t is
because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he
cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers
and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in
joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack happy?" We read in a
passage, which it is true, is largely symbolic, that one of Jesus'
quotations from the Old Testament was that "Man shall not live by
bread alone" (Luke 4:4). Hunger is a real thing--horribly real; but
it is comparatively easy to deal with, and man has deeper needs. The
Shoeblack, according to Teufelsdroeckh, wants "God's infinite
universe altogether to himself." In the simpler words of Jesus, he
is never happy till he says, "I will arise and go to my Father"
(Luke 15:18).

This craving for the Father the men of Jesus' day tried to fill with
the law; and, when the law failed to satisfy it, they had nothing
further to suggest, except their fixed idea that "God heareth not
sinners" (John 9:31). They despaired of the great masses and left
them alone. They did not realize, as Jesus did, that the Father also
craves for his children. When Jesus saw the simpler folk thus
forsaken, the picture rose in his mind of sheep, worried by dogs or
wolves, till they fell, worn out--sheep without a shepherd (Matt.
9:36). Every one remembers the shepherd of the parable who sought
the one lost sheep until he found it, and how he brought it home on
his shoulders (Luke 15:5). But there is another parable, we might
almost say, of ninety and nine lost sheep--a parable, not developed,
but implied in the passage of Matthew, and it is as significant as
the other, for our Good Shepherd has to ask his friends to help him
in this case. The appeal that lay in the sheer misery and
helplessness of masses of men was one of the foundations of the
Christian Church. (The Good Shepherd, by the way, is a phrase from
the Fourth Gospel (John 10:11), but we think most often of the Good
Shepherd as carrying the sheep, and that comes from Luke, and is in
all likelihood nearer the parable of Jesus.)

It is worth noticing that Jesus stands alone in refusing to despair
of the greater part of mankind. Contempt was in his eyes the
unpardonable sin (Matt. 5:22). How swift and decisive is his anger
with those who make others stumble! (Luke 17:2). The parable of the
lost sheep reveals what he held to be God's feeling for the hopeless
man; and, as we have seen, his constant aim is to lead men to "think
l