One of the most striking and beautiful of these symbols is that which represents Christ as the Good Shepherd, and believers as the sheep of his fold. While the doves, as we have seen, may be regarded as emblematic of the beatified spirits of the departed, the sheep more appropriately symbolize those who, still in the flesh, go in and out and find pasture. Suggesting the thought of that sweet Hebrew idyl[386] of which the world will never grow tired; which, lisped by the pallid lips of the dying throughout the ages, has strengthened their hearts as they entered the dark valley; and to which Our Lord lent a deeper pathos by the tender parable of the lost sheep—small wonder that it was a favourite type of that unwearying love that sought the erring and the outcast and brought them to his fold again. With reiterated and manifold treatment the tender story is repeated over and over again, making the gloomy crypts bright with scenes of idyllic beauty, and hallowed with sacred associations.
This symbol very happily sets forth the entire scope of Christian doctrine. It illustrates the sweet pastoral representations of man’s relationship to the Shepherd of Israel who leadeth Joseph like a flock,[387] and his individual dependence upon him who is the Shepherd and Bishop of all souls.[388] But it especially illustrates the character and office of Our Lord, and the many passages of Scripture in which he represents himself as the Good Shepherd, who forsook his eternal throne to seek through this wilderness-world the lost and wandering
sheep, to save whom he gave his life that he might bring them to the evergreen pastures of heaven.
This subject undergoes every possible variety of treatment and is endlessly repeated—rudely scratched on funeral slabs, elaborately sculptured on sarcophagi, moulded on lamps and vases, graven on seals and rings, traced in gold on glass, and painted in fresco, generally in the most prominent and honourable position, in the vaulting of the chambers and tympana of the arcosolia.[389] The Good Shepherd is generally represented as a youthful beardless figure in a short Roman tunic and buskins, bearing tenderly the lost sheep which he has found and laid upon his shoulders with rejoicing. This is evidently not a personal image, but an allegorical representation of the “Lord Jesus, that Great Shepherd of the sheep.” He is generally surrounded, as in [Fig. 47], by a group of fleecy followers, whose action and attitude indicate the disposition of soul and manner of hearing the word. Some are listening earnestly; others are more intent on cropping the herbage at their feet, the types of those occupied with the cares and pleasures and riches of this world. A truant ram is turning heedlessly away, as if refusing to listen; and often a gentle ewe nestles fondly at the shepherd’s feet or tenderly caresses his hand. An early Christian writer, contemporary with this primitive art, furnishes an interpretation of these pictures. He compares the poor of this world to sheep in a barren desert; finding no allurements here below, they seek after those things which are above. The rich, on the contrary, are like sheep in a pleasant pasture, with heads and hearts always intent on the things of earth. Frequently a shower of rain, or of water from a rock—the emblem of the dews of grace or the waters of
salvation—falls, abundantly on the listening sheep, scantily on those that are feeding, not at all on the one that is turning away.
Fig. 47.—The Good Shepherd.
Sometimes the sheep appears to nestle with an expression of human tenderness and love on the shepherd’s shoulders; in other examples it is more or less firmly held with one or both hands, as if to prevent its escape. In a few instances the fold is seen in the background, which seems to complete the allegory. Frequently the shepherd carries a staff or crook in his hand, on which he sometimes leans, as if weary beneath his burden. He is sometimes even represented sitting on a mound, as if overcome with fatigue, thus recalling the pathetic words of the Dies Iræ:
Quærens me sedisti lassus.