor to still the voice of their pain; or, when unable to escape them,
we may, in our wrath and desperation, rise up against them and rebuke
them: but they persistently remain, they continue to haunt, as if to woo
and to win us to penetrate their deeper meaning, and discover the treasure
that in them lies concealed. The very breakdown of human things, the
severing of human ties and relationships, the loss of health and wealth,
of treasures and friends, and of all that life holds dear, are really
meant, in the deepest sense, to drive us to the divine. This is the
meaning of those tears and sorrows, those pains and sufferings, that
loneliness, that grief, that agony of heart and soul which belong to this
world of tears. All these are intended to teach us that here below, on
this crumbling shore of time, we have no abiding city, or home, or life,
or love; but seek a city, a home, a life, a love that hath foundations,
whose builder and maker is God.(55)

We need God, we were made for God, and our nature, with all its longings
and powers, cries out for Him. And therefore has God so arranged the
world, in spite of all its evils, and in spite of all our sinfulness,
that, if we do not prevent it, it will lead us out to happiness—lead us
out to Himself. It was our sin that despoiled the face of the world; but
God, in His mercy, has drawn good out of evil, He has made the effects of
sin minister to our advantage, if we will but have it so. We may,
forsooth, refuse, because we are free; we may object, and rebel, and
oppose our lot; we may take our destiny out of the hands of our Creator
and attempt to shape it for ourselves; we may deride and despise the
humble, the lowly of heart, the patient, the mortified and the suffering;
we may upbraid the Providence of God and its workings, and refuse to
submit to the rule of the Creator; we may hold in derision and contempt
the little band that is sweetly marching the way of the cross, preferring
for ourselves the company of the multitude that knows not God—all this can
we do, because we are free; but if such be our choice, and if we persevere
in it, our portion is fixed, and we shall have at last only to say with
the wicked: “Therefore we have erred from the way of truth, and the light
of justice hath not shined unto us, and the sun of understanding hath not
risen upon us. We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and
destruction, and have walked through hard ways, but the way of the Lord we
have not known. What hath pride profited us? or what advantage hath the
boasting of riches brought us? All those things are passed away like a
shadow, and like a post that runneth on.”(56)

Sufferings, therefore, are common to all, to the good and the bad, to the
wise and the foolish, to the children of light and to the children of
darkness. But only those who are directed by grace and light from above
are able to pierce the deeper meaning of the cross. All have to bear it,
but not all understand it; all feel the weight of it, but all do not know
the power of it. Like fortune, it knocks at every door, into every heart
it endeavors to enter and make known its deeper significance, its hidden
secrets, lest any of us should suffer in vain, and our lives be altogether
a failure. To be able to suffer patiently and gladly for God’s sake, is
thus a great wisdom; it is a sign of future blessedness. It is the wisdom
of God, which is foolishness to men. “If thou hadst the science of all the
astronomers,” says Eternal Wisdom; “if thou couldst speak and discourse
about God as fully and well as all angels and men; if thou alone were as
learned as the whole body of doctors; all this would not bestow on thee so
much holiness of life as if, in the afflictions that come upon thee, thou
art able to be resigned to Me and to abandon thyself to Me. The former is
common to good and bad, but the latter belongs to My elect alone.”

We know that our Saviour took upon Himself the cross of sorrow and
suffering, not alone that He might satisfy for our transgressions and be
our ransom from bondage, but also that He might be unto us an example and
a leader. And knowing that our unfaithfulness had incurred severest
maladies from which none could escape, He bore our infirmities and carried
our sorrows for us, in order that we, in our time, might bear our
inevitable afflictions for His sake, for love of Him, and thereby attain
to unending glory with Him. “For the spirit himself giveth testimony to
our spirit, that we are the sons of God. And if sons, heirs also; heirs,
indeed of God, and joint heirs with Christ: yet so, if we suffer with him,
that we may be also glorified with him.”(57) “If you partake of the
sufferings of Christ,” says St. Peter, “rejoice that when his glory shall
be revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.”(58) The chains of
sorrow which bind us here below, our Shepherd thus would turn to golden
cords of love, which draw and hold us to Himself. We cannot, as we see,
ascend to Heaven, rise to blessedness, except by the way of the cross. And
our degree of glory in Heaven, the eternal happiness which we shall enjoy,
will be in proportion to the degree of charity or love of God which our
souls possess at death; and this divine charity, which is to measure our
future beatitude, is acquired and augmented by faithfully doing the will
of God—by patiently and lovingly bearing the cross of life. Sacrifice is
the test of love. And hence the more we do and suffer for Christ’s sake,
the more we prove our love for Him and the greater shall be our happiness
in the kingdom of His Father. All holy writers, all the masters of the
spiritual life agree in teaching that God particularly chastises those
whom He loves with a special love. He proves the elect to find if they are
worthy of Himself.(59) He does not spare them now, that He may spare them
hereafter; He tries them for a time, that He may reward them forever; He
seems harsh with them here, during the time of probation, only that He may
draw them closer to Himself everlastingly.

The devoted friends of God and the ardent lovers of things spiritual have
deeply pondered these momentous truths. They have realized that our days
here, though few and fast-flying, are really to determine our lot and
condition throughout the eternal years. They have known that the passing
present is the price of the lasting future; that this is the seeding time,
and hereafter the harvest. And because our future happiness is to be in
accord with our merits here acquired, jealously have they sought and
embraced every present occasion to increase their merits and their
worthiness for the glory that is to come. This is why they have loved the
cross, the symbol of salvation, the emblem of victory; this, too, is why
they have felt disturbed and full of fear when the cross was absent from
them. Unlike the unenlightened sufferer, who sees only punishment in his
pains, the saints of God have ever accepted their crosses as a sign of
special love, a divine visitation, a preparation for the great communion.

We see now how it is that the rod of chastisement and the staff of mercy
are able to give joy and comfort to God’s chosen friends; and thus are
they designed to console and comfort everyone who is truly led by faith
and love. Sufferings are really a blessing, but the eye of faith alone
discerns it. They keep us from present pleasures, from hurtful occasions,
from alluring vanities; they direct us into the way of salvation, they
drive us to God, they increase the glory of our eternal blessedness. What
are the trials of earth when compared with the joys of Heaven? Rather, how
precious are they! since, if we use them aright, they lead us out into a
higher life, to a closer friendship with God. And if, through the mercy of
our heavenly Father, we permit the cross to lead us to His knees and
enrich our lives with His love, who can speak its infinite value? What
treasure can be likened to it? Surely nothing that we know can surpass it
in worth. We might, indeed, enjoy all that life can give; we might possess
all riches, all health, all success; we might have honor, fame, glory,
power; the praise and love of men, the treasures of earthly friendship and
earthly affection—the whole world we might gain and enjoy; but if through
all these, or in spite of all, we should not be led to the love and
friendship of God, we should know only vanity, and life for us would in
its issue be nothing but a dismal failure.

But if, on the contrary, through the sufferings and losses, the
deficiencies and limitations of life, we have been led to make God our
dearest friend, if we have been taught, by the coldness and harshness of
men, to take refuge in His love, how blessed are we! how cheaply the
purchase has been made, even though it has meant the loss of every passing
good, of all that the world can give, even the pouring out of our own
life’s blood!

Teach me, O my Master, in the day of sorrow and tribulation, to understand
the meaning of the cross, to know the value of my sufferings, to grasp the
power and the secret of Thy rod and Thy staff. Assist me to see Thee
through the darkness that surrounds me; and give me to feel, in the midst
of loneliness and perils, amid pain and desolation, the nearness to my
soul of Thy loving-kindness, and the strength of Thy merciful presence.





IX. THOU SPREADEST BEFORE ME A TABLE IN THE PRESENCE OF MINE ENEMIES.


In the preceding verses of the Shepherd Psalm the Psalmist has described
the constant care of the shepherd for his sheep—the rest and refreshment,
the protection and comfort he provides for them. And now, in the present
verse, he speaks of a feast he has prepared for them, which is to be
likened to a bountiful banquet—a banquet which they are to enjoy, a feast
which they are to consume, in the sight of their enemies, in the presence
of the evils that afflict them. He refers, at first, to the manner of
preparing or spreading a table in the Orient. Often the custom of olden
times was not much different from that which prevails among the Arabs even
today. To prepare a table means with them simply to spread a skin or a
cloth or a mat on the ground.

And it is to this kind of table that the Psalmist refers when he sings of
the feast of the sheep. He means nothing more than that he has provided
for his flock in the face of their enemies a rich pasture, a spreading
slope, where they shall feed with contentment and peace, in spite of the
evils that surround them.

