shed, and of all its splendid buildings, its goodly
stones and votive offerings, which so much impressed his disciples,
not one stone would be left upon another stone (Mark 13:9; Luke
21:5). But the traditions of Jerusalem wakened thoughts in him of
the story of his people, thoughts with a tragic colour. Jerusalem
was the place where prophets were killed (Luke 13:34), the scene and
centre, at once, of Israel's deepest emotions, highest hopes, and
most awful failures. "O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!" he had said in
sadness as he thought of Israel's holy city, "which killest the
prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I
have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood
under her wings, and ye would not!" (Luke 13:34).

And now he is in sight of Jerusalem. The city and the temple
suddenly meet his view, as he reaches the height, and he is deeply
moved. Any reflective mind might well have been stirred by the
thought of the masses of men gathered there. Nothing is so futile as
an arithmetical numbering of people, for after a certain point
figures paralyse the imagination, and after that they tell the mind
little or nothing. But here was actually assembled the Jewish
people, coming in swarms from all the world, for the feast; here was
Judaism at its most pious; here was the pilgrim centre with all it
meant of aspiration and blindness, of simple folly and gross sin.
The sight of the city--the doomed city, as he foresaw--the thought
of his people, their zeal for God and their alienation from God--it
all comes over him at once, and, with a sudden rush of feeling, he
apostrophizes Jerusalem--"If thou hadst known, even thou, at least
in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now
they are hid from thine eyes . . . . Thou knewest not the time of
thy visitation!" (Luke 19:42-44).

It is quite plain from the Gospels that crowds had always an appeal
for Jesus. At times he avoided them; but when they came about him,
they claimed him and possessed him. Over and over again, we read of
his pity for them--"he saw a great multitude and was moved with
compassion toward them" (Matt. 14:14)--of his thought for their
weariness and hunger, his reflection that they might "faint by the
way" on their long homeward journeys (Mark 8:3), and his solicitude
about their food. Whatever modern criticism makes of the story of
his feeding multitudes, it remains that he was markedly sensitive to
the