I. The Shepherd Psalm (1 of 3)

The Psalm of Psalms

This psalm has sometimes been called the Psalm of the Crook. It lies between the Psalm of the Cross and the Psalm of the Crown. If the Twenty-second tells of the Good Shepherd, who died, and if the Twenty-fourth tells of the Chief Shepherd, who is coming again, the Twenty-third tells of the Great Shepherd, who keeps His flock with unerring sagacity and untiring devotion. No hireling is He. He asks no wage; He takes no reward. He counts not the cost. The sheep are His own. And in these sweet words we learn what He is towards them to-day, in all His shepherd tenderness and love.

Some have spoken of this psalm as a creed. I have it on good authority that one thinker at least, wearied with the perplexing questions that agitate so many hearts and brains in this strange questioning age, and pressed to give some positive affirmation of his creed, began reciting these words with solemn pathos of voice and kindling rapture of eye. And when he had finished the whole psalm he added: "That is my creed. I need, I desire no other. I learned it from my mother's lips. I have repeated it every morning when I awoke, for the last twenty years. Yet I do not half understand it; I am only beginning now to spell out its infinite meaning, and death will come on me with the task unfinished. But, by the grace of Jesus, I will hold on by this psalm as my creed, and will strive to believe it, and to live it; for I know that it will lead me to the cross, it will guide me to glory."

Yes, the testimony is true. And as one looking into some priceless gem may see fountains of colour Welling upward from its depths, so, as we shall gaze into these verses, simple as childhood's rhymes, but deep as an archangel's anthem, we shall see in them the gospel in miniature, the grace of God reflected as the sun in a dewdrop, and things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived. Read into these words the meaning of the Gospels, and you have an unrivalled creed, to which all Christians may unhesitatingly assent.

Others have spoken of it as a minstrel. Before me lies a page that describes it in some such terms as these: that it is a pilgrim minstrel commissioned of God to travel up and down through the world, singing so sweet a strain that none who hear it can remember whatsoever sorrow has been rending and tearing at the heart! This, too, is true. This psalm speaks in language that the universal heart of man can comprehend. It exercises a spell that can charm away the griefs that bid a bold defiance to philosophy and mirth.