es bickering and jangling,--all
this crowds in and out on every hand. Dirt, disease, low passion,
selfishness, apparent absence of anything noble or refined, are all
tangled inextricably up with these in human form.

And our Lord Jesus lived in an Oriental world. Is there any world quite
like it, except indeed it be the slums of our western world cities,
European and American? City slums seem to be our western point of contact
with the greater part of the eastern world. What was there to attract the
Lord Jesus to these crowds? Their need, you answer. Yes, no doubt, their
terrible need did move Him with compassion, to the hurting point.

But was there more than this? Something He said one time has made me
think there was something more, a pathetic, tremendous more, that took
hold of His heart. Could it be that He saw some lingering trace of the
Father's face in these faces? His eyes were very keen. He had seeing eyes.
And these men have all been made in the Father's image. Has that image
ever been wholly lost?--terribly blurred and scarred by sin, yes; but
wholly lost? Do you think so? I think not.

Those wondrous eyes of His looking into men's tired, pinched faces,
disfigured with passion or sorrow, or with sheer weariness of
existence--did He see something of the Father's face looking appealingly
up to be helped out of their sad plight? I wonder. Was it as though the
Father's face cried out to Him out of these poor beaten faces? I think so.
Do you remember that time when our Lord Jesus associated Himself so
closely with just such men and women, in talking of a coming day? He says
"inasmuch as ye did it to one of these My brethren, these least, ye did it
unto Me."[64] Listen to those words, "My brethren"! He is thinking of just
such crowds as He Himself ministered to, and as you find to-day in
Oriental city and in European and American slum. What is done for them is
done to Him. Their need is His need; their cry, His. It's Jesus coming to
us in these crowds. Their need is Jesus Himself appealing to us. And the
Jesus within us will answer with heart and life to this Jesus coming to
us in the pitiable need of the crowds.

I do not mean to use that word "pitiable" chiefly in the bodily sense,
though there's so much of that. But it has a deeper meaning. Here is this
fair young face turned to yours in the social group, here this strong
young man needing nothing that money can buy, but yet very needy, both of
them. In thei