BOOK St. Matt. xvi. 21 b St. Matt. xvii. 22 e St. Matt. xx. 17-19 b a occasion on which He spoke thus clearly was immediately after that confession of Peter, which laid the foundation of the Church, against which the gates of hell should not prevail; the next, after descending from the Mount of Transfiguration; the last, on preparing to make His triumphal Messianic Entry into Jerusalem. The darker hints and Parabolic sayings might have been misunderstood. Even as regarded the clear predictions of His Death, preconceived ideas could find no room for such a fact. Deep veneration, which could not associate it with His Person, and a love which could not bear the thought of it, might suggest, after the first shock of the words was past, and their immediate fulfilment did not follow, some other possible explanation of the prediction. But on that Wednesday it was impossible to misunderstand; it could scarcely have been possible to doubt what Jesus said of His near Crucifixion.' If illusions had still existed, the last two days must have rudely dispelled them. The triumphal Hosannahs of His Entry into the City, and the acclamations in the Temple, had given place to the cavils of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes, and with a Woe' upon it Jesus had taken His last departure from Israel's Sanctuary. And better far than those rulers, whom conscience made cowards, did the disciples know how little reliance could be placed on the adherence of the 'multitude.' And now the Master was telling it them in plain words; was calmly contemplating it, and that not as in the dim future, but in the immediate present-at that very Passover, from which scarcely two days 1 On the evidential force of the narrative of the Crucifixion, I must refer to the singularly lucid and powerful reasoning of Dr. Wace, in his work on 'The Gospel and its Witnesses' (London, 1883, Lecture VI.). He first refers to the circumstance, that in the narratives of the Crucifixion, written by Apostles, or by friends of Apostles, 'the writers do not shrink from describing their own conduct, or that of their Master's,' with a truthfulness which terribly reflects on their constancy, courage, and even manliness. Dr. Wace's second argument is so clearly put, that, although his book is-or, no doubt, will be, in the hands of most students of the subject, I take leave to transfer his language to these pages. 'Christ crucified was, we are told by St. Paul, "unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness." It was a constant reproach to Christians, that they worshipped a man who had been crucified as a malefactor. The main fact, of course, could not be disguised. But that the Evangelical writers should have so diligently preserved what might other wise have been forgotten-all the minute circumstances of their Master's humiliation, the very weakness of His flesh, and His shrinking, in the garden, from the cup He had to drink-all those marks, in fact, of His human weakness which were obliterated by His Resurrec tion-this is an instance of truthfulness which seems at least incompatible with any legendary origin of the narratives, at a time when our Lord was contemplated in the glory of His Ascension, and of His session at the right hand of God. But whatsoever impression of truthfulness, and of intense reality in detail, is thus created by the history of the Passion, must in justice be allowed to reflect back over the whole preceding history.' The argument is then further carried out as to the truthfulness of writers who could so speak of themselves, and concerning the fate of the Christ. But the whole subject should be studied in the connection in which Dr. Wace has placed it. THE HISTORY OF JUDAS. 471 VIII separated them. Much as we wonder at their brief scattering on CHAP. His arrest and condemnation, those humble disciples must have loved Him much to sit around Him in mournful silence as He thus spake, and to follow Him unto His Dying. But to one of them, in whose heart the darkness had long been gathering, this was the decisive moment. The prediction of Christ, which Judas as well as the others must have felt to be true, extinguished the last glimmering of such light of Christ as his soul had been capable to receive. In its place flared up the lurid flame of hell. By the open door out of which he had thrust the dying Christ Satan entered into Judas.'a Yet, even so, not permanently. It may, indeed, be doubted, whether, since God is in Christ, such can ever be the case in any human soul, at least on this side eternity. Since our world's night has been lit up by the promise from Paradise, the rosy hue of its morning has lain on the edge of the horizon, deepening into gold, brightening into day, growing into middaystrength and evening-glory. Since God's Voice wakened earth by its early Christmas-Hymn, it has