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Chapter 7 | Table
of Contents | Chapter 9
The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
Alfred Edersheim
1883
Book V
THE CROSS AND THE CROWN
Chapter 8
THE FOURTH DAY IN PASSION-WEEK
JESUS IN HIS LAST SABBATIC REST BEFORE HIS AGONY, AND THE SANHEDRISTS IN THEIR UNREST
THE BETRAYAL
JUDAS: HIS CHARACTER, APOSTASY, AND END.
(St. Matthew 26:1-5,14-16; St. Mark 14:1,2,10,11; St. Luke 22:1-6.)
FROM the record of Christ's Sayings and Doings, furnished by
St. Matthew, we turn once more to that of public events, as, from one or
another aspect they are related by all the Evangelists. With the Discourses in
the Temple the public Teaching of Christ had come to an end; with that spoken
on the Mount of Olives, and its application in the Parables of the 'Virgins'
and the 'Talents,' the instruction of the disciples had been concluded. What
follows in His intercourse with His own is parænetic,1
rather than teaching - exhortation, advice, and consolation: rather, perhaps,
all these combined.
1. I
take leave to introduce a term which has become naturalised in German
theological literature. There is no other single word which so expresses the
ideas.
The three busy days of Passion-Week were past. The day before
that on which the Paschal Lamb was to be slain, with all that was to follow,
would be one of rest, a Sabbath to His Soul before its Great Agony. He would
refresh Himself, gather Himself up for the terrible conflict before Him. And He
did so as the Lamb of God - meekly submitting Himself to the Will and Hand of
His Father, and so fulfilling all types, from that of Isaac's sacrifice on
Mount Moriah to the Paschal Lamb in the Temple; and bringing the reality of all
prophecy, from that of the Woman's Seed that would crush the Serpent's head to
that of the Kingdom of God in its fullness, when its golden gates would be
flung open to all men, and Heaven's own light flow out to them as they sought its
way of peace. Only two days more, as the Jews reckoned them2
- that Wednesday and Thursday - and at its Even the Paschal supper! And Jesus
knew it well, and He passed that day of rest and preparation in quiet
retirement with His disciples - perhaps in some hollow of the Mount of Olives,
near the home of Bethany - speaking to them of His Crucifixion on the near
Passover. They sorely needed His words; they, rather than He, needed to be
prepared for what was coming. But what Divine calm, what willing obedience, and
also what outgoing of love to them, with full consciousness of what was before
Him, to think and speak of this only on that day! So would not a Messiah of
Jewish conception have acted; nay, He would not have been placed in such
circumstances. So would not a Messiah of ambitious aims or of Jewish
Nationalist aspirations have acted; He would have done what the Sanhedrin
feared, and raised a 'tumult of the people,' prepared for it as the multitude
was, which had so lately raised the Hosanna-cry in street and Temple. So would
a disillusioned enthusiast not have acted; he would have withdrawn from the
impending fate. But Jesus knew it all - far more the agony of shame and
suffering, even the unfathomable agony of soul. And the while He thought only
of them in it all. Such thinking and speaking is not that of Man - it is that
of the Incarnate Son of God, the Christ of the Gospels.
2. An
attempt has been lately made, with great ingenuity, by the Rev. B. S. Clarke
of Boxted, to show that only the weekly Sabbath and the Day of Atonement, but
not the other festive, nor yet the natural days, began with the evening. The
admission in regard to Sabbaths and the Day of Atonement is, in the absence of
any qualifying remark in regard to them, a primâ facie argument against
the theory. But there is more than this. In Chull. 83 a it is noted, in
connection with offerings, that as in the history of the Creation the day
always belonged to the previous night ('one day'), it was always to be reckoned
in the same manner. Again, in Pes. 2 a it is stated that the day lasted
till three stars became visible. Lastly, and most important in regard to the
Passover, it is distinctly stated (Jer. Pes. 27 c, below), that it began
with the darkness on the 14th Nisan.