But the quiet and peace which the sheep enjoy, while partaking of their
spread-out banquet, are entirely owing to the protecting presence of the
shepherd. And it frequently happens that here again the utmost skill and
diligence of the shepherd are called into play in thus securing the peace
and safety of his flock. The most abundant pastures are many times
interspersed with noxious weeds and plants, which, if eaten, would sicken
and poison the herd; while around the feeding places and grazing grounds
very often lie hid, in thickets and holes and caves in the hillsides, wild
animals, such as jackals, wolves and panthers, ready to spring out, at the
critical moment, and devour the innocent sheep. The shepherd is aware of
all these evils and enemies of his tender flock; and he goes ahead and
prepares the way, avoiding the poisonous grasses, and driving away, or
slaying, if need be, the beasts that menace the peace and security of the
pasture. The evils are not entirely dispelled, but only sufficiently
removed or held in check so as not to imperil the flock.

Such is the table prepared for the sheep by their provident and watchful
shepherd; and such is the feast of which they partake with quiet joy in
the sight and presence of their enemies. But, as just said, the tranquil
joy which is theirs comes not from the fact that danger has been all
removed, nor from the fact that they have become hardened and used to its
presence. They know it is always near; and they are conscious, as far as
animals can be, of their own utter helplessness, if left to themselves, to
survive an attack of their powerful enemies. But they do not fear, they
are not disturbed or anxious, solely for the reason that they feel their
shepherd is present, and they know he will guard and protect them. Hence
the Psalmist is speaking for the sheep when he says to the shepherd with a
tone of confident joy, “Thou spreadest before me a table in the presence
of mine enemies.”

The spiritual meaning of this, like the other verses of the Shepherd
Psalm, is peculiarly descriptive of our Lord, the Good Shepherd of human
souls. He, in a manner altogether divine, precedes His elect, and prepares
them the way of salvation. He does not deliver them from enemies and
dangers, which would be unnatural in the present state, but He makes use
of evils, as said before, to increase the perfection of His chosen souls.
Gradually, step by step, from a natural He leads them to a higher
state—from diffidence to trust, from fear to love, from sorrow and anguish
to peace and joy.

The change in the soul is rarely at once and immediate; it does not come
of a sudden. At first it is difficult and repugnant to nature to find joy
in sorrow and pleasure in pain, to see gladness in tears and rest in
disturbance, to find peace in the midst of our enemies; but God, in His
omnipotent goodness, so disposes and provides for the souls of His elect
that sooner or later they penetrate to the meaning of things, and find
there their hidden treasure. When the fabric of life itself has crumbled
to its native dust, when friends have gone and charms departed, when the
very earth we tread seems trembling beneath our feet, and every dream of
earthly bliss is fled, when enemies sit where loved ones sat, and the
heart has all but ceased to beat, then is the acceptable time and
propitious moment, for the devout and faithful soul, that has washed its
garments in the blood of the Lamb, to look up to Heaven with expectant
joy. The thrilling vision of eternal love so much desired, so long perhaps
delayed, is then, indeed, about to dawn.

The sweetness of God and the peace of His spirit are not to be found in
the market place, nor in the noise and clamor of the busy street. It is
not at the banquets of earthly kings that we taste of the joys of the
Saviour’s feast. It is not amid honors and riches and the pleasures of
sense that the calm dews of Heaven refresh the soul. We were made for a
higher friendship, for a more intimate union, for a sweeter companionship
than any that earth can provide. And it is only when the door has been
shut to the outer world, when the vanities of time have ceased to be
sought, that the soul is ready for the wedding garment, and able to
prepare for the marriage feast. It is in the inner sanctuary and alone,
divested of fleshy trammels and freed from the bondage of earthly
attachments, that the soul is able to meet its God and hold intimate
converse with Him.

There are few, comparatively, out of the multitude of souls that are
called to the feast which is spread for them, that ever sit down at the
Master’s table. Many are invited, and the servant is sent out at the hour
of supper to say to them that were called, that all things are ready, and
that they should come; but they tarry, they are not ready, they begin to
make excuses and wish to be held excused. Some are entangled in perishable
riches and cannot leave their possessions; others are preoccupied with
worldly affairs and must not neglect their business; still others are
pursuing the pleasures of earth, and have no time for the things of
Heaven. But the feast is not for these, after all. The Master invites
them, He calls them, He sends His ministers in search of them, He reproves
and chides them, He thunders against them to make them hear and obey; but
they will not come, they shall never taste of His banquet. He has not
spread a table for the proud, the haughty, the arrogant; He cannot meet in
loving communion the worldly, the sensuous, the lovers of ease and hurtful
pleasures. Such as these are not prepared to meet Him; they would be out
of place and ill at ease in His company, they do not like His society.(60)

To be able to come to the Master and to sit at His feast there is need of
preparation. The garments of the world must be changed for the garments of
Heaven, the ways of men must be made to yield to the ways of God. For what
is wisdom with men is foolishness with God,(61) the weak things of earth
are the strong things of Heaven, the outcast of the world are the chosen
of the Father Almighty. And hence our Saviour under the figure of the
master in the parable who prepared a great supper, says of all those who
will not hear Him, who neglect His divine inspirations and despise the
call of His ministers, that they shall never taste of His feast. But who,
then, shall sit down at His table? for whom has He prepared the banquet?
He tells us Himself, that those who shall partake of His supper are the
lowly, the humble, the poor, the lame, and the blind; the despised of men
and the outcast of the people; those who have known sorrow and suffering
and penance, who have found the way of the cross and embraced it; who, for
the kingdom of Heaven and the love of Christ crucified, have given up
father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters; yea,
and their own life also, that they might inherit everlasting crowns that
fade not away.(62)

St. Paul was one of these masterful spirits, who surrendered all that he
had, all that he prized most dearly for love of Christ and His service.
“The things that were gain to me,” he says, “the same have I counted loss
for Christ. Furthermore, I count all things to be but loss for the
excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, for whom I have suffered the
loss of all things, and count them but as waste, that I may gain
Christ.”(63) What a struggle, too, was that which St. Augustine describes,
speaking of his own conversion! The parting with those sinful delights
which had hitherto held him in chains was like the forfeiture of all he
possessed, and it seemed to him that life thereafter would not be worth
living; yet he generously and vigorously gave them up that Christ might
become his possession. He has also described for us the change. “How
sweet,” he says, “did it at once become to me to want the sweetness of
those trifles, which to lose had been my fear, but which to have lost was
now a joy! Thou didst cast them forth from me, oh Thou true and highest
sweetness! Thou didst cast them forth, and in their stead didst enter in
Thyself, sweeter than all pleasure!”(64)

It is such as these, heroic souls, who for the sake of God and His
kingdom, have made the world their enemy, that compose the company of the
elect. And for these alone it is that the Shepherd of souls has spread a
table of rest and peace, even in this life, of which they partake in the
sight of their enemies, in the presence of those who think evil of them,
who despise and deride them, in the sight of the world which hates them.
These holy souls, the elect of God, whom the Father has chosen for
Himself, have learned, through the trials and losses of life, the lessons
of peace and detachment which crosses are intended to teach. They have
learned, by exclusion and retirement from worldly festivities and
pernicious delights, to draw near to God, out of love for His beauty and
mercy, or if only to ease their breaking hearts and dispel the loneliness
of their forsaken lives. In the words of the Psalmist, they have tasted
and seen that the Lord is sweet, and that there is no one like unto
God.(65) With the image of the Crucified before their eyes and conscious
of the presence of their loving Shepherd, they greet with delight the
sufferings that oppress them, and they feast in peace in the presence of
their enemies. They know that all is arranged or permitted by the hand
that guards them, and by the One that loves them; and, though He slay
them, yet will they trust Him.(66) For what can happen to those that love
God? what evil can befall them? Angels have charge over them to keep them
in all their ways.(67)