never been quite night there, nor can it ever be quite night in any human soul.' But it is a terrible night-study, that of Judas. We seem to tread our way over loose stones of hot molten lava, as we climb to the edge of the crater, and shuddering look down its depths. And yet there, near there, have stood not only St. Peter in the night of his denial, but mostly all of us, save they whose Angels have always looked up into the Face of our Father in heaven. And yet, in our weakness, we have even wept over them! There, near there, have we stood, not in the hours of our weakness, but in those of our sore temptation, when the blast of doubt had almost quenched the flickering light, or the storm of passion or of self-will broken the bruised reed. But He prayed for us-and through the night came over desolate moor and stony height the Light of His Presence, and over the wild storm rose the Voice of Him, Who has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Yet near to us, close to us, was the dark abyss; and we can never more forget our last, almost sliding, foothold as we quitted its edge. A terrible night-study this of Judas, and best to make it here, at once, from its beginning to its end. We shall, indeed, catch sudden glimpse of him again, as the light of the torches flashes on the traitor-face in Gethsemane; and once more hear his voice in the assemblage of the haughty, sneering councillors of Israel, when his footfall on the marble pavement of the Temple-halls, and the clink 1 This apart from the question of the exceptional sin against the Holy Ghost. a St. Luke St. John 27 xxii. 3 xiii. 2 and BOOK V St. John xii. 5, 6 28 of those thirty accursed pieces of silver shall waken the echoes, wake also the dirge of despair in his soul, and he shall flee from the night of his soul into the night that for ever closes around him. But all this as rapidly as we may pass from it, after this present brief study of his character and history. We remember, that 'Judas, the man of Kerioth,' was, so far as we know, the only disciple of Jesus from the province of Judæa. This circumstance; that he carried the bag, i.e., was treasurer and administrator of the small common stock of Christ and His disciples; and that he was both a hypocrite and a thief-this is all that we know for certain of his history. From the circumstance that he was appointed to such office of trust in the Apostolic community, we infer that he must have been looked up to by the others as an able and prudent man, a good administrator. And there is probably no reason to doubt, that he possessed the natural gift of administration or of 1 Cor. xii. 'government' (xvßépvnois). The question, why Jesus left him ❝the bag' after He knew him to be a thief-which, as we believe, he was not at the beginning, and only became in the course of time and in the progress of disappointment-is best answered by this other: Why He originally allowed it to be entrusted to Judas? It was not only because he was best fitted-probably, absolutely fitted-for such work, but also in mercy to him, in view of his character. To engage in that for which a man is naturally fitted is the most likely means of keeping him from brooding, dissatisfaction, alienation, and eventual apostasy. On the other hand, it must be admitted that, as mostly all our life-temptations come to us from that for which we have most aptitude, when Judas was alienated and unfaithful in heart, this very thing became also his greatest temptation, and, indeed, hurried him to his ruin. But only after he had first failed inwardly. And so, as ever in like circumstances, the very things which might have been most of blessing become most of curse, and the judgment of hardening fulfils itself by that which in itself is good. Nor could 'the bag' have been afterwards taken from him without both exposing him to the others, and precipitating his moral destruction. And so he had to be left to the process of inward ripening, till all was ready for the sickle. 6 This very gift of government' in Judas may also help us to understand how he may have been first attracted to Jesus, and through what process, when alienated, he came to end in that terrible sin which had cast its snare about him. The gift of government' would, in its active aspect, imply the desire for it. From 6 DEVELOPMENT OF JUDAS' INNER HISTORY. thence to ambition in its worst, or selfish, aspect, there is only a step-scarcely that: rather, only different moral premisses. Judas was drawn to Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, and he believed in Him as such, possibly both earnestly and ardently; but he expected that His would be the success, the result, and the triumphs of the Jewish Messiah, and he also expected personally and fully to share in them. How deep-rooted were such feelings even in the best, purest, and most