sheep might easily fall to its death. From such dangers the shepherd had
to guard his flock. Some sheep, however, being wayward by nature would
take one of these criss-cross paths leading to danger and fall headlong
into thickets or down ravines, where they would lie wounded, bleeding
and dying. What does a stupid sheep know of ravines, precipices or
haunts of wild beasts? That hill or valley seems to offer fair prospects
and good pasture--but death lurks there. The sheep knows not. The
shepherd would have to seek the lost, wounded sheep, and, finding it,
bind up its wounds, reset broken limbs and restore its health.

It is said that if a sheep wandered into a stranger's pasture the finder
could cut its throat and keep the carcass, providing the shepherd did
not come in time to save the sheep. Many times the shepherd arrived just
after the sheep had been mutilated, and by care saved its life and
restored it to health again. The sheep was again his own--it was
"restored."

=_The Wandering Sheep_=

David is spiritually soliloquizing. He thinks of the tendency of human
nature to err and stray like a sheep. "All we like sheep have gone
astray; we have turned every one to his own way." Man, too, has a genius
for going wrong. "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the
end thereof are the ways of death." No man is clever enough to guide
himself through the devious ways of life. He needs God as a guide.

David recalls how tenderly God had dealt with him after his backslidings
and how graciously and completely He had restored him to fellowship.

How gently Christ deals with the backslider! When John the Baptist
temporarily wavered in his conception of the mission of the Christ, and
sent his disciples to Jesus to ask, "Art thou he that should come, or
look we for another?" how tenderly Christ dealt with His forerunner! The
circumstances in the case might have led us to expect harsh treatment.
John had seen the open heavens and heard the voice of God saying, "This
is my beloved Son." In a special and miraculous way it had been revealed
to John that Jesus was the Messiah, "the Lamb of God, which taketh away
the sin of the world!" The people had looked upon John as a prophet. All
that he had said concerning the Christ they had believed, and now from
the forerunner of Christ comes this message of doubt repeated to Jesus
within the hearing of the multitudes. But that child of the desert had
been incarcerated for som