And what am I now? A learner still; and if I have learned anything, it is this, that I have every day more and more yet to learn. Of this I am certain, that my young scholar soon became my teacher. I first saw what true religion could accomplish in witnessing her experience of it. The Lord once “called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of his disciples” as an emblem and an illustration of his doctrine. But the Lord did more in the case of little Jane. He not only called her as a child to show, by a similitude, what conversion means, but he also called her by his grace to be a vessel of mercy, and a living witness of that almighty power and love by which her own heart was turned to God.
PART II.
There is no illustration of the nature and character of the Redeemer’s kingdom on earth which is more grateful to contemplation, than that of the shepherd and his flock. Imagination has been accustomed, from our earliest childhood, to wander amongst the fabled retreats of the Arcadian shepherds. We have probably often delighted ourselves in our own native country, by witnessing the interesting occupation of the pastoral scene. The shepherd, tending his flock on the side of some spacious hill, or in the hollow of a sequestered valley; folding them at night, and guarding them against all danger; leading them from one pasture to another, or for refreshment to the cooling waters. These objects have met and gratified our eyes, as we travelled through the fields, and sought out creation’s God, amidst creation’s beauties. The poet and the painter have each lent their aid to cherish our delight in these imaginations. Many a descriptive verse has strengthened our attachment to the pastoral scene, and many a well-wrought picture has occasioned it to glow like a reality in our ideas.
But far more impressively than these causes can possibly affect, has the word of God endeared the subject to our hearts, and sanctified it to Christian experience. Who does not look back with love and veneration to those days of holy simplicity, when patriarchs of the church of God lived in tents and watched their flocks? With what a strength and beauty of allusion do the prophets refer to the intercourse between the shepherd and flock for an illustration of the Saviour’s kingdom on earth! The Psalmist rejoiced in the
consideration that the Lord was his Shepherd, and that therefore he should not want. The Redeemer himself assumed this interesting title, and declared that “his sheep hear his voice, he knows them, and they follow him, and he gives unto them eternal life.”
Perhaps at no previous moment was this comparison ever expressed so powerfully, as when his risen Lord gave the pastoral charge to the lately offending but now penitent disciple, saying, “Feed my sheep.” Every principle of grace, mercy, and peace, met together on that occasion. Peter had thrice denied his Master: his Master now thrice asked him, “Lovest thou me?” Peter each time appealed to his own, or to his Lord’s consciousness of what he felt within his heart. As often Jesus commited to his care the flock which he had purchased with his blood. And that none might be forgotten, he not only said, “Feed my sheep,” but “Feed my lambs,” also.
May every instructor of the young keep this injunction enforced on his conscience and affections,—I return to little Jane.
It was about fifteen months from the first period of her attendance on my Saturday school, when I missed her from her customary place. Two or three weeks had gone by, without my making any particular inquiry respecting her. I was at length informed that she was not well; but apprehending no peculiar cause for alarm, nearly two months passed away without any further mention of her name being made.
At length a poor old woman in the village, of whose religious disposition I had formed a good opinion, came and said to me, “Sir, have you not missed Jane S--- at your house on Saturday afternoons?”