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COMFORT IN THE SHEPHERD'S STAFF

"Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."-Ps. 23:4.

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HE comfort of this text is a comfort against fear. This fear arises from apprehension of danger, and the danger is peculiar to the valley of the shadow of death. So speaks the context: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." To understand and apply the comfort of this text we must first know the meaning of the "valley of the shadow of death" and of "thy rod and thy staff."

Shadow of Death.—Mark you, this is not the valley of death, but the valley of the shadow of death; that is, a valley which to the mind is dark with the threats, apprehensions and terrors of death. Since the text deals with shadow, not substance, it appears not, therefore, to refer to that actual dying which closes life, but to an imminent and ominous hazard of death, apprehended by the mind and well calculated to excite most painful fear. Consequently, the path of duty may lead one into this valley not only in the early part of life, but many times later

before the journey ends. The Scriptures indeed tell of those "who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." The whole of their way was through this valley. In his "Pilgrim's Progress," John Bunyan, following the true scriptural idea, does not place this valley of the shadow of death at the terminus of the way, but makes it an early stage of the journey, rightly intimating that the fear of death will likely be more terrible to young Christians than to older and more experienced saints. But let us learn from Bible usage the meaning of the phrase "shadow of death." It is frequently employed by Old Testament writers, and in such connections as to make its meaning obvious. God himself thus describes the way through which he led typical Israel from Egypt to Canaan: "A wilderness, a land of deserts and of pits, a land of drought and of the shadow of death, a land that no man passed through and where no man dwelt." (Jer. 2:6.) This was the typical pilgrimage. The term "shadow" implies darkness. So Job uses it in cursing the day of his birth:

"Let that day be darkness;

Let not God regard it from above,

Neither let the light shine on it.

Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own."

Referring again to his miserable but living condition, Job declares:

"On my eyelids is the shadow of death." The term implies the apprehension of danger. Job, in speaking of murderers, thieves and adulterers, who love night and hate light, says: "For the morning is to all of them as the shadow of death: for they know the terrors of the shadow of death."

Again he describes miners as sinking shafts into the earth in their search for rich minerals, and despising the danger of going down into these deep excavations to obtain precious pearls and diamonds, so deep down and in such dangerful places that they are called: "Stones of thick darkness and of the shadow of death." That is, stones that you must find in thick darkness and under the shadow of death.

Elihu, in the same book, speaking of God's omniscience, says: "For his eyes are upon the ways of a man, and he seeth all his goings. There is no darkness nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves."

The psalmist, apart from this text, tells in one instance of some who were faithful to God though by him "sore broken in the place of jackals, and covered with the shadow of death," and in another place, of others who, because they rebelled against God, were made to sit in "darkness and in the shadow of death" until they repented and prayed for deliverance. Then the record says: "He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death." Isaiah applies the phrase to people bespotted

with spiritual ignorance. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined." In the New Testament this prophecy is declared to be fulfilled in the coming of Jesus into Galilee. In like manner Jeremiah applies the phrase to the judicial blindness which God sends upon those who despise light and refuse its opportunities. "Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while ye look for light he turn it into the shadow of death and make it gross darkness." In the prophecy of Amos the power is ascribed to God of "turning the shadow of death into the morning and of making the day dark with night." So much of the usage of the phrase has been cited to show clearly its biblical meaning. It means not, therefore, so much the pangs and horrors of actual death as those painful apprehensions of the mind, or dreadful imaginations excited by the real or supposed danger of death.

With wonderful skill Bunyan has woven into his description of this awful valley many of these scriptures. He makes the unconverted men who turn back from the journey towards heaven because they must pass through this valley, thus frightfully describe it: "The valley itself is as dark as pitch. We also saw there the hobgoblins, satyrs and dragons of the pit. We heard also in that valley a continual howling and yelling as of people under

unutterable misery who there sat bound in affliction and irons, and over that valley hang the discouraging clouds of confusion. Death also doth always spread his wings over it. In a word, it is every whit dreadful, being utterly without order." His Christian pilgrim himself finds it quite up to the mark of their description. The way through it was very narrow, shrouded in palpable darkness, shut in on one side by a deep ditch and on the other by a quagmire. Hell's mouth opened beside it, from which devouring flame leaped forth to consume him. Horrible noises of coming demons were before him and vile whisperings of blasphemy were behind him which his imagination supposed to be uttered by himself, but when most put to it he is cheered at hearing the voice of another pilgrim ahead of him quoting this very text: "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." The experience of all Christians takes them somewhat into this valley, and death, whether temporal, spiritual or eternal, is a dreadful reality, whose dark shadow, forecast, announces its approach. Yet possibly among other things the valley of the shadow of death may represent the inward distress, conflict and alarm which arise from unbelief and the supposition that God has withdrawn the light of his countenance, especially when accompanied by manifold temptations and apprehensions.