within them precious seed of promise.

We turn once more to the scene just described. For, it was no common pageantry; and

Christ's public Entry into Jerusalem seems so altogether different from - we had almost

said, inconsistent with - His previous mode of appearance. Evidently, the time for the

silence so long enjoined had passed, and that for public declaration had come. And

such, indeed, this Entry was. From the moment of His sending forth the two disciples to

His acceptance of the homage of the multitude, and His rebuke of the Pharisee's

attempt to arrest it, all must be regarded as designed or approved by Him: not only a

public assertion of His Messiahship, but a claim to its national acknowledgment. And

yet, even so, it was not to be the Messiah of Israel's conception, but He of prophetic

picture: 'just and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass.'31 It is foreign to our

present purpose to discuss any general questions about this prophecy, or even to

vindicate its application to the Messiah. But, when we brush aside all the trafficking and

bargaining over words, that constitutes so much of modern criticism, which in its care

over the lesson so often loses the spirit, there can, at least, be no question that this

prophecy was intended to introduce, in contrast to earthly warfare and kingly triumph,

another Kingdom, of which the just King would be the Prince of Peace, Who was meek

and lowly in His Advent, Who would speak peace to the heathen, and Whose sway

would yet extend to earth's utmost bounds. Thus much may be said, that if there ever

was true picture of the Messiah-King and His Kingdom, it is this, and that, if ever Israel

was to have a Messiah or the world a Saviour, He must be such as described in this

Prophecy - not merely in the letter, but in the spirit of it. And as so often indicated, it was

not the letter but the spirit of prophecy - and of all prophecy - which the ancient

Synagogue, and that rightly, saw fulfilled in the Messiah and His Kingdom. Accordingly,

with singular unanimity the Talmud and the ancient Rabbinic authorities have applied

this prophecy to the Christ.32 Nor was it quoted by St. Matthew and St. John in the

stiffness and deadness of the letter. On the contrary (as so often in Jewish writings, two

prophets - Isa. lxii. 11, and Zech. ix. 9 - are made to shed their blended light upon this

Entry of Christ, as exhibiting the reality, of which the prophetic vision had been the

reflex. Nor yet are the words of the Prophets given literally - as modern criticism would

have them weighed out in the critical balances - either from the Hebrew text, or form the

LXX. rendering; but their real meaning is given, and they are 'Targumed' by the sacred

writers. according to their wont. Yet who that sets the prophetic picture by the side of

the reality - the description by the side of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem - can fail to

recognise in the one the real fulfilment of the other?

Another point seems to require comment. We have seen reasons to regard the bearing

of the disciples as one of surprise, and that, all through these last scenes, they seem to