Note 1 — LETTER XII.

Not so. It was told them because David was in youth not a King; but a Shepherd like themselves. “To you, shepherds, is born this day a Saviour in the shepherd’s town;” that would be the deep sound of the message in their ears. For the great interest to them in the story of David himself must have been always, not that he had saved the monarchy, or subdued Syria, or written Psalms, but that he had kept sheep in those very fields they were watching in; and that his grandmother1 Ruth had gone gleaning, hard by.