It is confidence, therefore, in their Saviour and God that gives peace and
tranquillity to the souls of the just. To know Him, to love Him, to trust
Him, to dwell in His presence and to please Him, throughout all the
vicissitudes and evils of life, are the objects of their constant actions
and the highest aspirations of their fervid souls. Confident of the favor
and protection of God, and rooted in His love, they despise all pain and
the threats of men; and in the midst of the battle of life they rejoice in
a peace of mind and soul of which the worldling cannot dream. The pasture
in which they feed, the banquet of which they partake are nothing else
than the love and friendship of God which nourishes and refreshes their
spirits when to every mortal eye they seem destitute, abandoned and alone.
And this peace of God, which surpasseth all understanding,(68) develops in
souls truly spiritual a habit of mind and a character of life that even
here below partake of the stability and calm sense of victory which, in
their perfection, belong only to the state of the blessed in Heaven. They
feel that all things are possible to them through Him that strengtheneth
them,(69) and that no temporal affliction, no power of man or any creature
shall wrest from them the feast which they enjoy. And hence they are able
to ask, in the confident words of the Apostle, “Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or
nakedness; or danger, or persecution, or the sword ... In all these things
we overcome, because of him that hath loved us. Therefore we are sure that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor
things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor
any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”(70)





X. THOU ANOINTEST MY HEAD WITH OIL; MY CUP RUNNETH OVER.


In these words the Psalmist alludes to one of the most touching offices
performed by the good shepherd towards his sheep. The day is drawing to a
close, the golden orb of light has sunk to rest, and the shadows are
creeping up the hills. The hush of night is falling round, and the
shepherd must gather his flock into the fold. The labors, the journeys,
the trials, the wanderings of the day are over, and now comes the time for
rest. It is a scene full of peace, and the sheep greet its approach with
feelings of restful anticipation. Many of them are foot-sore and lame;
many have received bruises and scratches during the journeyings of the
day; some have gaping and bleeding wounds from the attacks of wild beasts;
while others are simply tired out and exhausted from the long walks and
steep climbing of hills. The shepherd knows all this, and before leading
them into rest he takes care to see that the wounds of all are dressed and
soothed, so that nothing shall disturb the sweet repose of their sleep.
For this purpose he stands at the door of the fold as the sheep pass in.
He has olive oil and cedar-tar to use as healing ointments for their
wounds, and he has cool, refreshing water for those that are worn and
weary. Lovingly and tenderly he regards each member, as one by one they
enter into rest; and they that are wounded or over-weary he holds back
with his rod, till their scars and sores are duly cared for and made ready
for the night’s repose.

How closely these offices performed for the sheep by the shepherd resemble
the care of our Father and Saviour providing at the end for the souls that
He loves! He has been with them all through life, leading, guiding,
guarding, shepherding them at all times, going before them with the
blessings of goodness. And when at length the end approaches, they feel
the need of His loving-kindness perhaps more than ever before. Like the
shepherd’s flock, their needs are many and various. Some souls there are
who, through the special grace of God, are able to pass their lives in
innocence and holiness, living in the world, yet not of it, dwelling in
the midst of men and in the sight of their wickedness and sin, yet
undefiled withal, beautiful witnesses of the power and love of Him that
strengthens and preserves them.

But the majority are not thus favored. Notwithstanding all their graces,
they have been subject to falls—perhaps to many grievous falls; they have
suffered many wounds and bruises, they have had many tears to shed.
Multitudes there are, in fact, who come down to the verge of life, to the
very gate of death, sin-stained, racked and wounded, their life blood
ebbing out through sores and wounds which they themselves have made by
wilful open friendship with sin and vice, the deadly foes of their souls.
We have many varying examples of these straying souls. There is the type
of Mary Magdalen, of St. Peter, of St. Paul, of St. Augustine, who passed
a portion, brief or prolonged, of their mortal days far from the Father’s
home, feeding on the husks of swine; but who, while yet in the vigor of
life, felt the touch of the merciful hand and heard the sound of the
loving voice, leading them, calling them back to God, back to the “beauty
ever ancient and ever new.” Such souls as these, it is true, constitute
one class of erring, but repenting sinners; but there is another class
whose plight is far more pitiable. They are those long-delayed, but
finally repentant sinners, men and women who have lived their lives away
from the Church and its sacraments, who have grown old and gray in the
sins of their youth, and now, at the last, when death is coming, are
moved, by a special grace from Heaven, to weep for their sins and wasted
years before they enter their eternal abode.

For each and all of these how important it is that the Shepherd should
stand at the door of the fold and bind up their wounds with His tender
grace before they pass through the portals of death! Scarred and wayward
children, victims of evil circumstances, creatures of vanity and of folly,
they realize at the end how impotent they are, how helpless in the
presence of the coldness of death to redeem or make sure the years that
are fled, unless He draw near and assist them who has sustained them in
life, and who is at once the author and the master of both life and death!

But for all, without exception, the need of the Shepherd is imperative at
the end. The victory, the happy issue of life’s struggle, “is not of him
that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.”(71)
All may run, all may strive, indeed, for the prize of eternal life, but
none can be sure, short of the mercy of God, that he will be saved; none
can merit this crowning glory of life. Whether young or old, whether
favored or neglected, whether innocent or guilty, whether the life has
been dowered with special blessings and never known the stain of grievous
sin, or whether it has been eked out amidst deepest misery and defiled
with hateful crimes, the same uncertainty for all remains as to the manner
in which the end shall come. Men may reason and conjecture, from what they
see and know, that this one or that is in God’s favor, and shall so
persevere to the end; that the members of a certain family, or class, or
station in life, are sure to be saved, and shall never fall short; but
that those of another class or condition shall, on the contrary, die as
they have lived, in the filth of their sins, to be forever in torment. But
these are the reasonings of men, which are of no avail in the sight of
God. It is only the Father in Heaven who knows the elect. He alone is able
to tell who shall remain to be crowned, and who is to be condemned.
Perseverance is a gratuitous gift of God, we cannot merit it. All our good
actions and holy deeds, which are performed in the state of grace and out
of a motive of charity, do, it is true, merit a reward in Heaven, they
tend to increase our blessedness hereafter; but just as it is not in our
power to merit the first grace, by which we are raised from a state of
sin, so are we utterly unable to do anything which shall secure for a
certainty the final grace, by which alone we can be saved. Wherefore the
Preacher said: “All these things have I considered in my heart, that I
might carefully understand them: there are just men and wise men, and
their works are in the hand of God; and yet man knoweth not whether he be
worthy of love or hatred. But all things are kept uncertain for the time
to come, because all things equally happen to the just and to the wicked,
to the good and to the evil, to the clean and to the unclean, to him that
offereth victims, and to him that despiseth sacrifices. As the good is, so
also is the sinner; as the perjured, so he also that sweareth truth.”(72)

This uncertainty as to the end of life, and of the gift of final
perseverance, all holy souls have felt. To die in the friendship of God,
and thence to enjoy His presence forever, is a gift of so transcendent a
nature, so far above our natural powers and utmost deserts that no
creature, which can at all conceive it, would dare claim it as a right. It
was this conviction that made the saints tremble to think of it. This it
was that prompted St. Paul to admonish the Philippians to work out their
salvation with fear and trembling,(73) and that also evoked from the same
Apostle those candid words concerning himself: “I chastise my body, and
bring it into subjection; lest, perhaps, when I have preached to others, I
myself should become a castaway.”(74)

And have we not sometimes witnessed instances which, so far as man can
judge, give ground for this fear as to perseverance, and emphasize the
great truth that to die in God’s favor is, indeed, a singular and a
gratuitous gift? How many have we not known who started well, but
terminated ill! How many are innocent and holy in youth and give every
promise of splendid manhood, but fade and drop, like poisoned flowers, ere
the age of maturity has dawned! How many are able to pass through the most
critical period of their lives, unshaken and undefiled, full of faith,
hope, love, purity; but who, when the age of security is thought to have
come, lose the grip which seemed so firm, turn to evil, yield to vicious
habits, and die reprobates of God! Look at King Solomon! Who was ever more
promising than he in his youth? Who ever gave fairer prospects of
continued holiness and of a beautiful end? He was so lovely, so amiable,
so favored of God in the morning of life; graced with such high
perfections, not knowing evil, a stranger to vice, a lover of sanctity, of
wisdom, and of grace. It would seem that he could never fall—he who was
the object of such unwonted favors, who dwelt so supremely in the smile of
Heaven. But lo, and behold the end of him who had received so many graces,
who chose wisdom as his handmaid that he might be guided aright! Behold
that youthful figure, so full of promise and goodly hope, praying to God
that he might never deviate from the ways of grace; and then see the
gray-haired apostate tottering to the grave, borne down by the weight of
his sins and of his years! And how many more there have been, like King
Saul, like Renan and Voltaire, and numerous others that we ourselves
perhaps have known, who were great and good in youth, and for a term of
years, but whose end was a miserable failure!

