people waiting to receive Him.

Do you think that Peter scrooged down his eyebrows, and in a jerky voice
said, "They might have given Him _one_ day to Himself. Can't they see He's
tired?" Do you think that likely John chimed in, with that fire in his
voice which the after years mellowed and sweetened but never lost,--"Yes,
how inconsiderate a crowd is!" _Do_ you think so? _I_ do. Because they
were so much like us. But _He_--the most tired of them all--"_was moved
with compassion_," and spent the whole day in teaching, and talking
personally, and healing. And then when they had gone He went off to the
mountain for the quiet time at night He could not get in the daytime.

Moved with Compassion.

There is a great word used of Jesus, and by Him, nine times[9] in these
brief records, the word _compassion_. The sight of a leprous man, or of a
demon-distressed man, _moved_ Him. The great multitudes huddling together
after Him, so pathetically, like leaderless sheep, eager, hungry, tired,
always stirred Him to the depths. The lone woman, bleeding her heart out
through her eyes, as she followed the body of her boy out--He couldn't
stand that at all.

And when He was so moved, He always did something. He clean forgot His own
bodily needs so absorbed did He become in the folks around Him. The
healing touch was quickly given, the demonized man released from his sore
bonds, the disciples organized for a wider movement to help, the bread
multiplied so the crowds could find something comforting between their
hunger-cleaned teeth.

The sight of suffering always stirred Him. The presence of a crowd seemed
always to touch and arouse Him peculiarly. He never learned that sort of
city culture that can look unmoved upon suffering or upon a leaderless,
helpless crowd. That word compassion, used of Him, is both deep and
tender in its meaning. The word, actually used under our English means to
have the bowels or heart, the seat of emotion, greatly stirred.

The kindred word, sympathy, means to have the heart yearning, literally to
be suffering the same distress, to be so moved by somebody's pain or
suffering that you are suffering within yourself the same pain too. Our
plain English word, fellow-feeling, is the same in its force. Seeing the
suffering of some one else so moves you that the same suffering is going
on inside you as you see in them. This is the great word used so often of
Jesus, and by Him.

There never lived a man wh