Is there any answer to the great question, Does any greater one care for our lives? If we are looking for an answer as susceptible to demonstration as a mathematical proposition we are doomed to disappointment. It is possible to believe in providence without being able either to prove or fully comprehend it. The child must become the parent before he can understand the ways of the father or mother with him; yet he can know their love before he can comprehend their ways.
Nothing could do more harm than to have the absolute assurance that an almighty friend would fly to our aid and protection in every time of danger or need. A friend whose power relieved us from the necessity of prudence or courage or endeavour would be a foe indeed. The All Wise loves man too well and too wisely to make plain always His ways of caring for him and His purposes of protection.
The furrowed faces and whitened heads of men may be the will of love as truly as the smooth ways of ease and complacency. There is one at the helm, but His concern is more for the making of strong sailors than for the securing of smooth sailing. The best evidence of the care of the Most High for all the sons of men is not in the immediate unbaring of His arm for their protection, but rather in the manner in which He causes the wind and the waves, the struggle with the tempest, the need for the nerving of the soul in the hour of peril all to work out His will, the will of great love, the bringing of the mariner to His likeness in character and soul.
THE SHEPHERD AND THE SHEEP
Millions have lived and died in faith in that word, The Lord is my Shepherd; nations have sung its strain into the strength of their being. The picture of the one who leads His flock, who carries the lambs in His arms, appeals to all; yet who has not some time, perhaps often, questioned: After all, is there any one who cares; is there any eye to see or heart to heed if I—or, indeed, all men—should faint or fall by the way?
Perhaps there are some who no longer find aught beyond an imagery of poetic beauty in the old strain, who even feel that it would be retreating intellectually to conceive of an infinite heart that broods over men or a hand that helps. They tell us that science has wiped out the possibility of such an one as this great Shepherd of the flock of humanity. Yet even they are not dead to this great thought that so long stirred men's souls and made them brave, ready to sacrifice, to die.
The truth is, the singer of long ago was but giving expression, in figures familiar to him, of a truth we all apprehend with greater or less clearness, one that alone gives strength, hope, and faith to our hearts, the conviction that back of all the warring purposes and jangling discords of our lives and our world there is reason, and order, and beneficence.
The science that seemed to wipe out the conception of a mighty Creator who fashioned the first man with His fingers, but emphasizes with a stress that grows from day to day the fact that this universe is not without order, its forces as sheep without a shepherd; that the stars are not wandering, nor the least atom without guidance; that, as one put it long ago, all things work together for good.
If the remotest particle of matter is bound up with the mighty laws of the universe, guided, governed, led to its appointed end, bound to serve its purpose, shall we not have faith that the law that guides the atom and holds the planet, pervades all the universe and takes us in its mighty grasp?
Not with doubt but with larger meaning and deeper assurance may I sing, "The Lord is my shepherd," thinking not only of one who takes up my little life and carries it, but of the great fact of all life under law, law divine, all pervading, moving in majesty on to the completion of its purposes. I may not know what the Shepherd looks like; I may have lost my old simple pictures of personality and appearance; the larger fact grows too great for fixed words.