THE GOOD SHEPHERD.
[To THE EDT/Va. or THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,--A layman must needs be cautious in writing of matters in which he is, perhaps, an amateur. Yet I confess I was much struck when a layman, a man of varied experiences in many parts of the world, happened to tell me that he regretted that the emblem of the Good Shepherd, so dear to the imagination of the earliest Christians, has been universally replaced by the Cross, the symbol of the physical martyrdom a the Divine Founder. It is signifi- cant, surely, that at a time when heathen and Christian alike necessarily attached much importance to physical miracles, the primitive Church should instinctively turn to the moral miracle of the Perfect Life, spent, not in secluded asceticism, but in frank and friendly communion with men and women of humble condi- tion, " publicans and sinners "; aliens, many of them, to Jewish conventions of conduct and manners. In our own day, it is pre- cisely the physical miracles that present most difficulty to the faith of lay followers of the Christ. Might we not have higher hopes of reconciliation if we thought more often of " the pure Exemplar and Idea of our Nature," a model displayed to women and men of the simplest nurture and scant learning? " Democracy " (perhaps because of a natural confusion with demagogy) has unpleasant associations for most of us. But surely the true, the Christian idea of democracy is of a system whereby any man, whatever his trade or breeding, may be in all essentials a gentle- man, not as a matter of status or convention, but of aspiration and love of his fellow-men. Demagogy, we all admit, is a detestable thing, the counterpart of the obsequious docility which is the baser element in aristocracy. But we may find the elements of the nobler democracy in those remarkable lines of Thomas Dekker :-
" The best of men That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer, A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit; The first true Gentleman that ever breathed."
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