Our perseverance, then, or the favor to die in the state of grace, is not
of ourselves, not the reward of our efforts, or of our good works, “but of
God that sheweth mercy.” We must do all in our power to merit eternal
life; we must press on to the mark, waging ceaseless battle in behalf of
God and of our souls, even to the last moment; but for the happy end of it
all we must perforce rely on the tender mercy of God. This is why our
Lord, before He departed from earth, prayed to His heavenly Father for His
disciples: “Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given me;
... I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world; but that
thou shouldst keep them from evil.”(75) This same truth the Psalmist also
had in mind when he prayed: “Perfect thou my goings in thy paths, that my
footsteps be not moved.”(76)

It is this appalling uncertainty about the end and outcome of life,
together with our own inability to make them secure, that makes death so
terrible to the minds and thoughts of multitudes, even of Christians and
well-living persons. They fear to fall into the hands of the living God.
For them the present life may be not so attractive; on the contrary, it is
likely replete with pain and toil; but somehow they wish to linger here,
preferring that which is certain, although so miserable, to that which is
doubtful, perhaps awful and irreparable. So long as they continue in this
present world there is chance for change, there is hope of improvement.
But when death intervenes, and the soul is removed to the other life, all
hopes of change are swept away, and the lot of the soul is fixed for
eternity. There is, of course, a fear of death which is altogether
natural. Many dread death who pretend not to believe in a future life, or
even in the existence of God. And many there are whose lives are holy, and
who have not whereof they ought to fear, but for whom, nevertheless, the
very thought of death is fraught with all manner of terrors. As some are
naturally afraid in the absence of light, and tremble with fear at being
alone in a dark and lonely dwelling, or spot, or place, so there are many
who, without assignable reason, other than a native tendency, are appalled
at the thought of death.

But when all due allowances have been made for the uncertainty of final
perseverance, and for the anxiety arising from natural temperament, it
seems not too much to say that, for the most part, the fear and dread of
death which haunts so many Christians can be reduced to two causes: a
defect of faith or a love of the world. It is one of these causes, or both
of them together, which alone can explain, in the majority of cases, why
such numbers of Christians and Catholics are unwilling to surrender the
present life, and are disturbed at the very thought of dying. Either they
do not realize by faith the surpassing glories of the life beyond—doubting
its reality, questioning its nature, misunderstanding the goodness and
mercy of God; or else they are so attached to the present existence that
all serious thought and desire for a better life are excluded from their
minds and hearts. Fenelon says that the condition of our spiritual life is
indicated by the answers we give to the following questions: “Do I love to
think of God? Am I willing to suffer for God? Does my desire to be with
Him destroy my fear of death?” We do not fear to meet or to be with one
whom we really love, for “love casteth out fear.” There is no dread at the
coming of the parent or friend whom we truly love, unless, perchance, we
have offended him, and lack full faith that we have been forgiven and
reinstated in his favor and friendship.

So it is with God. If we are unwilling to meet Him, or filled with fear at
the approach of His coming, it seems of a certainty that our faith is at
fault. Why should we not wish to meet Him who has made us, who loves us,
who has washed away our sins with His own blood, who alone can comfort our
trembling souls and fill us with every good? Perhaps we have sinned and
betrayed our Maker many times and grievously in our lives, and the voices
of those sins are haunting us, and bidding us beware of the hour of death
and of the judgment that follows. Perhaps there is a lurking suspicion
that we have not been forgiven, a temptation that we are not sincere, a
feeling that our sins are too grave to be pardoned, a conviction that we
do not belong to the company of the elect. We may have notions, moreover,
altogether severe, of the nature of God and of His justice; we feel His
immensity and sanctity, we have heard so much of His ineffable beauty,
that, weighed down with a sense of our nothingness, of our poverty and
misery and sinfulness, we cannot but shudder at the thought of appearing
in His presence. These and similar terrors may take hold of us and fill us
with a dread of death; but is it not clear that, whatever their cause,
these fears are born of a lack of faith? We do not trust, as we ought, the
Shepherd that loves us, we are not convinced of His mercy and kindness, if
we do not believe with child-like confidence that He stands ready ever to
forgive and bless the least of His children that humbly and sincerely seek
Him, asking for the help they need. The severity of God toward sinners
endures only so long as they refuse to acknowledge their guilt. His
harshness with them, like that of Joseph with his brethren, is but love in
disguise; and as soon as they are brought to own their guilt, that which
before was the anger of God is swiftly turned into His love and mercy.
Christ did not come to destroy, but to save. He will not crush the broken
reed, nor extinguish the smoking flax.(77) “As a father hath compassion on
his children, so hath the Lord compassion on them that fear him; for he
knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust.”(78)

But there is also the love of the world, which enslaves so many. So
numerous and so bewitching are the attractions of the present life that
they are loath to leave them. It is a beautiful world, this universe of
ours, so deep, so wide, so vast! It is filled with pleasures and
allurements and graced with myriad charms; and he, indeed, seems cold of
heart who can easily turn from its enchanting beauties, and close his ear
to its manifold voices. Ponder for a moment the richness of nature, its
similarity and variety, its sameness and its diversity; consider the
abundance of the harvest—the glowing fruits, the green and golden crops,
the sweet-scented flowers and gift-bearing grasses; see the stars above
and the waters beneath—all the wonders of earth and sky; and then when you
have ranged over fields and waves and mountains, when you have climbed up
the steeps of the sky and gazed on the marvels of the heavens, descend
again to earth and consider the human form—the chiefest work of the
Almighty hand, and the crown of the natural world. What beauties are here
concealed! What a mingling of material and spiritual, of human and almost
divine! What words can express, what lines portray the beauty of the human
countenance? Who can describe or adequately define the loveliness that
streams from human eyes, or echoes from the human voice? And yet these are
but the outer fringes and dimmest glimpses of the beauties of the soul
that dwells within.

How painful, then, it is for the worldly to forsake the beauties and
pleasures of this present life. Bound down to their beds of clay by the
things of sense, they are grieved to part with a life so full of diverse
attractions. How can they think undismayed of closing forever their eyes
and ears to these charms of color and sound! It is such a difficult thing,
and so hard to nature, to abandon these scenes of enticing pleasure, to
bid farewell to those that are dear and be hurried away alone and forlorn
to the chill and gloom of the grave.

So reason the children of the world; but are not their reasonings and
feelings a proof of their little faith, and of their poor conceptions of
spiritual and eternal interests? They do not want to leave the world,
because they love it; and they love the world, because their faith is too
weak to raise them to a vision of higher things. The plain on which they
stand is too low clearly to see the things of Heaven. How poor and
trifling at best is the earth and all it contains to Him who beholds with
a vivid faith the world above that is to come! How gladly does he lay down
his life and give up the struggle with ceaseless battles, who sees by
faith, just beyond the portals of death, the great home of the blessed,
spread out like a city on the mountains, bathed in light inaccessible,
full of joy and unending gladness, where “death shall be no more, nor
mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more.”(79)

The man of faith, therefore, is in no wise straightened or disturbed by
the approach of death. He has learned to know and to trust the good Master
whom he serves. Like the Apostle, he is only concerned that Christ should
be glorified in him at all times and in all things, “whether it be by life
or by death;” for to him also, “to live is Christ, and to die is
gain.”(80) He lives in the world, but is not of it; he treads the ways of
earth, but he really belongs to the kingdom above. Hence his cup of
interior peace is ever running over. Though surrounded by many evils, he
does not faint; though tempted exceedingly, he does not yield; but is
joyous and peaceful withal; because at all times and in all things he
feels himself to be the faithful servant of God, “in much patience, in
tribulation, in necessities, in distresses, in strifes, in prisons, in
seditions, in labors, in watchings, in fastings, in chastity, in
knowledge, in long-suffering, in sweetness, in the Holy Ghost, in charity
unfeigned; ... as dying, and yet living; as chastised, and not killed; as
sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as needy, yet enriching many; as having
nothing, yet possessing all things.”(81)

“Precious in the sight of God is the death of His Saints.” As they have
lived for Christ, they gladly welcome the summons that calls them home to
rest. Calmly and fearlessly they go down to death; joyously and with
feelings of exultation they hail the coming of Him on whom their thoughts
have rested throughout life, of Him whom they have ever seen by faith,
whom they have loved, whom they have trusted, whom they have chosen for
their own. Confident of the power and goodness of their faithful Shepherd,
pain daunts them not, the enemy frets them not. The last hour for them is
not one of darkness, but of light; it is not a time for lamentations, but
for joyous and gladsome strains. The end may be sudden, or it may be
gradual in its approach; it may come early, or late in life; it may be at
home or abroad; it may be in the winter, or it may be in summer; on the
sea or on the land; but to the just and spiritual it can never be a
surprise, it can never be lonely, never sad. It is the time for which they
have always longed—a time of liberation, of emancipation from the trammels
of earth and flesh, the end of continuous dying and the beginning of
lasting life. What a supreme moment, what a joyous event is death for a
just and holy soul! What sweet emotions must thrill the spirit, as the
Saviour stoops over the bed of death to wipe away forever the last of
earthly tears! Mary is there to hush the voice of reproach and to whisper
words of peace; Jesus has come to claim the soul and take it to Himself,
and flights of angels are waiting to sing it to its rest.





