And you can just see the look of disappointment in their faces as they say, "Why, He's going away." And for a few moments they stand there utterly dejected. Then somebody--for a long while I have thought it was a woman--somebody with eyes keenly watching the direction of the boat, said, "I believe He's going so and so"--naming a place across the lake--"let's run around the head of the lake, and meet Him when He gets out." And the crowd was taken with that. And they ran--literally _ran_--around the head of the lake. And as they went they spread the word, "The Master's going so and so. Come along with us." And the people came eagerly out of the villages and cross-roads. And the crowd thickened and the longer way around in distance proved the shorter way there in time. For by and by when Peter ran the nose of the boat into the sand on the other side, and the Master got out for _a day off_, there were five thousand men, maybe ten thousand people waiting to receive Him. Do you think that Peter scrooged down his eyebrows, and in a jerky voice said, "They might have given Him _one_ day to Himself. Can't they see He's tired?" Do you think that likely John chimed in, with that fire in his voice which the after years mellowed and sweetened but never lost,--"Yes, how inconsiderate a crowd is!" _Do_ you think so? _I_ do. Because they were so much like us. But _He_--the most tired of them all--"_was moved with compassion_," and spent the whole day in teaching, and talking personally, and healing. And then when they had gone He went off to the mountain for the quiet time at night He could not get in the daytime. Moved with Compassion. There is a great word used of Jesus, and by Him, nine times[9] in these brief records, the word _compassion_. The sight of a leprous man, or of a demon-distressed man, _moved_ Him. The great multitudes huddling together after Him, so pathetically, like leaderless sheep, eager, hungry, tired, always stirred Him to the depths. The lone woman, bleeding her heart out through her eyes, as she followed the body of her boy out--He couldn't stand that at all. And when He was so moved, He always did something. He clean forgot His own bodily needs so absorbed did He become in the folks around Him. The healing touch was quickly given, the demonized man released from his sore bonds, the disciples organized for a wider movement to help, the bread multiplied so the crowds could find something comforting between their hunger-cleaned teeth. The sight of suffering always stirred Him. The presence of a crowd seemed always to touch and arouse Him peculiarly. He never learned that sort of city culture that can look unmoved upon suffering or upon a leaderless, helpless crowd. That word compassion, used of Him, is both deep and tender in its meaning. The word, actually used under our English means to have the bowels or heart, the seat of emotion, greatly stirred.