lessly corrupt.. His death attests that he was not without some appreciation of honor, some sense of shame. The preaching of Jesus had doubtless real power over him. He, perhaps, honestly enlisted in Jesus's service. The seed may have taken real root none the less that thorns so soon sprang up and choked it.

It is not difficult to trace, in imagination, the rest of his

career.

So long as Christ preached only "the kingdom of God is at hand," so long Judas followed him with implicit faith in his Gospel. When the twelve were sent forth to repeat that message, he accepted the mission without hesitation, fulfilled it without faltering. His faith that he would soon share in the glories of that kingdom was the common faith of all. Peter, boasting of his fidelity, asked what he was to have therefor. John and James sought the first rank in the Messiah's nobility. Up to the last moment the twelve contended in unseemly strife for precedence at the table.

But when Christ refused the proffered crown at the plain of Bethsaida, Judas's faith was staggered. When Jesus told the people at Capernaum that it was only by his death he was to enter into his kingdom, Judas showed signs of disappointment that did not escape the sensitive heart of John.* When, in distincter language, Jesus prophesied his crucifixion, Judas, too guarded to utter the rebuke of Peter, shared the sentiments he was too secretive to express. When the rich young nobleman offered to join their band, Judas could ill comprehend the policy that would turn him away. When more than one like Nicodemus made overtures of secret alliance, Judas was restive under the rebuff that was administered to all who refused to confess Jesus before men. When Jesus uttered his first philippics against the Pharisees, Judas was among the first to instigate, if careful himself not to utter the caution, "Knowest thou that the Pharisees were of fended?" And his covetous nature and suspicious disposi*John vi., 64.

tion resented in secret every such utterance as the enigmatical sentence, "How hardly can a rich man enter the kingdom of God;" or that invective against worldly-mindedness veiled under the parable of the rich fool; or that yet more striking contrast between earthly and spiritual wealth which is afforded by the story of Dives and Lazarus. He thought, with Renan, that Jesus preached a gospel that savored too strongly of Ebionism. He had no ambition to be poor.*

Such, at least, we may well conceive to have been the ef fect of these teachings on his sordid soul.

Nor was it only his ambition that was crossed; his relig ious prejudices must also have been shocked. Judean by birth and education, the radical nature of Jesus's teaching offended him. He secretly revolted at the utterance which denounced the ablutions of the Pharisees, a ceremonial which the Jews had been taught to regard with reverence akin to that paid by the Romans to the mass. He was perplexed by his new Master's disregard of the Pharisaic Sabbath. He was impatient at what seemed to him the unnecessary disrespect to popular prejudice-the more impatient that those prejudices were his own. His reverence for the high-priest, the prelate of Judea, was wounded by the repeated rebukes which Jesus administered to the priestly party. His intense nationality rendered to him obnoxious the teachings of such parables as that of the good Samaritan, and such broad declarations as that the children of the kingdom would come from the north and the south, the east and the west, while the children of Abraham would be cast out.

Thus, if religious feeling combined with worldly ambition to draw him to Jesus, religious prejudice combined with a disappointed ambition to repel him.

Nothing is more deadly than a perverted conscience; and Judas had a conscience.

As the close of Christ's life drew on, the conflict in Judas's

*For indications that all the disciples were at least perplexed by these and kindred utterances, see Matt. xv., 12; xvi., 22; xix., 25.

soul became bitter and more marked. Jesus, stoned from the Temple, he was ready to desert; Jesus, thronged with attentive and admiring audiences, he was proud to acknowledge as his Lord. Jesus, prophesying of his shameful death, he had no ambition to follow to the cross; Jesus, promising to the twelve disciples the right to sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, was a Messiah after his own heart. Jesus, exiled from Judea, seeking in Perea safety from the Sanhedrim, he thought a sorry king; Jesus, raising the dead Lazarus by a word, revived his faltering faith and stimulated his slumbering hopes. Jesus, sitting down at meat with the despised Zaccheus, outraged his Jewish sense of propriety; Jesus, riding in triumphal procession amid waving branches and popular songs of rejoicing, reflected a glory in whose lustre he was glad to shine. Jesus, rebuking the heresies of the Sadducees, his orthodox head commended; Jesus, denouncing the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, his too worldly-wise heart condemned.

