(_Alger: Poetry of the Orient._) The entrance of our Lord into Jerusalem is referred to in the following passage from the Masnavi of Jalaluddin Rumi:-- Having left Jesus, thou cherishest an ass, And art perforce excluded like an ass; The portion of Jesus is knowledge and wisdom, Not so the portion of an ass, O assinine one! Thou pitiest thine ass when it complains; So art thou ignorant, thine ass makes thee assinine, Keep thy pity for Jesus, not for the ass, Make not thy lust to vanquish thy reason. (_Whinfield's Translation_). Elsewhere in the Masnavi Jalaluddin Rumi says:-- Jesus, thy Spirit, is present with thee; Ask help of Him, for He is a good Helper. In the Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz, by the same author, we have the lines:-- I am that sweet-smiling Jesus, And the world is alive through Me. Elsewhere he says, 'The pure one is regenerated by the breath of Jesus.' It is a significant fact that Jalaluddin Rumi spent most of his life at Iconium, where very likely some apostolic traditions lingered. One aspect of our Lord which has strongly impressed itself on the Mohammedan imagination is His homelessness.[65] Once on entering a Pathan village the writer was met by a youth, who asked, 'Is this verse in the Injil: "The Son of Mary had nowhere to lay His head"?' In the Qissas-al-ambiya (Stories of the Prophets) this takes the following grotesque shape:-- One day Jesus saw a fox running through the wilderness. He said to him, 'O fox! whither art thou going?' The fox answered, 'I have come out for exercise; now I am returning to my own home.' Jesus said, 'Every one has built himself a house; but for Me there is no resting-place.' Some people who heard it, said, 'We are sorry for Thee and will build Thee a house.' He replied, 'I have no money.' They answered, 'We will pay all the expenses.' Then he said, 'Very well, I will choose the site.' He led them down to the edge of the sea and, pointing where the waves were dashing highest, said, 'Build Me a house there.' The people said, 'That is the sea, O Prophet! how can we build there?' 'Yea, and is not the world a sea,' He answered, 'on which no one can raise a building that abides?' A similar echo of Christ's words is found in the famous inscription over a bridge at Fatehpur Sikri: 'Jesus (upon Whom be peace) said, "The world is a bridge; pass over it, but do not build upon it."' This keen sense of the transitoriness of everything earthly is a strongly-marked feature of the Oriental mind, and characterized all their saints and mystics. There is no wonder that this side of the gospel should make a special appeal to Orientals, and that the Fakir-missionary should seem to them to approximate most closely to his Master.[66]