Article January 10, 1920 Issue

The Good Shepherd

MARY H. CUMMINS

There are, perhaps, few subjects which have appealed more powerfully to the imagination of painters than that of the shepherd and his flock. We are all familiar with such pictures, some depicting the sheep peacefully browsing in green fields, others portraying their passage over rugged mountains or through a wild ravine, and yet others—which, perhaps, we love best of all—showing them as they are being carefully folded for the night. Whatever the setting, however, the central point of interest is always the shepherd. Whether he be garbed in the picturesque dress of the East or the more familiar costume of the West, our eyes turn instinctively to that solitary figure upon whose intelligence and alertness the safety of the sheep so largely depends.

This is because the figure of the shepherd implies protection, and protection is that for which every individual longs, whether he is aware of this fact or not. The desire to be guided aright, to be saved from disaster and misfortune, or to be rescued from these when they overtake us, is surely hidden somewhere in every human heart, and it is this which has led hundreds, who found themselves wayworn and weary from life's journey, to find comfort in the twenty-third psalm. On page 578 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy gives an exquisite interpretation of this psalm, which has come as a revelation to those who always loved it, as well as to those who were less familiar with its beautiful phrases; for now, for the first time, they learn how it is possible to know that the Shepherd is ever at hand.

The sheeplike tendencies of the unenlightened human mind have been frequently pointed out. This is evidenced in its readiness to become so engrossed in nibbling the luscious grass right under its nose that it is oblivious of all else; in its liability to be suddenly panic-stricken when danger threatens; and, perhaps, most of all in its inclination to follow blindly where another leads. It is proverbial that when one sheep jumps through a gap another will follow, and another, and another, until the whole flock has gone in the same direction. How often we have seen this repeated in human experience. One individual takes a course which seems to him desirable, and, mesmerized by his example, another follows. Others, looking through the gap through which these two have passed and seeing that the grass on the other side seems "pleasant to the eyes" and "good for food," hurry after them, with the result that before long hundreds are going in the same direction. Some of us, however, who have been either the leading sheep or one of those that followed, have found that the strip of grass which from a distance seemed so alluring, had an unaccountable way of shrinking when it was reached; moreover that it proved to be full of pitfalls; and not infrequently have we found ourselves disappointed and disillusioned,—in fact, like the lost sheep of the Bible story, "sick and helpless and ready to die."

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