Christ's teachings on Tuesday put an end to this conflict. The kingdom of Jesus was not a Judaic kingdom. The vineyard was to be taken from Judah and given to worthier nations. Her house was to be left to her desolate. Of her walls, and bulwarks, and towers, whose praises David had so sweetly sung, not one stone was to be left upon another. In the revelations of that hour, the dream of this Judean vanished. He seemed to himself the victim of an unwarrantable delusion. He rehearsed in his mind the repeated promises of his Master. These turned to be Dead-Sea fruit in his grasp. He forgot the warnings and the interpretations which should have guarded him against his false hopes. He was the victim of an unwarrantable delusion, but it was that of his own sensuous imagination.

He is not the only one who, having put his hand to the plow, has drawn back, seeing how sharp a furrow it cut through the fair sward.

To draw back from a reformation is never easy. To aban

don a failing cause; to return to Judaism because Christianity had no crown to offer-to return confessing the failure of his cause and empty-handed, was more than the sensitive ambition of Judas could endure. Sensitive we call his ambition. Two incidents of his life show it to have been so; one at the supper in Bethany, the other at the supper in Jerusalem.

Gradually, therefore, there had arisen, darkly and dimly, in his mind a project for returning not empty-handed. The damnable suggestion had been whispered to his cunning soul that the very difficulties of his position might be turned to the account of his ambition. For over two years the Judaic party had sought in vain the charmed life of this Galilean Rabbi. He that should destroy for Judaism this young Goliath that defied it, would he not receive the hosannas of victory from priest and from people? Already, in his imagination, he saw himself crowned by the party of his youth and the vote of the chief council. This, not the paltry sum of thirty pieces of silver, was the price his imagination offered him for the betrayal of his Lord.

He forgot that always the price of treachery is scornscorn heaviest from those who profit by it. So did Arnold. So does every traitor.

Little by little another element entered into the conflict going on within him-revenge. These dark thoughts, gradually as they had grown, carefully as they had been hidden beneath an almost impenetrable reserve, Jesus had read. He sometimes intimated in enigmas his knowledge of them. The Son of man, he said, will be betrayed.* The disciples looked on such occasions with wondering suspicion at each other; most of all, perhaps, at Judas, who was not a Galilean. These intimations galled him. His sensitive pride, keenly sensitive to praise and blame, made more of these suspicions than there really was, and widened the gulf already separating him from his companions. He writhed in angrier indignation because * John vi., 70, 71; Matt. xvii., 22; xx., 18.

he felt their justice, and because, unuttered, he could not openly resent them.

Thus gradually Judas separated more and more from his companions. Thus gradually more and more his disappointed hopes and base ambitions shaped themselves into a treacherous purpose.

Such was his state of mind when a very simple incident crystallized his ill-defined design into an instant and well-defined resolve.

On the return of Jesus from Jerusalem, Tuesday evening, Martha and Mary made an entertainment for him; Judas, of course, was among the guests. Martha was a good housekeeper, and evidently prided herself on her housekeeping. The feast was worthy of the family and the occasion; but Judas, brooding over the problem how to withdraw without disgrace from following this uncrowned king, was in no mood for feasts. The supper was Martha's homage to Jesus. After the supper Mary offered hers. She opened a box of very valuable ointment. A little would have sufficed for any ordinary anointing, but none less than the whole sufficed for Mary's love. After anointing the head, she poured the balance upon Jesus's feet.

At another time Judas might have accepted such an act of homage. If it had followed the hour of Christ's triumphal procession, he might have recognized it as a tribute not unworthy to be paid to his king. But it followed a day that signified his final breach with Jesus-a day dark with its uttered foreboding to Jews and the Jewish nation-a day momentous with its prophecies of coming disaster. Judas forgot his careful reticence, and openly condemned the waste of such wholesale offerings. Even now he had the wisdom to conceal his displeasure beneath a pretended regard for the poor. He even succeeded in communicating his sentiments to some of the other disciples.*

Jesus instantly defended the womanly love that proffered * Compare John xii., 5, with Matt. xxvi., 8.