unselfish of Jesus's disciples, we gather from the request of the mother of John and James for her sons, and from Peter's question: What shall we have?' It must have been sorrow, misery of moral loneliness, and humiliation, to Him Who was Unselfishness Incarnate, Who lived to die and was full to empty Himself, to be associated with such as even His most intimate disciples, who in this sense also could not watch with Him even one hour, and in whom, at the end of His Ministry, this heaviness was mentally and morally the outcrop, if not the outcome. And in Judas all this must have been an hundredfold more than in them who were in heart true to Christ. He had, from such conviction as we have described, joined the movement at its very commencement. Then, multitudes in Galilee followed His Footsteps, and watched for His every appearance; they hung entranced on His lips in the Synagogue or on the Mount'; they flocked to Him from every town, village, and hamlet; they bore the sick and dying to His Feet, and witnessed, awestruck, how conquered devils gave their testimony to His Divine Power. It was the spring-time of the movement, and all was full of promise—land, people, and disciples. The Baptist, who had bowed before Him and testified to Him, was still lifting his voice to proclaim the near Kingdom. But the people had turned after Jesus, and He swayed them. And, oh! what power was there in His Face and Word, in His look and deed. And Judas, also, had been one of them who, on their early Mission, had temporarily had power given him, so that the very devils had been subject to them. But, step by step, had come the disappointment. John was beheaded, and not avenged; on the contrary, Jesus withdrew Himself. This constant withdrawing, whether from enemies or from success-almost amounting to flight-even when they would have made Him a King; this refusal to show Himself openly, either at Jerusalem, as His own brethren had taunted Him, or, indeed, anywhere else; this uniform preaching of discouragement to them, when they came to Him elated and hopeful On the relation between ambition and covetousness, generally and in the special case of Judas, see p. 77. 473 CHAP VIII BOOK V at some success: this gathering enmity of Israel's leaders, and His marked avoidance of, or, as some might have put it, His failure in taking up the repeated public challenge of the Pharisees to show a sign from heaven; last, and chief of all, this constant and growing reference to shame, disaster, and death-what did it all mean, if not disappointment of all those hopes and expectations which had made Judas at the first a disciple of Jesus? He that so knew Jesus, not only in His Words and Deeds, but in His inmost Thoughts, even to His night-long communing with God on the hill-side, could not have seriously believed in the coarse Pharisaic charge of Satanic agency as the explanation of all. Yet, from the then Jewish standpoint, he would scarcely have found it impossible to suggest some other explanation of His miraculous power. But, as increasingly the moral and spiritual aspect of Christ's Kingdom must have become apparent to even the dullest intellect, the bitter disappointment of his Messianic thoughts and hopes must have gone on, increasing in proportion as, side by side with it, the process of moral alienation, unavoidably connected with his resistance to such spiritual manifestations, continued and increased. And so the mental and the moral alienation went on together, affected by and affecting each other. And if we were pressed to name a definite moment when the process of disintegration, at least sensibly, began, we would point to that Sabbath-morning at Capernaum, when Christ had preached about His Flesh as the Food of the World, and so many of His adherents ceased to follow after Him; nay, when the leaven so worked even in His disciples, that He turned to them with the searching question—intended to show them the full import of the crisis-whether they also would leave Him? Peter conquered by grasping the moral element, because it was germane to him and to the other true disciples: To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.' But this moral element was the very cliff on which Judas made shipwreck. After this, all was wrong, and increasingly so. We see disappointment in his face when not climbing the Mount of Transfiguration, and disappointment in the failure to heal the lunatick child. In the disputes by the way, in the quarrels who was greatest among them, in all the pettiness of misunderstandings and realistic folly of their questions or answers, we seem to hear the echo of his voice, to see the result of his influence, the leaven of his presence. And in it all we mark the downward hastening of his course, even to the moment when, in contrast to the deep love of a Mary, he first stands before us un |