There are, however, one or two peculiarities in its mode of treatment which require a word of explanation. The shepherd is generally represented as a young man lightly clad, with his tunic girt high about his loins, denoting thereby his unwearied activity; he is surrounded by sheep, or he carries one on his shoulders, bearing it home to the fold,—the most tender act of his office. And there is nothing in this but what we might naturally have expected. But he is also sometimes represented with a goat instead of a sheep upon his shoulders; and, in later paintings, he has the pastoral reed or tuneful pipe either hanging on the tree by his side or he is playing on it. Now this last particular has no place in the gospel parable, and the former seems directly opposed to it, since the goat is the accepted symbol of the wicked, the sheep only of the good. Hence these points have been taken up by some critics, either as tokens of thoughtless carelessness on the part of the Christian artists, or as proofs that their work, whether consciously or unconsciously, was merely copied from some Pagan original. Neither of these remarks appears to be just. The images of a shepherd in Pagan art, with scarcely a single exception, are of a very different kind; and the particular details objected to are not only capable of receiving a Christian interpretation, they even express consoling Christian truths. St. Gregory Nazianzen speaks of the anxious care of the shepherd as he sits on the hillside, filling the air with the soft notes of his pipe, calling together his scattered flock; and he observes that in like manner the spiritual pastor, desirous to recall souls to God, should follow the example of his Divine Master, and use his pipe more frequently than his staff. Then, as to the substitution of the goat for the sheep, it was probably intended as a distinct protest against the un-Christian severity of those heretics, who in very early times refused reconciliation to certain classes of penitent sinners.