tures, the copses leafless. But such a sense of
hidden life everywhere! I stood long beside the gate to watch the
new-born lambs, whose cries thrilled plaintively on the air, like the
notes of a violin. Little black-faced grey creatures, on their high,
stilt-like legs--a week or two old, and yet able to walk, to gambol, to
rejoice, in their way, to reflect. The bleating mothers moved about,
divided between a deep desire to eat, and the anxious care of their
younglings. One of them stood over her sleeping lamb, stamping her
feet, to dismay me, no doubt, while the little creature lay like a
folded door-mat on the pasture. Another brutally repelled the advances
of a strange lamb, butting it over whenever it drew near; another
chewed the cud, while its lamb sucked, its eyes half closed in
contented joy, just turning from time to time to sniff at the little
creature pressed close to its side. I felt as if I had never seen the
sight before, this wonderful and amazing drama of life, beginning again
year after year, the same, yet not the same.

The old shepherd came out with his crook, said a few words to me, and
moved off, the ewes following him, the lambs skipping behind. "He shall
feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth beside the waters of
comfort." How perfectly beautiful and tender the image, a thing seen
how many hundred years ago on the hills of Bethlehem, and touching the
old heart just as it touches me to-day!

And yet, alas, to me to-day the image seems to miss the one thing
needful; how all the images of guide and guardian and shepherd fail
when applied to God! For here the shepherd is but a little wiser, a
little stronger than his flock. He sees their difficulties, he feels
them himself. But with God, He is at once the Guide, and the Creator of
the very dangers past which He would lead us. If we felt that God
Himself were dismayed and sad in the presence of evils that He could
not touch or remedy, we should turn to Him to help us as He best could.
But while we feel that the very perplexities and sufferings come from
His hand, how can we sincerely ask Him to guard us from things which He
originates, or at least permits? Why should they be there at all, if
His concern is to help us past them; or how can we think that He will
lead us past them, when they are part of His wise and awful design?

And thus one plunges again into the darkness. Can it indeed be that
God, if He be all-embracing, all-loving, all-power