t, in consequence, was their
repute in Egypt, which surely is a figure of the world? "Every
shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians[24]."

But there are three favoured servants of God in particular, special
types of the Saviour to come, men raised from low estate to great
honour, in whom it was His will that His pastoral office should be thus
literally fulfilled. And the first is Jacob, the father of the
patriarchs, who appeared before Pharaoh. He became, as Abraham before
him, a father of many nations; he "increased exceedingly, and had much
cattle, and maid-servants, and men-servants, and camels, and
asses[25]," and he was visited by supernatural favours, and had a new
name given him--Israel for Jacob. But at the first he was, as his
descendants solemnly confessed year by year, "a Syrian ready to
perish;" and what was his employment? the care of sheep; and with what
toil and suffering, and for how many years, we learn from his
expostulation with his hard master and relative, Laban--"This twenty
years have I been with thee," he says; "thy ewes and thy she-goats have
not cast their young, and the rams of thy flock have I not eaten. That
which was torn of beasts I brought not unto thee; I bare the loss of
it; of my hand didst thou require it, whether stolen by day, or stolen
by night. Thus I was; in the day the drought consumed me, and the
frost by night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes. Thus have I been
twenty years in thy house; . . . and thou hast changed my wages ten
times[26]."

Who is more favoured than Jacob, who was exalted to be a Prince with
God, and to prevail by intercession? Yet, you see, he is a shepherd,
to image to us that mystical and true Shepherd and Bishop of souls who
was to come. Yet there is a second and a third as highly favoured in
various ways. The second is Moses, who drove away the rival shepherds
and helped the daughters of the Priest of Midian to water their flock,
and who, while he was keeping the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law,
saw the Angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush. And the third
is David, the man after God's own heart. He was "the man who was
raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet
Psalmist of Israel[27];" but he was found among the sheep. "He took
him away from the sheep-folds; as he was following the ewes great with
young ones, He took him; that he might feed Jacob His people, and
Israel His inheritance. So he fe