XI. SURELY GOODNESS AND MERCY SHALL FOLLOW ME ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE; AND
I SHALL DWELL IN THE HOUSE OF THE LORD UNTO LENGTH OF DAYS.


If the tender lambs and timid sheep of the shepherd’s flock could speak
the sentiments of their innocent hearts, each one would certainly voice
the words which here the Psalmist has uttered for them all. Throughout the
live-long day, throughout all the days of their lives, they experience the
shepherd’s goodness, they are the objects of his constant mercy. He has
been caring for them since their birth; he has led them out each morning,
since first they were able to walk; he has provided them with food, and
led them to water; and he has ever been present to shield them from harm,
and to protect them from their enemies. After such repeated experiences
and trials of his loving-kindness, they have grown accustomed to his
faithfulness and are filled with love of his goodness and mercy. And while
they have not the power of speech, and cannot by words express their
feelings, they do by the louder voice of action—by their quiet trust in
his care, by their habitual mildness and gentleness and quick response to
his every word, by the absence of solicitude and fear in view of his
presence—by these and all the other actions that speak their simple hearts
they show their love for their shepherd. Though often wounded and bleeding
and exhausted from the roughness and length of their journeys, they have
no distrust about the future, no fear for the morrow. In the midst of
distress the shepherd, they know, will provide. The Psalmist, therefore,
in the closing words of the shepherd song, gives utterance to the feelings
of the sheep when he sings: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord unto
length of days.”

But here, as in the opening verse of the Shepherd Psalm, the words of the
sacred Singer, although truly expressive of the sentiments of the sheep,
are more directly the expression of his own inner feelings, and of the
feelings of all faithful souls towards the Lord who rules and guides them.
All those whose lives have been really and sincerely led by faith, have,
like the shepherd’s flock, grown trustfully accustomed, in the course of
years, to the goodness and mercy, to the faithfulness and love of the hand
that provides for them. As they look into their lives, and retrace the
steps they have taken, they cannot fail to see how God has been always
with them, patiently enduring their faults, mercifully binding up their
wounds and hurts, and lovingly leading, drawing them to Himself. They can
see their advancement, slow perhaps as it has been; and they know it is
God who has given the increase. Looking now at their lives through the
perspective of the years that are gone, how many problems they are able to
solve! for how many apparent mysteries they have found an explanation! All
those crosses and trials, all those struggles and battles with the enemy,
all those attacks from within and assaults from without, all, in fact,
that they have ever endured, their sins alone excepted, they now can
trace, through the light of faith, back to the hand of their Father in
Heaven. Not everything, forsooth, has yet been explained, but enough,
indeed, is sufficiently clear to remove every doubt from the faithful soul
as to the goodness and Providence of God. And hence she exclaims with the
Psalmist, out of the abundance of her faith and confidence, “Surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall
dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

It is doubtless a lack of implicit trust in God and divine Providence
which, more than anything else, accounts for the unhappiness and spiritual
barrenness of so many Christian and religious lives. Poor and scanty is
the fruit they yield, simply because they have no depth of soil, they are
not deeply and firmly rooted in faith and confidence in God. Like reeds
shaken by the wind, like houses built on the sand, they tremble and shake
with every blast, they are all but overturned by every tempest that rises.

Nor is it wonderful that this should be so. The higher gifts of the spirit
come from God, and hence the good fruit which the spirit yields is also
traceable back to Him. “We do not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from
thistles; and as a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, so neither can
an evil tree bring forth good fruit.”(82) And just because the abundance
of the harvest of the spiritual life is dependent upon God as its giver,
is it strange that any distrust of Him and His Providence should be a
great hindrance to the soul’s advancement, and to the bestowal of the
constant help it needs? Can God be pleased with those who do not confide
in Him, and who do not trust Him? Our Lord’s own chiding words to His
disciples are a proof of His displeasure at any distrust in His power and
goodness. How often did He rebuke them for their want of confidence in
Him! How often did He accuse them reproachfully of their “little
faith,”(83) of being “slow of heart,”(84) of being an “unbelieving and
perverse generation!”(85) He was constantly pointing to their lack of
faith, reminding them that it was the source of their weakness, the cause
of their ignorance in things spiritual, the reason of their powerlessness
in the face of difficulties and against the enemies of their souls. It is
clear that Almighty God, being a generous and loving Father, must be
offended at those of His children who do not trust Him; and their want of
faith in Him is consequently the reason for His denying to them the help
which is the life of their souls, and without which they are powerless to
be useful servants in His vineyard.

And this failure to confide in the goodness of God betrays itself in other
ways. Besides sealing up the fountains of special graces and closing the
door on divine generosity, besides a general unfruitfulness in the
spiritual life, and the lack of all greater works for God and for souls,
which are its immediate consequences, it also penetrates into the interior
sanctuary of the spirit, and weakens at their source the springs of
spiritual action. The results are manifest. Not only is there no yielding
of fruit, but growth is likewise wanting. And if, under fairer conditions,
there has ever been any progress, it is soon perceived to wither and wane
in a soul devoid of living faith. All the exercises and practices of the
Christian life participate in the baneful effects. Prayer and the use of
the sacraments are either seriously neglected or gradually given up, and
the blighting influences of irreligion rapidly spread and overrun all the
departments of life. The view one takes of God, the faith or lack of faith
and trust one has in Providence, have their effect on the character and
give a direction to all one’s ways of thinking, feeling, acting, in regard
to the world we live in, in regard to mankind in general, in regard to the
causes, purposes, and destinies of all things.

Our conceptions of Providence are vital, therefore. They really determine
what our life is to be, and they are an index to the life that is
finished. It is impossible that we should be quite the same whether we try
to eliminate God from our lives, or allow His blessed influence to cheer
and lead us on; whether we look upon Him as a cold Master, waiting to
exact and to punish, or as a kind Father and Shepherd, seeking to spare
and to save; whether we regard Him as hid far in the heavens, caring
naught for the creatures and the world He has made, or whether we conceive
Him as intimately bound up with all the works of His hands, although
distinct from them, as guiding and regulating everything, as tenderly
loving and providing for all the needs of our souls.

Another most harmful result of deficient faith and confidence in God is
that it leads us to trust in creatures. It causes us to reverse the proper
order of things. We are dependent beings, and we instinctively feel our
deficiencies and the need of some one, or something on which to lean, at
times, and to which we can look for assistance. We may not be entirely and
always conscious of this tendency in us, we may be too proud or too blind
to admit it, or we may wish we could overcome it and rid our lives of so
constant a need; but whether we see it and acknowledge it or not, whether
we encourage it or try to repress it, the need is always there, deeply
engraved in our nature as creatures, and we cannot but seek to satisfy it.
There is none of us, frail beings that we are, who is entirely sufficient
unto himself. Sometimes, of course, the voice of our needs is silent, and
we feel that we shall never want; “I said in my abundance,” observes the
Psalmist, “I shall not be moved forever;”(86) but when the tide begins to
ebb and prosperity subsides, how soon do we remember that we are dust! How
frequently in times of trouble, in times of illness and poverty and
suffering, when face to face with our foes, or when death steps in and
slaughters, are we made aware of our insufficiency, and of our utter
helplessness to live our lives alone and meet single-handed the burdens
and misfortunes of earth! It takes but a little frost to nip the root of
all our greatness, and then when our high-blown pride breaks under us we
quickly realize how fragile and insecure are the personal foundations of
our lives. Naturally and reasonably, therefore, did the pagan philosophers
conclude that friendship and friends were necessary to man.

