O Jerusalem

I copied this passage this morning from Farrar's Life of Christ. It is Jesus' last journey to Bethany.

"Jesus did not love cities, and scarcely ever slept within their precincts...and though the necessities of His work compelled Him to visit Jerusalem...He seems to have retired on every possible occasion beyond its gates--partly because He loved that sweet home of Bethany--and partly, too, because He felt the peaceful joy of treading the grass that groweth on the mountains rather than the city stones, and could hold gladder communion with His Father in heaven under the shadow of the olive trees, where, far from disturbing sights and sounds, He could watch the splendor of the sunset and the falling of the dew...

"The exquisite beauty of the Syrian evening, the tender colors of the spring grass and flowers...the distant hills bathed in the primrose light of sunset, the coolness and balm of the breeze after the burning glare--

"[W]hat must these have been to Him to whose eye the world of Nature was an open book, on every page of which He read His Father's name!"

Art credit: O Jerusalem by Greg Olsen