The Shepherd and His Flock Author:John Ross Macduff Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Jfhrth S0itgljt mb Jmmb: " FOB THUS 8AITH THE LORD GOD : BEHOLD, I, EVEN I, WILL BOTH SEARCH MY SHEEP, AND SEEK THEM OUT."—EZEK. XXXIV. 11. ' WHAT MAN O... more »F YOU, HAVING AN HUNDRED SHEEP, IF HE LOSE ONE OF THEM, DOTH NOT LEAVE THE NINETY AND NINE IN THE WILDERNESS, AND GO AFTER THAT WHICH IS LOST, UNTIL HE FIND IT."—LUKE XV. 4. THE FLOCK SOUGHT AND FOUND. Is the Great Shepherd to leave the stray sheep to wander and perish ? or is He to pity and reclaim them ? Glory can accrue to Him in either way. It is for Him, in the plenitude of His own sovereignty and omnipotence, to decide the alternative. In the Crimean war of bygone years, there were two ways, very different from each other, in which heroic deed manifested itself. The one was, by our soldiers' indomitable courage in the field,—when brave men stood manfully to their guns, and poured the iron hail against fearful odds; —when a thin gossamer line, as if it had been a rampart of brass, broke a murderous charge, and turned the fortunes of the day;—when, oft and again, the apparently retreating wave, gathering up its strength—rallying its fretted thunder—swept with awful retribution over the ranks of the enemy, leaving the trophies of its might still and silent on the plain! That was the one way; the stern glory of carnage and destruction. The other unfolds a picture in strange and startling contrast with this. At midnight, in stifled hospital wards, amid the light of dim lamps and moans of sufferers, a gentle Form of pity flitted from couch to couch, with words and looks and deeds of mercy;—pale lips kissing the shadow on their pillows as it passed. Both, I repeat, wereheroic scenes and deeds. On which of the two does the inind love most to dwell ? On that field of stern desperate valour; or on these hushed corr...« less