Profoundly aware of this fundamental need of help and support which is a
result of our nature, we habitually stretch out our hands to others, not
only during the years of infancy and childhood, but to a greater or less
extent throughout the whole period of our earthly existence. At first, of
course, it is to creatures that we necessarily look—to parents, relatives,
guardians, teachers, and later on, to friends and acquaintances. Our needs
in the beginning and in early years, though many and imperative, are
comparatively simple; they can be satisfied by those around us. But as we
advance to maturity and take in more completely the meaning of our lives,
and consider not so much the needs of the body as the demands of the soul,
we find that the multiple requirements of infancy and youth, which were
able to be supplied by those that were near, have given way to the fewer,
but vast and unlimited, claims of age, which express the wants of the
spirit. It is when we appeal to creatures for the complete and permanent
satisfaction of these latter necessities of our being, that we seriously
err, and open the way to disappointment and sorrow. Not that we are to
have no cherished and chosen friends, or that we should despise the needs
and gifts, the privileges and blessings of friendship, which in truth our
nature requires; nor again that we are to regard with skeptical,
disdainful eyes the world and human nature; but we must not deceive
ourselves by trying to find in any created being that which it does not
possess. We must not endeavor to get from any creature that perfect
satisfaction which we need, and which the Creator alone can give. Neither
must we seek to fill the unlimited capacity of our souls with those gifts
only, poor and defective at best, which frail mortals like ourselves are
able to supply. It is folly in the highest degree to expect from anyone
less than God that which only God can afford.

The mistake, therefore, is made when creatures of any kind are allowed to
take the place of God; when they are sought and reposed in as an end in
themselves, and as sufficient satisfaction for the needs of the human
spirit. Unwise, indeed, is this mode of action, and bitter are the sorrows
of soul to which it inevitably leads! One man trusts in riches, another in
glory, another in the esteem of men; one leans upon his friends and
companions, another upon his relatives—all forgetful of the frail and
unsubstantial nature of every earthly prop. Frequently they never awaken
to the peril of their state until they find themselves face to face with
their doom and the awful disillusionment. The crash may be delayed, but
the day must come sooner or later for all of us, who have advanced but a
little beyond maturity, when all the natural lights of life go out, when
every human prop is removed, and we find ourselves out alone and in the
dark, so far as depends on the world and creatures. How miserable then
shall we be if we have put our trust in men! if we have tried to make
creatures play the part in our lives which only God can play! When we need
them most they fail us, when we fain would find beneath their protection a
shield against the fiery darts of life, behold they wither like the ivy of
Jonas and leave us alone in our want!(87) How vain, therefore, and
groundless is that confidence which is put in men, and how wretched that
poor man that hangs on princes’ favors! “Thou trustest in money,” says St.
Augustine, “thou holdest to vanity; thou trustest in honor, and in some
eminence of human power, thou holdest to vanity; thou trustest in some
principal friend, thou holdest to vanity. When thou trustest in all these
things, either thou diest and leavest them here, or in thy lifetime they
all perish, and thou failest in thy trust.”(88)

It is no despisal, then, of the needs and helps of earthly friends and of
our fellow-creatures to say that we should not put entire trust in them
for all the wants and demands of our being. They are good, they were made
by God, they are oftentimes able to assist us—nay, we need them to a
certain extent; but they are utterly unable to satisfy us completely, they
cannot if they would, simply because of the extent of our wants. And even
if creatures could give us a partial contentment, as at times they seem to
do, we know that it cannot last, and in the midst of our joy and pleasure
we are haunted by the thought that some day, soon at latest, it all must
pass away. We are seeking for rest, for peace, for happiness, and that
unending; we want something to steady our lives and satisfy the yearnings
of our souls forever: but we must not look for these things in the world,
for the world at best is passing away. There is no stability to human
things; the cloud and the storm swiftly follow the sunshine; we have not
here below a lasting habitation. Today we are sitting at the banquet of
pleasure, tomorrow we are draining the cup of sorrow; today we receive the
applause of men, tomorrow we may be the objects of their scorn; today we
put forth the tender leaves of hope, tomorrow there comes a killing frost
that ruins all our prospects.

Such, then, is the lot of man when considered in his relations to
creatures and to the world. It is a lot full of uncertainty, of
instability, of vicissitude; but this should not make us skeptical or
cynical; it affords no justification for pessimism. It is a condition
arising, on the one hand, from the very nature of limited beings, and on
the other, from the vast potentialities of our souls, which, while they
are limited in giving to others, cannot be appeased except by the God who
made them. There is a craving in the heart of man for something which the
world cannot give. He clutches for the things that are passing, he toils,
he labors, he struggles; he strives for money, for power, for place, for
honor, not that any of these things are in themselves what he desires, but
only because he conceives them as means and helps to the satisfaction, to
the stillness of mind, and peace of heart, and rest of soul and body for
which his nature longs. Peace and happiness and contentment of life are
the objects of all our dreams, of our persistent efforts, of our ambitions
and aims; but until we give up the hope of finding these things in the
world, in our fellow-mortals, in anything short of God, we shall never
know the blessedness for which we yearn. If we would ever attain to the
state which we covet, we must learn the lesson, even though it be through
tears and sorrow, that God alone, who made our souls with all their vast
desires, is able to comfort us and steady our lives amid the storms and
distresses of earth.

It is futile to trust in men, or “in the children of men, in whom there is
no salvation.”(89) The peace and blessedness which we seek are “not as the
world giveth;”(90) and unless we turn away from the world and cease to
torture our lives with its vanities, our portion can never be other than
heartaches, secret loathing, consuming thirst. “For many friends cannot
profit,” says Thomas a’Kempis, “nor strong helpers assist, nor prudent
counsellors give a profitable answer, nor the books of the learned afford
comfort, nor any precious substance deliver, nor any place, however
retired and lovely, give shelter, unless thou thyself dost assist, help,
strengthen, console, instruct, and guard us.”(91) Such has been the
history of the race, and such is the experience of every individual in the
race that has placed his hope and trust in anything created.

We are confronted, therefore, on the one side by the inherent weakness of
our own nature and the constant needs that arise therefrom; and on the
other side, we are assured by the history of the race, if not by our own
experience, that so long as we strive to satisfy our wants by an appeal to
anything but God we are doomed to disappointment and sorrow. It is
unfortunate that most people must first be crushed by the world and
creatures which they serve before they grasp the fundamental truth that
creatures are not their God. Comparatively few of those who enjoy the
world are ever brought to realize the dignity and divine purpose of their
souls until the world and its allurements, like a false pageant on a false
stage, give way beneath them, and they fall helpless and alone. It is
commonly only after repeated awful experiences, when worn out and
exhausted by years of fruitless quest for peace and happiness and
contentment, that men wake up to the simple fact that the treasures which
they seek are not in the world, nor as the world giveth.

But it is one thing to turn away from the world disappointed, disgusted
and betrayed; and it is quite another thing to turn to God and to
recognize Him as our good Father and Shepherd, patiently waiting to
receive us, ever able and ready to satisfy our wants. There are many
people who find the world a disappointment and a deception, and who turn
from it with loathing and hate, but who fail ever to lift their weary eyes
to the proper object of their trust. Like the Israelites of old, they
succeed at length in escaping from the hands of oppression and tyranny,
but only to wander in a desert land throughout the length of their days.
This is the region where dwell the pessimist, the skeptic and the
cynic—miserable mortals that have wasted on creatures the talents they
should have given to their Creator, or that have otherwise failed in their
conception of life, and have left unmultiplied the money of the
Master.(92) There is plainly no middle course for us, if we would not
encounter disaster; we are not negative as to the necessities of our
nature; it is not enough for us to turn from positive harm, from the
objects that deceive and disappoint us; we must further turn to positive
good, and to Him who alone can quiet and appease our yearning spirits.

