Ch. 12: The Shepherd and the Bible - Page 2

Apart from the feeling which old, religious country people, who know
nothing about the Higher Criticism, have for the Bible, taken literally
as the Word of God, there is that in the old Scriptures which appeals in
a special way to the solitary man who feeds his flock on the downs. I
remember well in the days of my boyhood and youth, when living in a
purely pastoral country among a semi-civilized and very simple people,
how understandable and eloquent many of the ancient stories were to me.
The life, the outlook, the rude customs, and the vivid faith in the
Unseen, were much the same in that different race in a far-distant age,
in a remote region of the earth, and in the people I mixed with in my
own home. That country has been changed now; it has been improved and
civilized and brought up to the European standard; I remember it when it
was as it had existed for upwards of two centuries before it had caught
the contagion. The people I knew were the descendants of the Spanish
colonists of the seventeenth century, who had taken kindly to the life
of the plains, and had easily shed the traditions and ways of thought of
Europe and of towns. Their philosophy of life, their ideals, their
morality, were the result of the conditions they existed in, and wholly
unlike ours; and the conditions were like those of the ancient people of
which the Bible tells us. Their very phraseology was strongly
reminiscent of that of the sacred writings, and their character in the
best specimens was like that of the men of the far past who lived nearer
to God, as we say, and certainly nearer to nature than it is possible
for us in this artificial state. Among these sometimes grand old men who
were large landowners, rich in flocks and herds, these fine old,
dignified "natives," the substantial and leading men of the district who
could not spell their own names, there were those who reminded you of
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Esau and Joseph and his brethren, and
even of David the passionate psalmist, with perhaps a guitar for a harp.

No doubt the Scripture lessons read in the thousand churches on every
Sunday of the year are practically meaningless to the hearers. These old
men, with their sheep and goats and wives, and their talk about God, are
altogether out of our ways of thought, in fact as far from us--as
incredible or unimaginable, we may say--as the neolithic men or the
inhabitants of another planet. They are of the order of mythical heroes
and the giants of antiquity. To read about them is an ancient custom,
but we do not listen.

Even to myself the memories of my young days came to be regarded as very
little more than mere imaginations, and I almost ceased to believe in
them until, after years of mixing with modern