In the Spring of the year the Jewish shepherd conducted his sheep to their pasture, and there they remained until the end of the following Autumn. At night they were enclosed in folds, the flocks of several shepherds being sometimes gathered in the same fold. The fold, open overhead, was surrounded by a wall, in which there was but one door, at which the doorkeeper (_ostiarius_) remained through the night, until the shepherd’s return in the morning. A thief, wishing to steal sheep, would, of course, not attempt to enter by the door, but would climb the wall. On the shepherd’s return in the morning the door of the fold was thrown open by the doorkeeper, and each shepherd entered and called his own sheep, which, knowing his voice, followed him to their own pasture. Throughout the whole day the shepherd remained with them, guarding them from wild beasts and robbers, and attending to the weak and maimed. Thus his relations with his sheep were very close and constant indeed, and must be carefully borne in mind, in order that we may rightly appreciate the full significance of these beautiful parables. *He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold.* If we strip this language of its metaphorical character, the sense is: that the teacher who enters not into the Church through Christ as the door, that is to say, by believing in Christ, is a false teacher, as were therefore, the Scribes and Pharisees. Christ, then, is the door (see verse 7); the Church is the sheepfold; and the Scribes and Pharisees, with all such, are the thieves and robbers who injure their fellow‐men, sometimes secretly like thieves, sometimes with open violence like robbers. That Christ is signified by “the door,” is the view of SS. Aug., Cyril, Bede, Greg., and of A Lap.; and is, indeed, distinctly stated by Himself, in verse 7, after His hearers had failed to understand His words. Hence we unhesitatingly reject the view of Mald. and many others, who take “the door” in verse 1 to be different from that in verse 7; the latter, they say, being the door of the _sheep_, Christ Himself; the former the door of the shepherds, which Mald. understands of _legitimate authority_ to teach. We have no doubt that the door in both verses is the same, because Christ begins to explain, in verse 7: “Jesus _therefore_ said to them again” what He had said in verses 1‐5. 2. Qui autem intrat per 2. But he that entereth in by ostium, pastor est ovium. the door, is the shepherd of the sheep. 2. The sense is that he who entereth by faith in Christ, and by Christ’s authority, is _a_ true shepherd (ποιμήν, without the article). Such a pastor is contrasted with the Pharisees who blindly refused to enter by the only gate.