thy left, in thy kingdom." Nor is it at all likely that she understood Christ's enigmatical reply, "Ye know not what ye ask," until she saw, in the hour when by crucifixion he entered into his kingdom, the two malefactors occupying the very places she had selected for her children.*

Thus the band, augmenting as it marched, passed along the wild and rocky road that leads from Jericho to Jerusalem. It was night before they reached the little village of Bethany. The city was already fast filling up with strangers; the tents of many a caravan already whitened the surrounding hills. The home of Martha, and Mary, and their brother Lazarus, claimed the privilege of affording Jesus and his twelve disciples a generous hospitality. He yielded to their claim. It was Friday night. An imaginary line drawn about the city, half a mile distant from its walls, constituted its Sabbath environs. No Jew could pass that line upon that sacred day on peril of severest penalties. Bethany lay without that imaginary line. The morrow, therefore, was spent in comparative seclusion with congenial friends. Close to the bustle of a great and now overcrowded city, no ripple of its life reached for that day his ear. It was a day of quiet preparation for a week of activity, of conflict, and of anguish, to end in a victory purchased only by his death.

Jerusalem is literally a city set on a hill. "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion," sang its poet-founder. It is built on a promontory of rock that juts out from the table-land of Judea. Deep but narrow gorges separate it from the surrounding hills. On the west, and south, the Valley of Hinnom lies between Zion and the neighboring highlands. On the east, between Moriah and the Mount of Olives, the Brook Kedron sings softly to itself in the valley which it christens with its name. Only on the north does the city adjoin the mountain range of which it is a part. Its uplifted towers are twenty-five hundred feet above the level of the Mediterranean Sea, the blue of whose waves *Matt. xx., 20-27; Mark x., 35-45. † Psalm xlviii., 2.

is discernible from a neighboring eminence; thirty-six hundred feet above the valley of the Jordan, whose waters empty into the Dead Sea eighteen miles to the eastward.

This city is really two. Valleys on either side environ it. A third valley, penetrating its heart, divides its rock foundation into two hills, and the city itself into an upper and low

er town. The east twin, one hundred feet higher than its neighbor, overlooks it. This is the Mount Zion of the Bible, the site of Solomon's royal palace. The western hill, smaller but more precipitous, afforded by its flat platform a fitting site for the temple he erected to Jehovah. From its battlements the spectator looked down a giddy height into the valley of the Kedron, far below. Across this valley, and shutting in Jerusalem on the east from all view of the Jordan, rose the Mount of Olives, now barren, but then crowned with herbage, and covered with the gardens which supplied the city with its summer fruits. From its peaks one still looks east into the basin of the Dead Sea, down a descent so precipitous that what is really a hard day's journey seems but an easy hour's walk. Westward he looks down into the very heart of all that remains of the Holy City, with its narrow streets, its overhanging houses, its ruined walls and towers, and its Mohammedan Mosque of Omar on the site of its ancient Temple.

Leaving the city by the Temple Gate, crossing the deep valley of the Kedron by an arched and elevated bridge, passing beneath the shade of olive groves, and through the midst of aromatic gardens, leaving Gethsemane to the left, climbing the mount that overlooked the city and the neighboring gorge, and descending on the other side into the valley, where are still found the few remains that mark the site of ancient Bethany, the well-traveled road to Jericho wound its way, the chosen path of all Jewish pilgrims from the north and east. Thus every morning of the Passion Week, Jesus, approaching the Holy City from Bethany, crossed the Mount of Olives, and, entering Jerusalem near its Temple Gate, passed at once into the outer courts, thronged with devout worshipers and curious lookers-on; thus every evening, when his work was done, while others went to their city homes, he returned the way he came, perhaps to the village that entertained him, perhaps to some of the Galilean encampments that now whitened the groves of the Mount of Olives itself.

This digression seemed necessary in order to understand the events of the week on which we are now about to enter.

The Sabbath, as we have said, Jesus spent in seclusion at Bethany. Meanwhile, however, the rumor had run through the city that Jesus and Lazarus were both coming up to the Passover; and the early sun of the first day of the week saw a throng streaming out of the eastern gate, and along the road to Jericho, toward the village where they were staying. At the same time, Jesus, with the twelve, started from the village for the Holy City. The disciples had procured for their Master a mule, probably from a Galilean friend— from some one, at all events, who knew Jesus, and who recognized him as his Lord. One of the disciples took off his burnoose and made out of it a simple saddle for his Master. The trappings were not ornate, but they were those of a genuine love. To his followers it seemed clear that the hour of the inauguration of Christ's kingdom had at last come. Pilgrims from Galilee, whose caravans filled the road, and whose encampments lined it, extemporized a procession in honor of the Rabbi whose fame reflected glory on their province. Citizens of Bethany, who bare witness to the resurrection of their fellow-townsman, vied with them in their homage. As they marched they chanted some verses of an ancient psalm.* In the wildness of their enthusiasm, some ran before, plucked the olive boughs from neighboring trees, and carpeted the way; others threw off their outer garments and strewed them in Jesus's path, that they might receive the consecration of his shadow falling on them. Some conservative Pharisees objected, as some of their descendants still object to all religious excitement, and demanded that Christ rebuke this unseemly enthusiasm. Jesus replied that if the people were silent the very stones would cry out. The prophet Habakkuk had six hundred and fifty years before foretold the day when the stones should cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber should answer it. Possibly Jesus referred to this *Psalm cxviii., 26. † Habbakkuk ii., 11.

prophecy, and to the hour of its fulfillment, when, because Jerusalem had no songs of welcome for its Lord, the stones of its falling towers, and walls, and Temple courts cried out in wrathful tones the judgments of God against her.

To Jesus this hour of the city's destruction was already at hand. He shared not the enthusiasm which he would not rebuke. As this procession passed the apex of the hill, he beheld the city, with its white walls glistening in the morning sun, its palace roofs of red cedar, its innumerable towers of massive masonry, and its streets thronged with citizens and pilgrims; beheld, too, the tented encampments of strangers which surrounded it. In that moment he saw, as in a vision, the day so rapidly drawing near when the tents of the Roman legions would environ these walls, when the throngs that crowded its streets would battle with one another for a crust of bread, when these white walls would crumble to the dust beneath the Gentile artillery, and when the blood of priest and people would bring to a final end the whole system of Jewish sacrifice. And the tears welled to his eyes, and the soliloquy was wrung from his heart, "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace."

But they did not know. And with joy in the triumphs of the present, unconscious of the future, the gay caravan passed on, meeting its counterpart of curious ones coming from the city to see the Rabbi whose word was invincible over death; inspiring these their Judean comrades with their own enthusiasm; absorbing them in their own now doubled ranks; gathering constant additions as they marched along, as such crowds always do; and thus, with resounding psalms, and waving palm and olive branches, entering the city, perhaps, by the very gate where, five days later, Jesus went out to Golgotha, bleeding from the Gentile scourge, and sinking under the weight of his intolerable cross.*

*For account of this triumphal procession, see Matt. xxi., 1-11; Mark xi., 1-10; Luke xix., 29-44; John xii., 12-18.