One of the most evident and convincing reasons, then, why we should put
our trust in God above all else is that He alone can satisfy and give us
rest. Only God is able adequately to respond to all the needs of our
being. The simplest process of reasoning should assure us of this, when
once we perceive the vastness of our wants and the impossibility of their
satisfaction through the medium of created things. We know our nature,
which has come from the source and essence of truth, cannot be false.
Neither can our unlimited capacities for knowledge, for joy, for happiness
be a deceiving mockery. There is a way to peace for us, and a source of
supreme contentment; there is a fountain of living waters from which, if
we drink, we shall never thirst again. Hence our Saviour said: “Come to me
all you that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you;”(93) and
again, “he that shall drink of the water that I will give him shall not
thirst forever: but the water that I will give him shall become in him a
fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting.”(94)

But we shall never be able to come to God, we shall never succeed even in
getting near the secret of interior peace and contentment until we are
able to grasp more or less comprehensively the great basic truths of our
existence: that God loves each one of us with the love of an infinite
Father, and that His Providence is so universal and omnipotent as to
extend to all things, even to the numbering of the hairs of our head. We
talk much about chance and fortune and accident, we speak every day of
things happening, as if by the sheerest contingence, without warning or
previous knowledge; and so it is with reference to ourselves, and to all
the world perhaps: but with reference to divine Providence it is not so;
there is nothing accidental, nothing unforeseen with respect to God.
“Without Thy counsel and Providence, and without cause, nothing cometh to
pass in the earth,”(95) says the Imitation. But what does this mean, “God
provides?” It means that the will of the omnipotent Father directs and
governs everything. “Providence,” says St. John Damscene, “is the will of
God, by which all things are fitly and harmoniously governed,”(96) and
such is its power that nothing can elude or deceive it, neither can it be
hindered or baffled in any way. “For God will not except any man’s person,
neither will He stand in awe of any man’s greatness; for He made the
little and the great, and He hath equally care of all.”(97)

And just as divine Providence disposes and governs all the events of life,
directing each to its proper end, so the divine Will is the cause of
everything that exists. Just as it is impossible that anything should
escape God’s knowledge and directing hand, so is it impossible that
anything should exist or come into being without the direct intervention
or permission of His will. There is nothing in the world which God has not
made, and nothing takes place which is not according to His good-pleasure,
except the malice and guilt of sin. Even all the other evils of life, such
as sickness, suffering, disease, poverty, cold, hunger, thirst, and the
like, God actually and positively wills. And precisely because these
things proceed from His will, they cannot be bad. God is the author of all
good, and evil He cannot do. So good, indeed, is He that, if He were not
sufficiently omnipotent to draw good out of evil, He would never have
permitted any evil to exist. “God has judged it better,” says St.
Augustine, “to work good out of evil, than to allow no evil.”(98) We must
not argue in our foolishness and try to understand all the doings of God,
for His ways are not our ways, His thoughts not our thoughts.(99) It is
often beyond our power even to understand our fellow-creatures, and how
foolish it is to complain because we cannot comprehend the great Creator!
Enough for us, if we be sincere and right of heart, to know, as we do,
that God is good, that He loves us individually, and that His protecting
hand guides and governs all the events of our lives, even to the smallest
detail. These are truths which we must take hold of and lay close to our
hearts, else we shall go the way of error and issue in ultimate disaster.

And from these truths, so certain and unquestionable, it further follows
that everything existing in the world, so far as it affects us, everything
that falls to our lot, all that we encounter, all that we suffer, all that
we do, aside from sin, has been purposely arranged by Almighty God for our
greater spiritual good and eternal salvation. This must be so, since God
is the universal cause of all things, and since He sincerely loves us and
desires above all to save us. If it were otherwise, either He would not
have omnipotent control of everything, or He could not be said really to
desire our salvation. How sadly we misunderstand these great truths in our
daily lives, when we murmur and complain at the evils that afflict us! How
narrowly we conceive the all-powerful will of God, and the infinite abyss
of His goodness which would lead us to eternal delights! We would like to
escape all the evils of time, we love our lives, and we wish to save them
from final wreck; but when failing to trust to the will of God we forget
the words of Christ, that “he that loveth his life shall lose it; and he
that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal.”(100) We
want to save our souls, and we are, perhaps, much disturbed about doing
many and great things in the cause of God and of Heaven, unmindful the
while of the Master’s warning that, “not every one that saith to me, Lord,
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doth the will of
my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of
heaven.”(101) It is doubtless our aim to draw ever nearer and nearer to
our Saviour, and to deepen our relationship with Him; but do we remember
that He said, “whosoever shall do the will of God, he is my brother, and
my sister, and mother?”(102)

“Yes,” you will say, “This is all true; I know it is so; my faith is at
fault. If I only had that beautiful faith and trust in God which many have
it would be easy for me, and I should be happy! Faith is a gift and
favored are they that possess it.” But, dear reader, can you not pray? Can
you not ask from God that heavenly gift which will move mountains and
translate them into the sea?(103) Can you not overcome your indolence and
your repugnance, and patiently and persistently implore from on high that
superior vision which pierces the clouds and sees in everything the hand
of God? Surely you can say, with the devout author of the Imitation of
Christ, “Behold, Oh beloved Father, I am in Thy hands, I bow myself under
the rod of Thy correction. Strike my back and my neck too, that my
crookedness may be conformed to Thy will.”(104) Here again, remember the
words of your Saviour, “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the
violent bear it away.”(105)

Perhaps the greatest trial to our faith in divine Providence is in bearing
what we call the wrongs of life. That we should have any crosses to suffer
at all; that there should be death and sickness and disease; that there
should be poverty and misery, distress and worry, labor and sorrow; that
there should exist any of these things, is to our infirmity, if we forget
our sins and the sins of our race that have caused these evils, a trial
and a test of fidelity. But still more is it difficult, except to minds
that are deeply religious, to meet with the gentleness and serenity of
faith the positive injuries—the injustice, the scorn, the ridicule, the
pain and persecution which others, needy creatures like ourselves,
actually inflict upon us. It is easier, we say, to bear poverty than
insult; it is easier to suffer the inclemency of the elements than to
endure the unkindness of our brethren; it is easier to put up with the
pain and weariness of bodily sickness than to come under the lash of the
tongues of men. There is here, however, no room for hesitation and
question; the rule is the same for all the crosses that come to us. God
often permits us to be afflicted by the sins of others for our greater
spiritual profit. Since, therefore, all alike proceed from God, either by
positive act or divine permission, and since we know that He is supremely
good and loves us, having given every proof of His desire to save us, even
to the delivering up of His only Son,(106) we can never reasonably or
sincerely doubt that every evil and cross of life, with the sole exception
of our personal sins, has been arranged for our good. My God, do Thou
teach us the wisdom of the cross! “For this is a favor to Thy friend, that
for love of Thee he may suffer and be afflicted in the world, how often
soever and by whom soever Thou permittest such trials to befall him.”(107)

It is helpful that here also, in learning to discern the source and
meaning of our afflictions, we have ever before us the examples of the
holiest souls. We know that in all trials they steadfastly look beyond the
cross that presses them to the hand of Him who has placed it there. Like
the shepherd’s sheep, they are convinced of the power and goodness of
their Master, and nothing can shake their trust in Him. Without
distinction or question they accept all as coming from God by special act
or sovereign permission, to purify them, to detach them from the world and
creatures, to increase their nearness and likeness to Himself, to multiply
their merits for Heaven and bring them to everlasting crowns. They
discover the workings of Providence everywhere, in things that are
painful, as well as in things that are pleasant to nature. Thus behind
their pangs of body and mind, behind the whips and scorns of time, behind
the tongue that slanders and calumniates them, behind the oppressor’s
wrong, the injustice and tyranny of princes and rulers, behind all the
evils of life they see the hand of Him who directs and governs all. But
here we must not conclude that the Saints and holy persons have never
resisted evil and evil-doers, and that consequently we must not. This
would be a serious mistake, as Church history and hagiography plainly
prove. Who was ever more vigorous and fearless in opposing wrong and the
doers of wrong than St. Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome? Who was ever
more persistent in his efforts to prevail against the evils of sin in
others than St. Monica, St. Teresa, St. Dominic, and St. Catharine of
Siena? After their example, then, we may and we must struggle against
evils of all kinds, whether physical or spiritual, whether from ourselves
or from others, in so far as it is not certain that it is the will of God
that we should submit to them. But when we have exerted ourselves
reasonably and lawfully to rid our lives of that which afflicts us, and
still it persists, there can be no further doubt that it is the will of
God that we should patiently and submissively accept our condition and our
cross. Since, however, we do not know how long it is the wish of
Providence that we should be burdened and afflicted, we may continue
patiently to use every legitimate means to be delivered, provided it be
done with humble resignation to the will of our heavenly Father.

The acceptance of injuries, therefore, on the part of holy souls is not a
weak yielding to inevitable circumstances, nor a willing consent to the
wrongs of others. Like St. Paul, they know whom they have believed,(108)
and they are certain that, in due time, divine justice will bring all
evil-doers to an evil end and will deliver the just from their troubles.
And further, when the vengeance of the persecutor is turned upon them, and
they are hunted down without reason by their kind, even by the members of
their own household, they remember the words of their Shepherd, “The
disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is
enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his
lord. If they have called the good man of the house Beelzebub, how much
more them of his household!”(109)

And again, when the servants of God behold the wicked prospering and the
just oppressed; when they see the ambitious, the covetous, the
unscrupulous preferred and honored, and they themselves plotted against
and rejected, their heart is not disturbed, because they know first of all
that “to them that love God, all things work together unto good,”(110) and
secondly, they are persuaded that the efforts of sinners must finally
fail. “For the hope of the wicked is as dust, which is blown away with the
wind, and as a thin froth which is dispersed by the storm: and as a smoke
that is scattered abroad by the wind: and as the remembrance of a guest of
one day that passeth by.”(111) In a word, then, those who are really the
friends of God have faith and confidence in their heavenly Master; and all
the perils of earth, and all the powers of darkness cannot avail to daunt
them or turn them aside from their purpose.

