John Stevenson
Published: 2009-08
Total Pages: 140
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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: NO WANT. Verse 1.?I shall not want. Having declared the joyful truth that the Lord was his Shepherd, the Psalmist proceeds to describe his own felicity as a member of the flock. So full is his sense of security and blessedness, that he stays not to specify any one particular form of his innumerable mercies, but at once, by a single and sententious negative, banishes every idea that any real evil can befall him, and appropriates to himself all needful good. I shall not want. What an amazing declaration ! Does he deny that life is a chequered scene? Does he not know that riches take unto themselves wings and flee away ? Has he forgotten that even conquerors have fallen, and that the mightiest of mo- narchs have begged their bread ? By no means. The Psalmist is neither ignorant nor forgetful of these facts; but his confidence in God as his heavenly Shepherd, has raised him superior to all fear of privation. The changes and chances of this uncertain world he can calmly contemplate, and yet exclaim, I shall not want. But on what ground, it may be demanded, does he base this assertion ? We can without hesitation reply ? On the surest of all grounds. Did he not immediately before declare, The Lord is my Shepherd? And is it not both natural and appropriate to add, I shall not want ? Imagine the opposite conclusion. How absurd, how contradictory, is it to say, The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall be left to want Surely the most despondent of men would recoil from such a proposition. The statements it contains arc destructive of each other. Since, then, the Psalmist could affirm with truth, The Lord is my Shepherd, we must conclude that he was fully warranted to add, I shall not want. Nay, we may take still higher ground, and assert that he was bound to say so...