"The Lord is my Shepherd;
I shall not want."
Three thousand years have passed away since the sweet singer of Israel first sang this psalm about the shepherd care of God. Thirty centuries! It is a long time. And in that vast abyss all the material relics of his life, however carefully treasured, have mouldered into dust.
The harp, from the strings of which his fingers swept celestial melody; the tattered banner, which he was wont to uplift in the name of the Lord; the well-worn book of the law, which was his meditation day and night; the huge sword, with which he slew the giant; the palace chamber, from which his spirit passed away to join the harpers harping with their harps, all these lie deep amid the debris of the ages.
But this psalm, though old as the time when Homer sang, or Solon gave his laws, and though trodden by the myriads of men in every succeeding age- is as fresh to-day as though it were just composed. Precious words! They are the first taught to our children, and perhaps the Holy Child Himself first learned to repeat them in the old Hebrew tongue beside his mother's knee in Nazareth; and they are among the last that we whisper in the ear of our beloved ones, standing in the twilight between the darkening day of earth and the breaking day of heaven. The sufferer in the sick-chamber; the martyr at the stake; the soldier on his sentry duty; the traveller amid many perils; the Covenanter; the Huguenot; the Vaudois, these, and a multitude which no man can number, have found in these words a lullaby for fear, an inspiration to new life and hope. "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want."
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