This steadfastness of religious trust we, in our turn, must strive to
acquire. It is the only way to peace and victory. If we would ever rise
above the evils of our lives we must learn to look to God for every thing.
And this looking to God must be, not only as to our bountiful benefactor,
but as to a kind master who knows how best to discipline his servants and
preserve them from irreparable harm.

There is a substantially correct translation of the final verse of the
Shepherd Psalm, which may be rendered as follows: “And Thy goodness and
kindness pursue me all the days of my life, _that I may dwell_ in the
house of the Lord forever.” It is the special wording of the second clause
of the stanza that expresses the real purpose of divine Providence in
regard to the elect. Everything in life has been ordained and arranged for
their eternal salvation, and for the increase of their heavenly rewards.
“Therefore,” wrote St. Paul to Timothy, “I endure all things for the sake
of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation, which is in Christ
Jesus, with heavenly glory.”(112) It is this firm conviction that infinite
love is at the bottom of all the workings of Providence, doing everything
for the sake of the elect, that consoles and steadies the souls of the
just throughout all the trials and crosses of life. In the thick of the
battle they never lose sight of the faithful Shepherd that leads them, and
they ever behold by faith the unspeakable delights He has prepared for
them that love Him.

What joys are there in our faith and hope! If by the mercy and goodness of
God we succeed in saving our souls, how cheap will seem the price we shall
have paid for Heaven, and how benign and ineffably loving will appear the
Providence of God which is leading us there! At times now in our fervor we
can faintly and feebly imagine what it will mean to throw off forever this
veil of faith and see distinctly and continually the Shepherd of our
souls. But our liveliest conceptions here are infinitely inferior to the
vision to come. “To see God face to face, as He is; to gaze undazzled on
the Three Divine Persons, cognizable and distinct in the burning fires of
their inaccessible splendors; to behold that long-coveted sight, the
endless Generation of the All-holy Son, and our hearts to hold the joy,
and not die; to watch with spirits all out-stretched in adoration the
ever-radiant and ineffably beautiful Procession of the Holy Ghost from the
Father and the Son, and to participate ourselves in that jubilee of
jubilees, and drink in with greedy minds the wonders of that Procession,
and the marvelous distinctness of its beauty from the Generation of the
Son; to feel ourselves with ecstatic awe, and yet with seraphic intimacy,
overshadowed by the Person of the Unbegotten Father, the Father to whom
and of whom we have said so much on earth, the Fountain of Godhead, who is
truly our Father, while He is also the Father of the Eternal Son; to
explore, with exulting license and with unutterably glad fear, attribute
after attribute, oceans opening into oceans of divinest beauty; to lie
astonished in unspeakable contentment before the vision of God’s
surpassing Unity, so long the joyous mystery of our predilection, while
the Vision through all eternity seems to grow more fresh and bright and
new: O my poor soul! what canst thou know of this, or of these beautiful
necessities, of thy exceeding love, which shall only satisfy itself in
endless alternations, now of silence and now of song?”(113)

If regret were possible for the blessed hereafter, they would never cease
to mourn over the loss of their opportunities on earth to increase their
eternal beatitude. It is only when the veil shall have been removed that
we shall fully realize how the goodness and mercy of God have always
pursued us in this life, that we might be saved and enjoy the rewards of
His house forever. May God give us all that child-like trust in our
heavenly Master which the sheep display toward their shepherd; may He
grant us that vivid constant faith of the Saints which will enable us to
see in every event of life, in adversity as well as in prosperity, in our
pains as well as in our joys, the designs of a loving Father who is ever
wishing and trying to lead His children to His home of eternal delights.






FOOTNOTES


    1 Isa. xl. 11.

    2 Jer. xxiii. 4, 5.

    3 Ezech. xxxiv. 11, 12, 23.

    4 Phil. ii. 6, 7.

    5 Jno. x. 30, 38; xii. 45.

    6 Luke xii. 49.

    7 Gen. iii. 19.

    8 Lam. i. 12.

    9 Ps. cxliv. 9.

   10 Isa. liii. 4.

   11 Rom. viii. 17.

   12 2 Cor. iv. 17.

   13 Matt. v. 48.

   14 Jno. xv. 5.

   15 Luke xxiii. 34.

   16 Prov. viii. 31.

   17 Jno. xv. 15.

   18 Ps. viii. 5.

   19 Prov. xxiii. 26.

   20 Matt. xi. 28.

   21 Jno. vi. 52, 55.

   22 Jno. xvi. 2.

   23 Ezech. xviii. 23; xxxiii. 11; 2 Pet. iii. 9.

   24 Ps. 102. 14.

   25 Luke xv. 4, 7.

   26 Luke i. 31.

   27 Matt. xvi. 18.

   28 Luke x. 17.

   29 Matt. xviii. 17.

   30 Matt. xxiv. 35.

   31 Matt. xxiv. 24.

   32 2 Cor. xi. 26.

   33 2 Cor. xi. 13.

   34 Matt. xxviii. 20.

   35 Ps. cxiii. 13, 14.

   36 Jude 10.

   37 Matt. x. 17, 22-26.

   38 Mich. vii. 6; Matt. x. 36.

   39 Bk. i. 11. 5.

   40 Matt. xvi. 24.

   41 Ps. xvii. 4, 5.

   42 Luke xii. 34.

   43 1 Jno. iv. 16, 18.

   44 Ps. xxvi. 1, 2.

   45 Matt. x. 28.

   46 Wis. iii. 3.

   47 Ps. xxxiii. 20.

   48 Ps. xiii. 3.

   49 Jno. x. 10.

   50 2 Tim. ii. 5.

   51 Luke ix. 23.

   52 Jno. xii. 34.

   53 Job vii. 1; Job xiv. 2.

   54 Isa. xl. 6, 7.

   55 Heb. xi. 10.

   56 Wis. v. 6-9.

   57 Rom. viii. 16, 17.

   58 1 Peter iv. 13.

   59 Wis. iii. 4, 6.

   60 Luke xiv.

   61 1 Cor. i. 25.

   62 Luke xiv. 26.

   63 Philip iii. 7, 8.

   64 Confess. ix. 1.

   65 Ps. xxxiii. 9; lxxxii. 2.

   66 Job xiii. 15.

   67 Ps. xc. 11.

   68 Philip iv. 7.

   69 Philip iv. 13.

   70 Rom. viii. 33-39.

   71 Rom. ix. 16.

   72 Eccl. ix. 1, 2.

   73 Philip, ii. 12.

   74 1 Cor. ix. 27.

   75 Jno. xvii. 11-15.

   76 Ps. xvi. 5.

   77 Isa. xlii. 3.

   78 Ps. cii. 13, 14.

   79 Apoc. xxi., iv.

   80 Philip i. 20, 21.

   81 2 Cor. vi. 4-11.

   82 Matt. vii. 16-19.

   83 Matt. vi. 30.

   84 Luke xxiv. 25.

   85 Matt. xvii. 16.

   86 Ps. xxix. 7.

   87 Jonas iv.

   88 In Ps. xxx. Exp. 2.

   89 Ps. cxlv. 2, 3.

   90 Jno. xiv. 27.

   91 Bk. iii.; ch. lix. 3.

   92 Matt. xxv. 24-31.

   93 Matt. xi. 28.

   94 Jno. iv. 13, 14.

   95 Bk. iii., ch. 1, 4.

   96 De Fide orthod. ii. 29.

   97 Wis. vi. 8.

   98 Ench. tom. iii., ch. 27 and ii.

   99 Isa. lv. 8; Rom. xi. 33.

  100 Jno. xii. 25.

  101 Matt. vii. 21.

  102 Mk. iii. 35.

  103 Mk. xi. 23.

  104 Bk. III., ch. l. 6.

  105 Matt. xi. 12.

  106 Rom. viii. 32.

  107 Imitation, Bk. III., ch. l. 4.

  108 2 Tim. i. 12.

  109 Matt. x. 24, 25.

  110 Rom. viii. 28.

  111 Wis. v. 15.

  112 2 Tim. ii. 10.

  113 Faber, Creator and Creature, Bk. II., ch. v.





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