ance, and absolute trust in his care, had taught him the secret of
peace in helplessness, of patience in ignorance. The green strips of
meadow-land where the clear waters brought life, the wearied flocks
sheltered from the mid-day heat, the quiet course of the little stream,
the refreshment of the sheep by rest and pasture, the smooth paths which
he tried to choose for them, the rocky defiles through which they had to
pass, the rod in his hand that guided, and chastised, and defended, and
was never lifted in anger,--all these, the familiar sights of his youth,
pass before us as we read; and to us too, in our widely different social
state, have become the undying emblems of the highest care and the
wisest love. The psalm witnesses how close to the youthful heart the
consciousness of God must have been, which could thus transform and
glorify the little things which were so familiar. We can feel, in a kind
of lazy play of sentiment, the fitness of the shepherd's life to suggest
thoughts of God--because it is not our life. But it needs both a
meditative habit and a devout heart to feel that the trivialities of our
own daily tasks speak to us of Him. The heavens touch the earth on the
horizon of our vision, but it always seems furthest to the sky from the
spot where we stand. To the psalmist, however,--as in higher ways to his
Son and Lord,--all things around him were full of God; and as the
majesties of nature, so the trivialities of man's works--shepherds and
fishermen--were solemn with deep meanings and shadows of the heavenly.
With such lofty thoughts he fed his youth.

The psalm, too, breathes the very spirit of sunny confidence and of
perfect rest in God. We have referred to the absence of traces of
sorrow, and to the predominant tone of hopefulness, as possibly
favouring the supposition of an early origin. But it matters little
whether they were young eyes which looked so courageously into the
unknown future, or whether we have here the more solemn and weighty
hopes of age, which can have few hopes at all, unless they be rooted in
God. The spirit expressed in the psalm is so thoroughly David's, that in
his younger days, before it was worn with responsibilities and sorrows,
it must have been especially strong. We may therefore fairly take the
tone of this song of the Shepherd God as expressing the characteristic
of his godliness in the happy early years. In his solitude he was glad.
One happy thought fills the spirit; o