"I am the good shepherd" is one of Jesus' most tender, most compassionate sayings. The first sixteen verses of the tenth chapter of St. John's Gospel, from which this saying comes, should be joined to the twenty-third Psalm. Notwithstanding the fact that John's words are tinged with Greek thought, as descriptive of shepherd life in the East, those two portions of Scripture belong together. The various phases of shepherd life in Syria are indelibly printed in my memory. Our mountain village home was situated on the upper slope of a rather steep hill, at the base of which a thin stream flowed over its rocky bed. Across the narrow ravine, on the lower slope of another hill, just opposite our home, there were three sheep and goat folds. There for years I watched the shepherds and their flocks go out and come in, morning and evening, from early {296} spring until late autumn, when the shepherds dismantled the folds by removing their thorny fences, pulled down their rude bowers, and led their flocks to the "lowlands," where they spent the short winter season. The wailing of Isaiah, in the twelfth verse of the thirty-eighth chapter (Revised Version), "My dwelling is removed and is carried away from me as a shepherd's tent," reminds me very strongly of the easy removal and complete disappearance of that temporary shelter, which I so often saw torn down and carried away. While at work in the fields cutting stone for my father's building operations in various parts of Mount Lebanon, the shepherds were all around us. In those days I watched the shepherd lead his flock "into the waters of rest," or the restful, refreshing waters, which the English version renders "still waters." I watched him as, by inarticulate, deep, guttural sounds, whistling, certain characteristic words which the flock seemed to understand, and the flinging of pebbles or "smooth stones," such as those {297} with which David smote Goliath, he guided, I might say invited, the "blessed creatures," into every nook and corner among the rocks where there was pasture. It was this solicitous watchfulness of the shepherd which the writer of the twenty-third Psalm had in mind when he said, "The Lord is my shepherd, _I shall not want_." In the heat of the day the shepherd made his flock "to lie down" in the pasture ground, and the "blessed ones," as the shepherd always calls his sheep and goats, would fold their nimble legs and lie down, singly and in small groups, a surpassing picture of contentment, trustfulness, and peace. They seemed to realize that although they were in the wilderness they had nothing to fear. For the loving shepherd, with his strong and heavy staff, was in their midst to ward off all danger from them.