name's sake._ No being has the right to the name of guide or shepherd
unless the paths by which he takes the flock do bring them to their
pasture and rest. The other ambiguous phrase is the _vale of deep
darkness_. As is well known, the letters of the word may be made to spell
_shadow of death_; but the other way of taking them is the more probable.
This, however, need not lead us away from the associations with which our
old translation has invested them. It is not only darkness that the poet
is describing, but the darkness where death lurks for the poor sheep,--the
gorges, in whose deep shadows are the lairs of wild beasts, and the
shepherd and his club are needed. It stands thus for every dismal and
deadly passage through which the soul may pass, and, most of all, it is
the Valley of the Shadow of Death. There God is with men no less than by
the waters of repose, or along the successful paths of active life. Was He
able to recover the soul from life's wayside weariness and hunger?--He
will equally defend and keep it amid life's deadliest dangers.

II. But the Psalm is not only theology. It is personal religion. Whether
the Psalmist sang it first of the Church of God as a whole, or of the
individual, the Church herself has sung it, through all generations, of
the individual. By the natural progress of religion from the universal to
the particular; by the authority of the Lord Jesus, who calls men singly
to the Father, and one by one assures them of God's Providence, Grace and
Glory; by the millions who have taken Him at His word, and every man of
them in the loneliness of temptation and duty and death proved His
promise--we also in our turn dare to believe that this Psalm is a psalm
for the individual. The Lord is _my_ shepherd: He maketh _me_ to lie down:
He leadeth _me_: He restoreth _my_ soul. Lay your attention upon the
little word. Ask yourself, if since it was first put upon your lips you
have ever used it with anything more than the lips: if you have any right
to use it: if you have ever taken any steps towards winning the right to