A Syrian or an Arabian pasture is very different from the narrow meadows
and fenced hill-sides with which we are familiar. It is vast, and often
virtually boundless. By far the greater part of it is desert--that is,
land not absolutely barren, but refreshed by rain for only a few months,
and through the rest of the year abandoned to the pitiless sun that sucks
all life from the soil. The landscape is nearly all glare: monotonous
levels or low ranges of hillocks, with as little character upon them as
the waves of the sea, and shimmering in mirage under a cloudless heaven.
This bewildering monotony is broken by only two exceptions. Here and there
the ground is cleft to a deep ravine, which gapes in black contrast to the
glare, and by its sudden darkness blinds the men and sheep that enter it
to the beasts of prey which have their lairs in the recesses. But there
are also hollows as gentle and lovely as those ravines are terrible, where
water bubbles up and runs quietly between grassy banks through the open
shade of trees.

On such a wilderness, it is evident that the person and character of the
shepherd must mean a great deal more to the sheep than they can possibly
mean in this country. With us, sheep left to themselves may be seen any
day--in a field or on a hill-side with a far-travelling fence to keep them
from straying. But I do not remember ever to have seen in the East a flock
of sheep without a shepherd.

On such a landscape as I have described he is obviously indispensable.
When you meet him there, 'alone of all his reasoning kind,' armed,
weather-beaten, and looking out with eyes of care upon his scattered
flock, their sole provision and defence, your heart leaps up to ask: Is
there in all the world so dear a sacrament of life and peace as he?