Feed us, the children, as sheep. Yea, Master, fill us with righteousness, Thine own pasture; yea, O Instructor, feed us on Thy holy mountain the church, which towers aloft, which is above the clouds, which touches heaven. “And I will be,” He says, “their Shepherd,”[370] and will be near them, as the garment to their skin. He wishes to save my flesh by enveloping it in the robe of immortality, and He hath anointed my body. “They shall call me,” He says, “and I will say, Here am I.”[371] Thou didst hear sooner than I expected, Master. “And if they pass over, they shall not slip,”[372] saith the Lord. For we who are passing over to immortality shall not fall into corruption, for He shall sustain us. For so He has said, and so He has willed. Such is our Instructor, righteously good. “I came not,” He says, “to be ministered unto, but to minister.”[373] Wherefore He is introduced in the Gospel “wearied,”[374] because toiling for us, and promising “to give His life a ransom for many.”[375] For him alone who does so He owns to be the good shepherd. Generous, therefore, is He who gives for us the greatest of all gifts, His own life; and beneficent exceedingly, and loving to men, in that, when He might have been Lord, He wished to be a brother man; and so good was He that He died for us. Further, His righteousness cried, “If ye come straight to me, I also will come straight to you; but if ye walk crooked, I also will walk crooked, saith the Lord of hosts;”[376] meaning by the crooked ways the chastisements of sinners. For the straight and natural way which is indicated by the _Iota_ of the name of Jesus is His goodness, which is firm and sure towards those who have believed at hearing: “When I called, ye obeyed not, saith the Lord; but set at nought my counsels, and heeded not my reproofs.”[377] Thus the Lord’s reproof is most beneficial. David also says of them, “A perverse and provoking race; a race which set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not faithful with God: they kept not the covenant of God, and would not walk in His law.”[378] Such are the causes of provocation for which the Judge comes to inflict punishment on those that would not choose a life of goodness. Wherefore also afterwards He assailed them more roughly; in order, if possible, to drag them back from their impetuous rush towards death. He therefore tells by David the most manifest cause of the threatening: “They believed not in His wonderful works. When He slew them, they sought after Him, and turned and inquired early after God; and remembered that God was their Helper, and God the Most High their Redeemer.”[379] Thus He knew that they turned for fear, while they despised His love: for, for the most part, that goodness which is always mild is despised; but He who admonishes by the loving fear of righteousness is reverenced.