THE PRINCE OF PEACE.
It was in the lovely spring time of a land that scarcely knows winter
that a strange and beautiful scene made Jerusalem still more beautiful.
Over the Mount of Olives, where the olive and the fig-trees were in
tender leaf, came a procession of people crying,
"Hosanna; blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the
Lord!"
The road was crowded with people who with lifted faces and songs of
praise waved branches of palm as they walked before and beside Jesus,
who was riding toward Jerusalem, seated upon a young ass, after the
manner of the kings and prophets of ancient Israel.
After Jesus and His friends had left Bethany to go to Jerusalem He had
sent two of His disciples to a village near by to bring to Him an ass,
with its colt, that they would find tied there, and they were to say to
the owner of the asses, "The Lord hath need of them," that the words of
the prophet might be fulfilled,
"Tell ye the daughter of Zion, 'Behold thy king cometh unto thee, meek,
and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.'"
While the Lord and His friends were coming up the Mount of Olives, many
people from Jerusalem who knew that He was on His way came to meet Him,
and when the two disciples brought to Jesus the ass upon which He was
to ride they placed Him upon it, and spreading their garments in the
way, and with waving palms and singing they came over the ridge of the
Mount of Olives from which they could see Mount Zion shining before
them. The Pharisees had come out to see what it meant and were angry.
"See--the world is gone after Him!" they said, but Jesus, when they
asked Him to stop the praises of the people, told them that the very
stones would cry out if the people should hold their peace. As they
came to a point in the road where from a smooth rocky height they could
see the great city with its temple before them, the whole company
stopped, and Jesus, beholding it, wept over it saying,
"If thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, the things which
belong to thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes!"
[Illustration: Jesus entering Jerusalem]
And He spoke of the days when enemies should surround the Holy City,
and lay it even with the ground, because they knew not the time of
their visitation. Fifty years after the Romans took the Holy City and
burned the beautiful Temple, and put uncounted people to death. And so
Jesus went down through the valley of the Kedron and up through the
city gates with the great procession that grew at every step until He
came to His Father's House--the Temple. Then He looked about and saw
the buyers and sellers again making the Temple a market, but He went
silently away with His friends to Bethany again. He had entered the
city as the Prince of Peace, not as a Roman Emperor would do, with
sound of trumpet and the tread of armed legions, and they knew not the
time of their visitation.