Article December 25, 1926 Issue

And There Were Shepherds

HESTER DONALDSON JENKINS

There is no more lovely episode in the story of Jesus' birth than that of the shepherds, to whom came the angel choir singing of the coming of the Christ. Painter, musician, and poet have vied with each other in celebrating it worthily. In a quite different fashion one student of Christian Science has essayed to follow its meaning.

It is a story of shepherds. In the Hebrew Scriptures God is often spoken of as a shepherd, and Jesus called himself "the good shepherd;" but in this story the shepherds stand for the simple workers for God, whose flocks are the thoughts and deeds they carefully tend. These shepherds were "in the same country" with the Christ-babe: the light would not have shone upon them had they been in dark Egypt, or far from their father's home; but they watched their flocks "in the same country."

Jesus uses the endearing term "little flock" to his disciples, and Mary Baker Eddy speaks of her flock and the flock of her students. The word "flock" suggests love, tender-ness, and devotion. Sheep are defined in the Glossary of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 594) as, "Innocence; inoffensiveness; those who follow their leader." Metaphysically, sheep might mean the pupils of a teacher, the children of a parent, the employees of an employer, the patients of a practitioner. All of us have some of these sheep to tend. It was the business of the shepherds to tend the flocks; they were thus doing their duty when the glory came.

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