I. The Shepherd Psalm (2 of 3)

"It has remanded to their dungeon more felon thoughts, more black doubts, more thieving sorrows, than there are sands on the seashore. It has comforted the noble host of the poor. It has sung courage to the army of the disappointed. It has poured balm and consolation into the heart of the sick. It has visited the prisoner and broken his chains, and, like Peter's angel, has led him forth in imagination, and sung him back to his home again. It has made the dying Christian slave freer than his master, and consoled those whom, dying, he left behind mourning, not so much that he was gone as because they were left. Nor is its work done. It will go singing on through all the generations of time, and it will not fold its wings till the last pilgrim is safe and time ended; then it shall fly back to the bosom of God, whence it issued, and sound on, mingled with all those harmonies of celestial joy which make heaven musical for ever."

But it may also be compared to the holy of holies of old, the inner shrine of that splendid temple which rose, noiseless as some tall palm, at the bidding of Solomon. However eager or noisy might be the tide of human life that throbbed and surged through the narrow streets of the Holy City, or even pulsed in the temple courts, yet there was always one quiet and undisturbed enclosure where angel guardians stretched out their wings in calm repose over the ark of God. There at least was rest; and if the priestly occupants had only been allowed to tarry in that secret place of the Most High, surely they had forgotten the fret and rush of life under the spell of that unutterable repose. Dusty haste and restless anxiety must doff their garments and shoes ere they could enter there.

And all this is the psalm before us. It is an oasis in the desert; it is a bower on a hill of arduous climbing; it is a grotto in a scorching noon; it is a sequestered arbour for calm and heavenly meditation; it is one of the most holy places in the temple of Scripture. Come hither, weary ones, restless ones, heavy-laden ones; sit down in this cool and calm resort, while the music of its rhythm charms away the thoughts that break your peace. How safe and blessed are you to whom the Lord is Shepherd! Put down this volume and repeat again, in holy reverie, the well-known words to the end, and see if they do not build themselves into a refuge on which the storms may break in vain.