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"Look, there they come!" exclaimed the inn-keeper in glad surprise. "They'll come past here. I really believe it's the Messiah-King! Oh, I could have let out my windows for a silver groat apiece!" The woman from Galilee wanted to go back into the house, but she was pushed aside and carried with the crowd into the narrow street, where suddenly she stood before Him! Before Jesus, her son!
The triumph of Bethphage that bold act of the provincials in celebrating at the very gates of Jerusalem the advent of their Messiah-King completed the exasperation of the Pharisees and the aristocracy of the temple. The immediate arrest of Jesus was resolved upon. A great idea of order and of conservative policy governed all their plans. The desire was to avoid a scene.
He asserted Himself to be a worker of miracles, the Messiah-King of Israel, the Son of God, therefore He died. And they witness to the misconception which ruled in the minds of these priests as to the relation of His claims to the Cross. They thought that it had finally burst the bubble, and disposed once for all of these absurd and blasphemous pretensions.
When the crowd heard that, they were quiet, and looked at the new arrival with a sort of awe. And so old Herod had taken him for the Messiah-King! A feeling of reverence spread among the people. For Jesus stepped into the river. The prophet dipped his vessel in the water and poured it over his lightly-bent head. The edges of the clouds in the heavens shone with the crimson light of evening.
Well, the Jews had mocked at their Messiah-King, and He would mock at them through Him. He heard the accusation but found nothing in it. "What?" he said to the High Priests and their supporters, "I'm to condemn your King? Why, what are you thinking of?" Instead of terrifying the accused with his judicial dignity, he desired to enter into conversation with Him.
And then they bowed down to the ground before Him, and sang in a shrill voice: "Hail to Thee, O anointed Messiah-King!" and put out their tongues at Him. Jesus sat there, calm and unmoved. He looked at His tormentors with sad eyes, not in anger, but in pity. His disciples, terrified to death, had now come up, but remained outside the walls.
Of even deeper significance was her sympathetic attitude toward the pride which showed early in her son, and her skill in transferring to him her sense of form, of bearing, of tactfulness and of simple grace. At about the age of twelve he read in a German book about the Messiah-King whom many Jews still awaited and who would come riding, like the poorest of the poor on an ass.
All through it, up to this last moment, His one care was to damp down popular enthusiasm, to put on the drag whenever there came to be the least symptom of it, to discourage any reference to Him as the Messiah-King of Israel, to shrink back from the coarse adulation of the crowd, and to glide quietly through the world, blessing and doing good. But now, at the end, He flings off all disguise.
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