The Evangelist leaves a strong impression upon our minds of the hurry and confusion in Jerusalem at that feast; the curiosity of the people to see Jesus and to see Lazarus; the questionings of the council whether the excitement could be removed without the death of both; the half-formed thought, which might soon take shape and lead to some act, that perhaps the king was among them after all. And then follows the story of the entrance into Jerusalem, which is told at less length than in the other Evangelists; but to which there are two additions that are worthy of note. St. John quotes, as St. Matthew has done, the prophecy of Zechariah:--'_Thy king cometh, meek, and sitting upon an ass_:' and then adds, '_These things understood not His disciples at the first: but when He was risen from the dead, then remembered they that these things were written of Him, and that they had done these things unto Him_.' The illumination of his own mind, and of the minds of his fellow Apostles, respecting the sense and connexion of the Scriptures,--how they learned to connect with Him the descriptions of a King reigning in righteousness, which the Old Testament contained,--how the resurrection from the dead identified Him as the fulfiller of them,--how it linked His relation to God with His relation to man,--this we learn more clearly from St. John than from all the other apostolical writings. _They_ take the matter, in a certain degree, for granted; he enables us to see the process of it. I have spoken of this subject in considering the passage,--'_The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up._' The more we meditate upon it, the more, I believe, we shall be able to trace lines of thought running through the Old Testament, by which the formal critic is puzzled,--the more we shall find how little the word written in letters could profit, if the Living Word did not expound it to the heart and reason,--the more we shall be sure that the laws which governed men in the old time are those which govern us; that we must have the same Teacher as they had; or that while we seem to know everything we shall know nothing.