the painter have each lent
their aid to cherish our delight in these imaginations. Many a
descriptive verse has strengthened our attachment to the pastoral scene,
and many a well-wrought picture has occasioned it to glow like a reality
in our ideas.

But far more impressively than these causes can possibly affect, has the
word of God endeared the subject to our hearts, and sanctified it to
Christian experience. Who does not look back with love and veneration to
those days of holy simplicity, when patriarchs of the church of God lived
in tents and watched their flocks? With what a strength and beauty of
allusion do the prophets refer to the intercourse between the shepherd
and flock for an illustration of the Saviour's kingdom on earth! The
Psalmist rejoiced in the consideration that the Lord was his Shepherd,
and that therefore he should not want. The Redeemer himself assumed this
interesting title, and declared that "his sheep hear his voice, he knows
them, and they follow him, and he gives unto them eternal life."

Perhaps at no previous moment was this comparison ever expressed so
powerfully, as when his risen Lord gave the pastoral charge to the lately
offending but now penitent disciple, saying, "Feed my sheep." Every
principle of grace, mercy, and peace, met together on that occasion.
Peter had thrice denied his Master: his Master now thrice asked him,
"Lovest thou me?" Peter each time appealed to his own, or to his Lord's
consciousness of what he felt within his heart. As often Jesus commited
to his care the flock which he had purchased with his blood. And that
none might be forgotten, he not only said, "Feed my sheep," but "Feed my
lambs," also.

May every instructor of the young keep this injunction enforced on his
conscience and affections,--I return to little Jane.

It was about fifteen months from the first period of her attendance on my
Saturday school, when I missed her from her customary place. Two or
three weeks had gone by, without my making any particular inquiry
respecting her. I was at length informed that she was not well; but
apprehending no peculiar cause for alarm, nearly two months passed away
without any further mention of her name being made.

At length a poor old woman in the village, of whose religious disposition
I had formed a good opinion, came and said to me, "Sir, have you not
missed Jane S--- at your house on Saturday afternoons?"

"Yes," I replied, "I believe she is n