to the prosperity of the flock. It was by
attempting to accomplish this object by a defective plan, that Laban
afforded to Jacob the opportunity of prosecuting his subtle policy.
While conversing lately with some shepherds on the Scottish
Cheviots, I learned that masters and servants in that district
arrange the matter easily to their mutual profit and satisfaction.
The wages of the shepherd are not paid in money; a certain number of
the sheep, between forty and fifty according to circumstances, are
his own property, and their produce constitutes his hire. Thus his
own interest is an ever present motive pressing the man to do his
best for the flock, and so to do his best for the master.

We assume, therefore, according to the terms of the narrative in their
literal acceptation, that this is a man "having an hundred sheep,"--that
the sheep are his own. He is feeding them on pasture land far from
cultivated fields and human dwellings. Hills impervious to the plough,
and patches of vegetation interspersed through rugged stony tracts, have
in all countries and ages constituted the appropriate pasture for flocks
of sheep. These are indicated here by one word, "the wilderness." The
term is obviously used not in a strict but in a free popular sense; it
means simply the region of pasturage, consisting generally of hills and
moors, not suitable for being ploughed and sown.

A flock of a hundred sheep, although small, is yet sufficiently
considerable to render it impossible for the shepherd to detect the
absence of one by merely looking to them in the lump and from a
distance; he must have minutely inspected them ere he discovered that
one was amissing. Knowing them all individually, he knows the one that
has strayed; he loves them all as his children, and grieves when one
goes out of sight.

It was no mark of carelessness in the shepherd, as some have erroneously
imagined, to leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness while he went
to seek the one that was lost. The main body of the flock was left in
its own proper place, where it is often left from morning till night by
the most careful shepherd, even when he is not employed on the urgent
duty of recovering wanderers.

The shepherd knows the nature of the country in which the sheep is
straying; and also the nature of the sheep that is straying there. He
knows the roughness of the mountain passes, and the silliness of the
solitary truant sheep; he divine