He Himself when down here left the crowds, when they were so great that the towns were overwhelmed and they had to be taken out to the country places. He would leave these crowds and go off quietly to get alone with His Father.[63] All that tireless ministry was under the direction of Another. He went off for close touch, and fresh consultation with His Father. The Father's Image in the Common Crowd. Have you ever wondered what there was in those common crowds to attract our Lord Jesus? Perhaps if you have ever walked in those narrow crowded alleys called streets, in China or Japan, you may have wondered, sometimes. Tired, dirty, pinched faces, eyes vacantly staring, or else fired with low passion, high-keyed voices bickering and jangling,--all this crowds in and out on every hand. Dirt, disease, low passion, selfishness, apparent absence of anything noble or refined, are all tangled inextricably up with these in human form. And our Lord Jesus lived in an Oriental world. Is there any world quite like it, except indeed it be the slums of our western world cities, European and American? City slums seem to be our western point of contact with the greater part of the eastern world. What was there to attract the Lord Jesus to these crowds? Their need, you answer. Yes, no doubt, their terrible need did move Him with compassion, to the hurting point. But was there more than this? Something He said one time has made me think there was something more, a pathetic, tremendous more, that took hold of His heart. Could it be that He saw some lingering trace of the Father's face in these faces? His eyes were very keen. He had seeing eyes. And these men have all been made in the Father's image. Has that image ever been wholly lost?--terribly blurred and scarred by sin, yes; but wholly lost? Do you think so? I think not. Those wondrous eyes of His looking into men's tired, pinched faces, disfigured with passion or sorrow, or with sheer weariness of existence--did He see something of the Father's face looking appealingly up to be helped out of their sad plight? I wonder. Was it as though the Father's face cried out to Him out of these poor beaten faces? I think so. Do you remember that time when our Lord Jesus associated Himself so closely with just such men and women, in talking of a coming day? He says "inasmuch as ye did it to one of these My brethren, these least, ye did it unto Me."[64] Listen to those words, "My brethren"! He is thinking of just such crowds as He Himself ministered to, and as you find to-day in Oriental city and in European and American slum. What is done for them is done to Him. Their need is His need; their cry, His. It's Jesus coming to us in these crowds. Their need is Jesus Himself appealing to us. And the Jesus within us will answer with heart and life to this Jesus coming to us in the pitiable need of the crowds.