It has been asked and answered many times already. Because I know some of you are in sick-rooms, some are lonely and some companioned by grief, some are poor and some for the time are misunderstood, some are discouraged and some feel themselves little loved, some are young and cannot find their way, and some are old and wayworn,--because I know all of you have need of the Shepherd's watch, I want to answer your question. Yes, we did indeed have such a guest, a man whose home was among the Syrian shepherds, a man who well knew the life which rightly interprets the Shepherd Psalm. I give my word that this story's message about the Psalm's meaning is straight from David's land. We had such a guest and he told us these things out of the life of his people, as we sat together one night over fragrant cups of tea. W. A. K. Boston, January, 1904. Can there be anything more poetic than this life of the Syrian shepherd? It ought to be religious, too. Far, far away, out on the lone mountain, with the everlasting hills around, and heaven above, pure, blue, and high, and still. There go and worship in solemn silence and soul-subduing solitude, worship the Most High God in his temple not made with hands. And now the lights are out in the village, the shepherds are asleep by the side of their flocks, the tinkling bell from the fold falls faintly on the still night air, and the watch-dog bays drowsily from his kennel at the gate. Good night, fair world; 'tis time to seek repose. Let us first read and meditate upon that delightful chapter, the tenth of St. John, where our blessed Saviour appropriates all these characters of a good shepherd to himself. "The Land and the Book." "Faduel Moghabghab," said our guest, laughing as he leaned over the tea-table toward two little maids, vainly trying to beguile their willing and sweetly puckered lips into pronouncing his name. "Faduel Moghabghab," he repeated in syllables, pointing to the card he had passed to them. "Accent the u and drop those g's which your little throats cannot manage," he went on kindly, while the merriment sparkled in his dark eyes, and his milk-white teeth, seen through his black moustache as he laughed, added beauty to his delicate and vivacious face. He was a man of winsome mind, this Syrian guest of ours, and the spirituality of his culture was as marked as the refinement of his manners. We shall long remember him for the tales told that evening of his home in Ainzehalta on the slope of the Syrian mountains, but longest of all for what he said out of the memories of his youth about a shepherd song. "It was out of the shepherd life of my country," he remarked, "that there came long ago that sweetest religious song ever written--the Twenty-third Psalm." After the ripple of his merriment with the children had passed he turned to me with a face now serious and pensive, and said: "Ah, so many things familiar to us are strange to you of America."