“All subtle thought, all curious fears,
Borne down by gladness so complete;
She bows, she bathes the Savior’s feet
With costly spikenard and with tears.”
—Alfred Tennyson.
“In the day time He was teaching in the temple, and at night He went out and abode in the mount that is called the Mount of Olives.”—Luke xxi., 37.
“Gethsemane on one side, Bethany on the other ... where He was wont to pray for His people and weep for a sinful world; where His feet stood on the eve of His ascension and where His wondering disciples received from white-robed angels the promise of His second advent. It will be admitted that above and beyond all places in Palestine Olivet witnessed ‘God manifest in the flesh.’”—Porter’s “Giants of Bashan.”
After Jesus had been driven from His native Nazareth, He found a home in the house of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, in the village of Bethany, on the eastern slope of Olivet. That was sweet, memorable Bethany of the Gospels; “the perfection of repose,” amid the palm and oak-covered slopes of Olivet; hidden by its quiet life, as well as its sequestering mountain, from Jerusalem, that great, throbbing heart of Palestine.
Thither, down the east steps of the Temple, through the “Golden Gate,” along camel paths that wound past Gethsemane and across fitful Kedron, the Son of Man often went when worn out by His love ministries, or harassed by the gainsayings of the great city. So, preaching His new kingdom, He exalted its cornerstone, the godly home, by electing one such, that of Lazarus and his sisters, as a rest and a refuge for Himself. Beyond this He proved His own humanity by seeking earthly friendships, at the same time exhibiting Himself, though the favored of heaven, the object of constant angelic regard, as needing, because He was human, that which humanity ever needs—congenial human fellowships.