thought the wise Greek's prayer: "O all ye gods, grant me to be beautiful in soul; and may all that I possess of outward things be in harmony with those within." Nor did the Psalmist have the stoical nature of the Roman Epictetus; yet, though his hope was more buoyant and childlike than that of Rome's slave-philosopher, it was kindred in spirit to that confidence with which Epictetus declared his faith toward Zeus: "Though he set me before mankind poor, powerless, sick; banish me, lead me to prison,- shall I think that he hates me? Heaven forbid! . . . Nor that he neglects me; but to exercise me and to make use of me as a witness to others." And it was in one of the Hebrew books, by an author who was a philosopher as well as poet, the Book of Job,that this expression of implicit confidence in Deity reaches the climax of depreciation and sacrifice as to the things ordinarily regarded as necessary for the satisfaction of human wants. Out of the midst of his afflictions Job says to his vain counsellors, "Though the Almighty slay me, yet will I trust in him."

There is no occasion, then, to believe that, when the Hebrew thought of Jehovah as a Shepherd, he necessarily expected a cosseting care for individual human souls, which would save them from all pains, anxieties, trials, and personal efforts for themselves. This "Lord my Shepherd" Psalm itself contradicts such an idea. It speaks of dangers, terrors, darkness, enemies, to be encoun

tered. Nor would the metaphor of the office of shepherd, drawn from the writer's personal knowledge or experience, convey the idea of escape from all encounter with the hazards and perils of life. The Hebrew shepherds at their best did not protect their flocks against all unhappiness. They could not make the grass to grow wherever they wished. The way to the green pastures was sometimes long and wearying. The refreshing fountains were sometimes dried. Violent assaults could not always be warded off. And once every year the shepherd himself led his flocks to the shearers' hands. And any one who has seen the plaintive pathos of entreaty on the face of a sheep under the shears, tied against struggling, and even though, according to the Scripture, dumb, will know that the operation to the poor creature is no pleasant experience, however needful it may be for mankind. The good shepherd was wise and tender, but his wisdom and tenderness had their limitations; and these limiting conditions the flocks. could not always readily distinguish from hardness and cruelty. So, though Jehovah was believed to be a being of infinite wisdom and tenderness, the Hebrew devoutly acknowledged that his ways of showing his wisdom and kindness in the leadership of Israel might often be beyond the limits of man's vision and knowledge. Nevertheless, despite all apparent aberrations and delinquencies, he still trusted the divine leadership; and this was the highest test of the loyalty of Hebrew faith.

We are now prepared to see what were the essential elements of the Psalmist's conception of Jehovah as Shepherd. There are only two of them, but two which to him covered the whole infinity of the character of the Hebrews' Deity, however variously they described him by other forms of speech. The first of these elements will be made conspicuous at once by a more exact rendering of the leading word of the Psalm. Let us translate it thus: "The Eternal is my Shepherd." The word which is translated as "Lord" in the common version is the Hebrew word "Jehovah," more correctly, "Yahweh," and its literal meaning is "eternal existence." "I am that I am" is a Scriptural paraphrase of its meaning. Here was indicated the Being of all beings, Power of all powers, the mystery of supreme existence prior to and penetrating all finite existences. "The Eternal" appears to be as good an English phrase for the idea as any that can be found of equal brevity. And what the Hebrew meant was that, amidst all that was transitory, finite, changeable, perishable, confused, and uncertain in human affairs, there was an Eternal Power as leader, a Power working through and over all for some sublime and lasting end of its own. This is the first essential element of the Psalmist's conception of Deity as a Shepherd, or Leader, of his people. And the second element is that this leadership is accomplished and the sublime end of the Eternal reached through the law of righteousness. The devout Hebrew believed.

that the Eternal was himself the author and giver of the law of righteousness, and that amidst and despite all the moral disloyalty and disobedience, all the vices and wickedness and crimes and calamities of the Hebrew people, the Eternal would turn and overturn, check and punish, until Israel was established in righteousness; and that the prosperity and peace which the nation dreamed of as its ideal destiny could only be attained through the people's learning and keeping the ways of right

eousness.

These, let me repeat, were the two essential facts to which the Hebrew held in his metaphorical description of Jehovah as Shepherd: first, the Eternal, through all change and transitoriness, is man's leader; second, the road of leadership is up the ways of righteousness, to safety, felicity, and peace. The Eternal Power that maketh for righteousness to adopt essentially Matthew Arnold's oft-quoted phraseology - expresses well the Hebrew conception of Jehovah in its inner signifi

cance.

And now I ask whether the intervening centuries have rendered these two declarations obsolete and nugatory? Has the nineteenth century taken us past them? Have we any science that has controverted them? Is there any philosophy of the universe that does not use these two ideas, in some shape, for corner-stones? Is there any rational and ethical, not to say religious, action of man that does not in some way involve them?

Of course, the Hebrew gave other distinctive attributes to his Deity, generally clothing him with very anthropomorphic qualities and features, and representing him as personally and miraculously overseeing and arranging all the affairs of individual human lives. In this region we should certainly find many dogmas which have been outgrown and abandoned, many opinions which to-day's science and reason would deny. But these beliefs were merely subsidiary to the two points of faith just named and in no wise essential conditions of their soundness, and in the Psalm of the Eternal as our Shepherd these merely temporary beliefs have little place. In that poetic utterance, only those two central points of Hebrew faith - the Eternal as leader, and a leader Righteous and Good are prominent.

What, then, does the rational and scientific thought of modern times have to say on these two points of the Hebrew faith in Jehovah as a Shepherd? On the first point, as soon as we give the literal translation, "The Eternal is my Shepherd," there comes at once to view a remarkable parallelism. "The Eternal" we may almost say is the phrase of science. Eternal power, eternal energy or force, eternal existence,- these are all expressions to represent that something, that original, uncreated, and unevolved substance of being which all science and all discussions about the universe have to assume as the basis of all phenomena. There is no blankest atheism, no form of philo