ns of their own, and are thankful to any one
who leads them and gives them a cue, and helps them to feel that they
have after all a place in the community. Who has not stood by as an
onlooker at a public demonstration and smiled at the noise and glare
that a mass of people will produce when their feelings are ever so
little stirred, and marked how even against their own individual
sentiments they are carried away by the mere tide of the day's
circumstances, and for the mere sake of making a demonstration? This
crowd which followed our Lord with shoutings very speedily repented and
changed their shouts into a far blinder shriek of rage against Him who
had been the occasion of their folly. And it must indeed have been a
humbling experience for our Lord to have Himself ushered into Jerusalem
by a crowd through whose hosannas He already heard the mutter of their
curses. Such is the homage He has to content Himself with--such is the
homage a perfect life has won.

For He knew what was in man; and while His disciples might be deceived
by this popular response to His claim, He Himself was fully aware how
little it could be built upon. Save in His own heart, there is no
premonition of death. More than ever in His life before does His sky
seem bright without a cloud. He Himself is in His early prime with life
before Him; His followers are hopeful, the multitude jubilant; but
through all this gay enthusiasm He sees the scowling hate of the priests
and scribes; the shouting of the multitude does not drown in His ear the
mutterings of a Judas and of the Sanhedrim. He knew that the throne He
was now hailed to was the cross, that His coronation was the reception
on His own brows of all the thorns and stings and burdens that man's sin
had brought into the world. He did not fancy that the redemption of the
world to God was an easy matter which could be accomplished by an
afternoon's enthusiasm. He kept steadily before His mind the actual
condition of the men who were by His spiritual influence to become the
willing and devoted subjects of God's kingdom. He measured with accuracy
the forces against Him, and understood that His warfare was not with the
legions of Rome, against whom this Jewish patriotism and indomitable
courage and easily roused enthusiasm might tell, but with principalities
and powers a thousandfold stronger, with the demons of hatred and
jealousy, of lust and worldliness, of carnality and selfishness. Never
for a momen