gladsome one, that, as the shepherd observed when one sheep
left the fold, the Shepherd of Israel, who slumbers not nor sleeps,
detects every wandering soul, and in that soul every wandering thought.
The Physician's thorough knowledge of the ailment lies at the very
foundation of the patient's hope.

2. The shepherd cared for the lost sheep; although he possessed ninety
and nine, he was not content to let a unit go. A species of personal
affection and the ordinary interest of property, combine to cause grief
when the sheep is lost, and to contribute the motive for setting off in
search of the wanderer.

In attempting to apply the lesson at this point, we very soon go beyond
our depth. Our own weakness warns us not to attempt too much; but the
condescending kindness of the Lord, in speaking these parables,
encourages us to enter into the mystery of redeeming love on this side
as far as our line can reach. In that inscrutable love which induced the
Owner of man to become his saviour when he fell, there must be something
corresponding to both of the ingredients which constituted the
shepherd's grief. There was something corresponding--with such
correspondence as may exist between the divine and the human--to the
personal affection, and something to the loss of property. When we think
of the Redeemer's plan and work as wholly apart from self-interest, and
undertaken simply for the benefit of the fallen race, we form a
conception of redemption true as far as it goes, but the conception is
not complete. The object which we, from our view-point, strive to
measure, has another and opposite side. For his own sake as well as for
ours, the Redeemer undertook and accomplished his work.[77] "For the joy
that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame." When
he wept over Jerusalem, mere pity for the lost was not the sole fountain
of his tears. Those tears, like some great rivers of the globe, were
supplied from two sources lying in opposite directions. As the
possession of the ransomed when they are brought back affords the
Redeemer joy, the want of the lost, while they are distant, must cause
in his heart a corresponding and equivalent grief. It is true, that if
we too strictly apply to the divine procedure the analogy of human
affairs at this point we shall fatally dilute our conception of the
generosity displayed in the Gospel; but on the other hand, if do not
apply this analogy at all, we shall inevitably perm