WHO WERE MOVED?
‘And when He was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?’
‘All the city was moved.’ Let us think of some different types of people who were represented in that great throng.
I. The common people.—They heard Him gladly, and the same is true to-day. The Church is the Church of the poor, and experience teaches how gladly they hear the Gospel if it is preached to them in a tongue they can understand. If our words to them lack earnestness, or reality, or an intelligent appreciation of their position, they will not learn and we lose them, and what is worse, we weaken one of the strongest evidences in support of the truth of Christ’s Gospel, which when He preached it they heard gladly.
II. The suffering.—They knew that He did all things well. The blind and the lame recognised Him; they came and were healed. It is a mistake to say that suffering, whether pain, or sickness, or misery, makes a man fanciful, imaginative, enthusiastic. It is from the sickbed that we often get clearer proof than can elsewhere be found what and who He is.
III. The children.—Christ loves children, and the man must, indeed, be very ignorant, or very wicked, who can laugh at the testimony of childhood to Jesus Christ. Poverty loves Christ, suffering loves Christ, children love Christ.
IV. The disciples.—Those who had companied with Jesus during those three years past, hearing His words, seeing His works, feeling His love, growing into His wisdom, gradually accustoming themselves to view men and things as He viewed them, and to admire till they adored the patience and self-denial, and the wonderful self-devotion of His character—they, above all others, were ready with the answer to the inquiry, Who is this? You cannot really know what Christ is without first living with Him.
—Dean Vaughan.