The spacious roadway was filled with people from end to end--an eager, curious, excitable crowd. There were men, women, and children; but though it contained a sprinkling of persons of higher social rank, it was recruited mostly from that class which sees nothing objectionable in a crowd as such. Vehicular traffic was stopped. The police kept sufficient open space upon the pavement to permit of pedestrians passing to and fro. In front of the house was a surprising spectacle. Invalids of all sorts and kinds were there gathered together in heterogeneous assemblage. The officials, finding it impossible without using violence to prevent their appearance on the scene, had cleared a portion of the roadway for their accommodation, so that when He appeared, He found Himself confronted by all manner of sick. There were blind, lame, and dumb; idiots and misshapen folk; sufferers from all sorts of disease, in all stages of their maladies. Some were on the bed from which they were unable to raise themselves, some were on chairs, some on the bare ground. They had been brought from all parts of the city--young and old, male and female. There were those among them who had been there throughout the night.
When they saw Him come out of the door, those who could move at all began to press forward so that they might be able to reach Him, crying:
'Heal us! heal us!'
In their eagerness they bade fair to tread each other under foot; seeing which the officer who stood at the gate turned to Him, saying:
'Is it you these poor wretches have come to see? If you have encouraged them in their madness you have incurred a frightful responsibility; the deaths of many of them will be upon your head.'
He replied:
'Speak of that of which you have some understanding.' To the struggling, stricken crowd in front of Him He said: 'Go in peace and sin no more.'
Straightway they all were healed of their diseases. The sick sprang out of their beds and from off the ground, cripples threw away their crutches, the crooked were made straight, the blind could see, the dumb could talk. When they found that it was so they were beside themselves with joy. They laughed and sang, ran this way and that, giving vent to their feelings in divers strange fashions.
And all they that saw it were amazed, and presently they raised a great shout:
'It is Christ the King!'