VII. the alternative of declaring himself openly and CHAP. authoritatively to be the Messiah, and so force him to the tardy accomplishment of the ambitious visions of his partisans. It is possible that the traitor may not have contemplated, or may not have permitted himself clearly to contemplate, the ultimate consequences of his crime: he may have indulged the vague hope, that if Jesus were really the Messiah, he bore, if we may venture the expression, "a charmed life," and was safe in his inherent immortality (a notion in all likelihood inseparable from that of the Deliverer), from the malice of his enemies. If he were not, the crime of his betrayal would not be of very great importance. There were other motives which would concur with the avarice of Judas; the rebuke which he had received when he expostulated about the waste of the ointment, if it had not excited any feeling of exasperation against his Master, at least showed that his character was fully understood by him. He must have felt himself out of his element among the more honest and sincere disciples; nor can he have been actuated by any real or profound veneration for the exquisite perfection of a character so opposite to his own: and thus insincere and doubting, he may have shrunk from the approaching crisis, and as he would seize any means of extricating himself from that cause which had now become so full of danger, his covetousness would direct him to those means which would at once secure his own personal safety, and obtain the price, the thirty pieces CHAP. of silver*, set by public proclamation, on the head of Jesus. VII. Nor is the desperate access of remorse, which led to the public restitution of the reward, and to the suicide of the traitor, irreconcileable with the unmitigated heinousness of the treachery. Men meditate a crime, of which the actual perpetration overwhelms them with horror. The general detestation, of which, no doubt, Judas could not but be conscious, not merely among his former companions, the followers of Jesus, but even among the multitude; the supercilious coldness of the Sanhedrin, who having employed him as their instrument, treat his recantation with the most contemptuous indifference, might overstrain the firmest, and work upon the basest mind: and even the unexampled sufferings, and tranquil endurance of Jesus, however he may have calmly surveyed them when distant, and softened and subdued by his imagination, when present to his mind in their fearful reality, forced by the busy tongue of rumour upon his ears, perhaps not concealed from his sight, The thirty pieces of silver Perhaps, when we are em- fluenced by our own sense of the incalculable importance of those consequences which arose out of the treachery of Judas. The service which he performed for this sum was, after all, no more than giving information as to the time and place in which Jesus might be seized among a few disciples without fear of popular tumult, conducting their officers to the spot where he might be found, and designating his person when they arrived at that spot. might drive him to desperation, little short of in- CHAP. sanity.* over. VII. It was on the last evening + but one before the The Passdeath of Jesus that the fatal compact was made: the next day, the last of his life, Jesus determines on returning to the city to celebrate the Feast of the Passover: his disciples are sent to occupy a room prepared for the purpose. His conduct and language before and during the whole repast clearly indicate his preparation for inevitable death. § His washing the feet of the disciples, his prediction of his betrayal, his intimation to Judas that he is fully aware of his design, his quiet dismissal of the traitor from the assembly, his institution of the second characteristic ordinance of The Last the new religion, his allusions in that rite to the Supper. breaking of his body, and the pouring forth of his blood, his prediction of the denial of Peter, his final address to his followers, and his prayer before Of all difficulties, that concerning which we arrive at the least satisfactory conclusion, is the apparent anticipation of the Passover by Christ. The fact is clear that Jesus celebrated the Passover on the Thursday, the leading Jews on the Friday; the historical evidence of this in the Gospels is unanswerable, independent of all theological reasoning. The reason of this difference is and must, we conceive, remain undecided. Whether it was an act of supreme authority assumed by Jesus, whether there was any schism about the right day, whether that schism was between the Pharisaic and AntiPharisaic party, or between the Jews and Galileans, all is purely conjectural. VII. CHAP. he left the chamber, are all deeply impregnated with the solemn melancholy, yet calm and unalterable composure, with which he looks forward to all the terrible details of his approaching, his almost immediate, sufferings. To his followers he makes, as it were, the valedictory promise, that his religion would not expire at his death, that his place would be filled by a mysterious Comforter, who was to teach, to guide, to console. * This calm assurance of approaching death in Jesus is the more striking when contrasted with the inveterately Jewish notions of the Messiah's kingdom, which even yet possess the minds of the Apostles. They are now fiercely contesting for their superiority in that earthly dominion, which even yet they suppose on the eve of its commencement. Nor does Jesus at this time altogether correct these erroneous notions, but in some degree falls into the prevailing language, to assure them of the distinguished reward which awaited his more faithful disciples. After inculcating the utmost humility by an allusion to the lowly fraternal service which he had just before performed in washing their feet, he describes the happiness and glory which they are at length to attain, by the strong, and no doubt familiar, imagery, of their being seated on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The festival was closed according to the usage with the second part of the Hallel †, the Psalms, from the 113th to the 118th inclusive, of which the * Luke, xxii. 24―30. Buxtorf, Lex Talmudica, p. 613. Lightfoot in loco. t former were customarily sung at the commencement, the latter at the end, of the paschal supper. Jesus with his disciples again departed from the room in the city* where the feast had been held, probably down the street of the Temple, till they came to the valley: they crossed the brook of Kidron, and began to ascend the slope of the Mount of Olives. Within the city no open space was left for gardens ; but the whole neighbourhood of Jerusalem was laid out in inclosures for the convenience and enjoyment of the inhabitants. The historian of the war relates, not without feelings of poignant sorrow, the havock made among these peaceful retreats by the devastating approaches of the Roman army. ‡ Jesus turned aside into one of these inclosures §, which, it should seem from the subsequent history, was a place of customary retreat, well-known to his immediate followers. The early hours of the night were passed by him in retired and devotional meditation, while the weary disciples are overpowered by involuntary slumber. Thrice Jesus returns to them, and each time he finds them sleeping. But to him it was no hour of quiet or repose. In the solitary garden of Gethsemane, Jesus, who in public, though confronting danger and suffering neither with stoical indifference, nor with the effort of a strong mind working * Matt. xxvi. 30-56.; Mark, xiv. 32-52.; Luke, xxii. 39-53.; John, xviii. 1. + Lightfoot's derivations of some of the places on Mount Olivet are curious:-Beth-hana the place of dates; Beth-phage the place of green figs; Geth-semane Hist. of the Jews, iii. 13. CHAP. VII. Jesus in the garden of Gethse mane. |