IT is told us by one who was once a missionary in Greece, that while living there he one night became very much interested in those words of the Lord Jesus,
Thereupon he asked his native manservant if it was usual in his country to give names to the sheep. The man said it was, and that the sheep obeyed the shepherd when he called them by their names.
The next morning the missionary happened to be passing near a flock of sheep, so he asked the shepherd the same question that he had asked his servant the night before, and he received the same answer. He then requested the shepherd to call one of his sheep. The shepherd did so, and the sheep instantly came away from its pasturage and its companions, and ran up to the hand of the shepherd with signs of pleasure. The missionary was specially struck by the sheep’s prompt obedience, the like of which he declares he had never seen in any other animal. It is also true, he says, of the sheep in that country, that “a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers.”
The shepherd told him, that many of his sheep were still wild; that they had not yet learned their names; but that by teaching, they would all learn them. The others, which knew their names, he also called tame.
What a picture we have in this story of the state, not only of men and women in the world, but of children too! The Good Shepherd laid down His life for the sheep, but many of them are still wild; they have not learned to hearken to His voice. Others have learned to obey His call, and to follow Him, and He has given them “eternal life, and they shall never perish.”
How does our young reader act toward the Good Shepherd? Is His voice “most sweet” to you? and do you delight to “follow Him” from day to day?
ML 11/09/1924