all
these shouts of joy and sobs of grief and mutterings of malice, surely no
scene is so full of emotion and none can illustrate more strikingly the
relation between religious feeling and religious faith.

An appeal to the eye and ear and heart may awaken sentiment and prepare
the way for the surrender of the will. There is to-day a proper place for
music and architecture and eloquence as aids to devotion. In the case of
the triumphal entry, Jesus planned every detail. He sent two disciples to
secure the colt on which he was to ride; he allowed the disciples to place
on the colt their garments, and as he rode toward the city he accepted the
acclamations of the crowd. When the Pharisees criticized Jesus for
permitting such praise and arousing such excitement, he declared that such
homage to himself was not only proper but necessary, and that if the
multitudes were silenced the very stones would "cry out" to welcome and to
honor him. Jesus was offering himself as King for the last time, and
therefore his offer was to be made in the most impressive way. He appealed
to the imagination. He stirred the emotions. He did not mean that he was
to be such a king as the people supposed; the borrowed colt, the garments
of peasants, the banners of leafy branches were not to be the permanent
furnishings of a court. He wished to secure the submission of their wills,
the complete surrender of their lives, and therefore he made this
stirring, dramatic, emotional appeal to the multitudes. He knew that
religious feeling is an aid to religious faith.

However, religious feeling is not to be confused with religious faith.
Emotion is no substitute for conviction. Jesus was not deceived. As he
caught sight of the sacred city and heard the bitter criticism of the
Pharisees, he realized the stubborn unbelief he was to encounter; he saw
his rejection and death and the consequent destruction of Jerusalem and he
pronounced his pathetic lament, "If thou hadst known in this day, even
thou, the things which belong unto peace!" He predicted the ghastly
horrors of the coming siege and the desolation of Zion and declared that
it was due to inability to see that he had come as a Saviour and that his
ministry had been a gracious visitation which might have resulted in
repentance and in continued life for the nation. It is the sad, sad lament
for what might have been.

Jesus entered the Temple and rebuked the rulers for allowing the house of
God to be de