offered him ten or five pieces of silver, and he must still have stuck to his bargain. Yet

none the less do we mark the deep symbolic significance of it all, in that the Lord was,

so to speak, paid for out of the Temple -money which was destined for the purchase of

sacrifices, and that He, Who took on Him the form of a servant,30 was sold and bought

at the legal price of a slave.31

And yet Satan must once more enter the heart of Judas at that Supper, before he can

finally do the deed.32 But, even so, we believe it was only temporarily, not for always -

for, he was still a human being, such as on this side eternity we all are - and he had still

a conscience working in him. With this element he had not reckoned in his bargain in

the High Priest's Palace. On the morrow of His condemnation would it exact a terrible

account. That night in Gethsemane never more passed from his soul. In the thickening

and encircling gloom all around, he must have ever seen only the torch-light glare as it

fell on the pallid Face of the Divine Sufferer. In the terrible stillness before the storm, he

must have ever heard only these words: 'Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?' He

did not hate Jesus then - he hated nothing; he hated everything. He was utterly

desolate, as the storm of despair swept over his disenchanted soul, and swept him

before it. No one in heaven or on earth to appeal to; no one, Angel or man, to stand by

him. Not the priests, who had paid him the price of blood, would have aught of him, not

even the thirty pieces of silver, the blood-money of his Master and of his own soul -

even as the modern Synagogue, which approves of what has been done, but not of the

deed, will have none of him! With their 'See thou to it!' they sent him reeling back into

his darkness. Not so could conscience be stilled. And, louder than the ring of the thirty

silver pieces as they fell on the marble pavement of the Temple, rang it ever in his soul,

'I have betrayed innocent blood!' Even if Judas possessed that which on earth cleaves

closest and longest to us - a woman's love - it could not have abode by him. It would

have turned into madness and fled; or it would have withered, struck by t he lightning -

flash of that night of terrors.

Deeper - farther out into the night! to its farthest bounds - where rises and falls the dark

flood of death. The wild howl of the storm has lashed the dark waters into fury: they toss

and break in wild billows at his feet. One narrow rift in the cloud -curtain over-head, and,

in the pale, deathlike light lies the Figure of the Christ, so calm and placid, untouched

and unharmed, on the storm-tossed waters, as it had been that night lying on the Lake

of Galilee, when Judas had seen Him come to them over the surging billows, and then

bid them be peace. Peace! What peace to him now - in earth or heaven? It was the

same Christ, but thorn-crowned, with nail-prints in His Hands and Feet. And this Judas