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 ab