as blind leaders of the blind (Matt. 15:14). I understand, then, that it is a parable with a double application. First, Christ compares the Pharisees to shepherds, himself to the door, and declares that they alone are true shepherds who enter into Israel through, _i. e._, under command from, and with the authority of, Christ as the Messiah--all others are thieves and robbers (vers. 7-10); he then changes the application, retaining the figure, declares himself to be the shepherd, whose praises David and Isaiah sang, and indicates the nature of the service which he will render to his sheep, namely, giving his life for them. The parable itself embraces verses 1-6; the first application, a lesson against the false Pharisaical teachers, verses 7-10; the second application, a lesson concerning himself as the good shepherd, verses 11-18. The first application is interpreted by Ezekiel, ch. 34; the second, by Psalm 23 and Isaiah 40:11. The ordinary interpretation, which regards Christ as referring to himself throughout as shepherd, necessarily supposes that he employs a mixed metaphor, in which, without any apparent reason, he alternately represents himself as the door and the shepherd. 1 Verily, verily, I say unto you,[388] He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. [388] Rom. 10:15; Heb. 5:4. =1. He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold.= Sheepfolds, as usually constructed in the East, are low, flat buildings, erected on the sheltered side of the valleys, and when the nights are cold, the flocks are shut up in them, but in ordinary weather they are merely kept within the yard. During the day, of course, they are led forth to pasture by the shepherds. The folds are defended by a wide stone wall, crowned by sharp thorns which the wolf will rarely attempt to scale. The leopard and panther, however, when pressed with hunger, will overleap the thorny hedge, and make havoc of the flock. In Greece, folds are sometimes built merely of a parapet of bushes or branches, placed at the entrance of caves, natural or made for the purpose, in the side of hills or rocky ledges. A porter guards the door of the larger sheepfolds. See _Thompson’s Land and Book_, I, 299, and _Smith’s Bible Dict._, Art. _Sheepfold_. The sheepfold, in this parable, answers primarily to Israel, the then visible and organic church of God, but secondarily to the church of Christ in all ages, the visible and external organization, in which the professed disciples of Christ, his sheep, are gathered for better protection. He that enters not by the door, but furtively climbs up some other way, marks himself thereby as evil disposed. [Illustration: AN EASTERN SHEEPFOLD.] 2 But he that entereth in by the[389] door is the shepherd of the sheep. [389] Verse 7, 9.