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 idea of hunger.  Jairus is reminded that his little girl will be the better for food (Mark 5:43).  The rich are urged to make feasts for the poor, the maimed and the blind (Luke 14:12).  The owner of the vineyard, in the parable, pays a day’s wage for an hour’s work, when an hour was all the chance that the unemployed labourer could find (Matt. 20:9).  No sanctity could condone for the devouring of widows’ houses (Matt. 23:14).

The great hungry multitudes haunt his mind.  The story of the rich young ruler shows this (Mark 10:17-22).  Here was a man of birth and education, whose face and whose speech told of a good heart and conscience—­a man of charm, of the impulsive type that appealed to Jesus.  Jesus “looked on him,” we read.  The words recall Plato’s picture of Socrates looking at the jailer, how “he looked up at him in his peculiar way, like a bull”—­the old man’s prominent eyes were fixed on the fellow, glaring through the brows above them, and Socrates’ friends saw them and remembered them when they thought of the scene.  As Jesus’ eyes rested steadily on this young man, the disciples saw in them an expression they knew—­“Jesus, looking on him, loved him.”  Their talk was of eternal life; and, no doubt to his surprise, Jesus asked the youth if he had kept the commandments; how did he stand