shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered,' says the old prophecy.
Of course, for what is there to hold them together unless it be
their guide and their director? So we are brought face to face with
this plain prosaic rendering of the metaphor--that but for the centre
of unity provided for mankind in the person and work of Jesus Christ,
there is no satisfaction of the deep hunger for unity and society
with which in that case God would have cursed mankind. For whilst
there are many other bonds most true, most blessed, God-given, and
mighty, such as that of the sacred unity of the family, and that of
the nation and many others of which we need not speak, yet all these
are constantly being disintegrated by the unresting waves of that
gnawing sea of selfishness, if I may so say, which, like the waters
upon our eastern coasts, eats and eats for ever at the base of the
cliffs, so that society in all its forms, whether it be built upon
identity of opinion, which is perhaps the shabbiest bond of all, or
whether it be built upon purposes of mutual action, which is a great
deal better, or whether it be built upon hatred of other people,
which is the modern form of patriotism, or whether it be built upon
the domestic affections, which are the purest and highest of all--all
the other bonds of society, such as creeds, schools, nations,
associations, leagues, families, denominations, all go sooner or
later. The base is eaten out of them, because every man that belongs
to them has in him that tyrannous, dominant self, which is ever
seeking to assert its own supremacy. Here is Babel, with its
half-finished tower, built on slime; and there is Pentecost, with
its great Spirit; here is the confusion, there is the unifying; here
the disintegration, there the power that draws them all together.
'They were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd,' and one
looks out over the world and sees great tracts of country and long
dismal generations of time, in which the very thought of unity and