Such Avere the A'illages Avith Avhich Jesus Avas familiar, although their life Avas then more pro- sperous, and at least some of their homes more habitable. To their inhabitants He spoke His parables of simple life, such as that of the Friend at JNIidnight (Lk IP). In one of them He blessed the children A\'hom village mothers brought to Him
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(Mk 10^^). In another He brightened the wedding feast with good wine Mn 2'). In the gathering dusk, the two villagers at Eraniaus recognizerl Him in the act of breaking bread at their table <Lk 24^*'^). From a village gate was heard the sound of swift footsteps, when a rich young ruler, within sight of the squalor which had enriched him, asked the question alx»ut eternal life, and was answered that he must sell all that he had and give to the poor iMk 10^" I. Beside another \'illage gate He stojiped the funeral procession of an only son of his mother, and gave her back her dead restored to life (Lk 7^'). Tliat was at Xain, one of the villages of that hill of ' Little Hermon,' on whose sides Endor and Shunem also cling — a hill of >Tllages of resurrec- tion. Bethany hardly count* among the villages, being almost a suburb of Jerusalem, and differing from the rest in consequence. But of all the vil- lages of Palestine none brings Jesus so near as the little hamlet of Ephraim, perched far off on its hill in the lonely uplands to the east of Bethel. It was f)erhaps the remotest of the inland villages of Israel, and its rustic inhabitants dwelt alone. It was TO it that He retired for His last retreat before the Passover of Death (Jn 11^). To Him the sick- ness and helplessness of the villages of HLs native land appealed, and drew forth com:>assion and heal- ing. The suUenness that sometimes rejected Him and would have none of His love awakened no resentment, but onlv a great and pitving distress (Mt 11^- etc., Lk 95»). The childlikeness of the villagers refreshed Him after the sophisticated life of towns, and found response in His constant speeches in praise of diildren and the childlike spirit 'Mt IS* I.
5. Jerusalem. — For good or evil, no city in the world has exercised so strong and constant an influence on the world as Jerusalem. Some of her visitors have been filled with an unbounded enthu>iasm, otliers have been depressed with a shattering di.sapix)intment ; but in one way or other the city has influenced all comers. It has been the usual fate of sacred cities to gather to themselves much of the worst along with much of the liest of earthly life. Jerusalem is no ex- ception to the mle. It is the most sacred and the most sinister spot on earth. I
From the day when Da^ad took it, the last strong- hold of the Jebusites, and the battle-ljeaten old forrress-walls of rough stone opened their gates to the God of Israel, it had been the focus of the nations life (2 .S 6, Ps 24). Solomon glorified it as the secular and religious centre, drafting into it the wealth and nobility of Israel until the land Wcame liydrocephalous — its metropolis magnificent and the rest .shrivelled and impoverished. In a far more real sense Josiah made JertLsalem great ; and now at length, after countless changes of for- tune, .Jesus found it a city of such tmique import- ance and significance that it stood over against all the rest of the land, dividing the nation into ' dwellers in Jerusalem ' and ' others " — a more effective division than any other of the time.
In tlie \-i*its paid by Jesus to Jerusalem, from those of His infancy and the memorable first remem- bered \'isit — that paid when He was twelve years old — to the triumphal entry and the night journey as a captive from Gethsemane, there is an increas- ing intensity of interest. His arguments here are more of the nature of pitched battles than in the country (.Jn 6. etc. i : His acts of authority more decisive and dangerous (Mt 2P-i ; even His healing of the sick more of the nature of a chal- lenge (Jn .5'*). Tims the history of Jesus fully confirms our sense of the importance of Jerusalem. The thrill of patriotic enthu.sia«m in such a word as His reference to 'the city of the Great King' (Mt 5^1 has already been alluded to. But more
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and more irrevocably that loyal .sentiment changed its aspect as the facts thrust them-selves upon Him. It was the impossible spirit of the city more than any other thing that changed Jesus' speech from the Sermon on the Mount to the terrible dentmcia- tions and warnings of the closing days. The sacred city, which at the first had been tor Him, as for every religious man of Israel, the goal of pilgrimage and the embodiment and incarnation of spiritual thought and dream, came to Ije the arena of His life's supreme conflict, where spirituality would fight out its great battle Avith ' the world, the fle^h, and the devU.' Here love would try the final issue Avith hate, and life with death. It is by a happy inspiration that Langland, in his Pi>:rs the Ploic- man, tells of Jesus ' going to a jotists in Jerusalem.' Nothing could more exactly describe His own view of the case during His later journeys (Mt 16^, Jn IP^). His spirit as He journeyed was that of one who, having fought the battle of the Spirit across the whole field, is now going on to the storming of the citadel.