Matthew 12:14

THE STRAY SHEEP

Matthew 12:14. “What seems to you? If there may be to any man a hundred sheep, and one of them may stray away, does he not, leaving the ninety and nine, going into the mountains, seek the lost one? And if it may be that he find it, truly, I say unto you, That he rejoiceth over it more than over the ninety and nine which went not astray. So it is not the will, in the presence of your Father who is in heaven, that one of these little ones may be lost.” Throughout this memorable discourse, delivered by our Savior at Capernaum and really, so far as the record goes, His valedictory sermon, before He left home for the last time, bidding adieu to Galilee, where He spent about two and a half years of His ministry, preaching, healing, casting out demons, and establishing His disciples in the doctrines of the kingdom, before He goes away to Jerusalem, Judea, and Perea, to preach the remaining six months of His earthly ministry, and lay down His life for a guilty world He still keeps those infants, both natural and spiritual, prominent before His audience. One of the popes said, “Give me the first seven years, and I will give you all the balance,” feeling assured that, in that short time, he could so write the dogmata of the Catholic Church on the mind of the child, they could never be obliterated. Such is the wonderful redemption of Christ that He actually saves all in their infancy, committing to us, along with the guardian angels, the noble and stupendous work of keeping them saved. O how the universal Church needs awakening on this momentous interest! You see from the illustration that by prayer, instruction, discipline, and vigilance, we are to keep a standing army of saints and angels around the little ones all the time. Then, in case that one out of a hundred should wander away, we are to go through storms and tempests, thorns and briers, deserts and forests, plain and mountain, craggy steeps, frightful precipices, and yawning chasms, till we rescue the lost.