He had, indeed, before that, sought gradually to prepare them
for what was to happen on the morrow's night. He had pointed to it in dim
figure at the very opening of His Ministry, on the first occasion that he had
taught in the Temple,3
as well as to Nicodemus.4
He had hinted it, when He spoke of the deep sorrow when the Bridegroom would be
taken from them,5
of the need of taking up His cross,6
of the fulfilment in Him of the Jonah-type,7
of His Flesh which He would give for the life of the world,8
as well as in what might have seemed the Parabolic teaching about the Good
Shepherd, Who laid down His life for the Sheep,9
and the Heir Whom the evil husbandmen cast out and killed.10
But He had also spoken of it quite directly - and this, let us specially
notice, always when some highpoint in His History had been reached, and the
disciples might have been carried away into Messianic expectations of an
exaltation without humiliation, a triumph not a sacrifice. We remember, that
the first 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;11
the next, after descending from the Mount of Transfiguration;12
the last, on preparing to make His triumphal Messianic Entry into Jerusalem.13
The darker hints and Parabolic sayings might have been misunderstood. Even as
regarded the clear prediction of His Death, preconceived ideas could find no
room for such a fact. Deep veneration, which could not associate it with His
Person, and love which could not bear the thought of it, might, after the first
shock of the words was past, and their immediate fulfilment did not follow,
suggest 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.14
If illusions had still existed, the last two days must have rudely dispelled
them. The triumphal Hosannas 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 to 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
separated them. Much as we wonder at their brief scattering on 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.
3. St.
John ii. 19.
4. iii.
14.
5. St.
Matt. ix. 15.
6. x.
38.
7. St.
Matt. xii. 40.
8. St.
John vi. 51.
9. St.
John x. 11, 15.
10. St.
Matt. xxi. 38.
11. St.
Matt. xvi. 21.
12. St.
Matt. xvii. 22.
13. St.
Matt. xx. 17-19.
14. 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 Apostle, or
by friends of Apostles, 'the writers do not shrink from describing their own
conduct, or that of their Master,' with a truthfulness which terribly reflects
on their constancy, courage, and even manliness. Dr. Wace's second
argument is so clearly put, that I must 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 otherwise
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 Resurrection - 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 presented it.
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 of receiving.
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.'15
Yet, even so, not permanently.16
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 midday-strength 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.17
15. St.
Luke xxii. 3.
16. St.
John xiii. 2 and 27.
17. This
apart from the question of the exceptional sin against the Holy Ghost.
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 shudderingly 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 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 above 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 out 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 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 thief18
- 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 'government' (kubernhsiV).19
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 fulfills 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.
18. St.
John xii. 5, 6.
19. 1
Cor. xii. 28.
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 thence to ambition in its worst, or
selfish, aspect, there is only a step - scarcely that: rather, only different
moral premisses.20
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' 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, the 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, such 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.
20. On
the relation between ambition and covetousness, generally, and in the case of
Judas, see p. 77.
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, and 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 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 could 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
manifestation, continued and increased. And so the mental and the moral
alienation went on together, affected by and affecting each other. As 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 unmasked, as heartless, hypocritical, full of hatred - disappointed
ambition having broken down into selfishness, and selfishness slid into
covetousness, even to the crime of stealing that which was destined for the
poor.
For, when an ambition which rests only on selfishness gives way
there lies close by it the coarse lust of covetousness, as the kindred passion
and lower expression of that other form of selfishness. When the Messianic
faith of Judas gave place to utter disappointment, the moral and spiritual
character of Christ's Teaching would affect him, not sympathetically but
antipathetically. Thus, that which should have opened the door of his heart,
only closed and double-barred it. His attachment to the Person of Jesus would
give place to actual hatred, though only of a temporary character; and the wild
intenseness of his Eastern nature would set it all in flame. Thus, when Judas
had lost his slender foothold, or, rather, when it had slipped from under him,
he fell down, down the eternal abyss. The only hold to which he could cling was
the passion of his soul. As he laid hands on it, it gave way, and fell with him
into fathomless depths. We, each of us, have also some master-passion; and if,
which God forbid! we should lose our foothold, we also would grasp this
master-passion, and it would give way, and carry us with it into the eternal
dark and deep.
On that spring day, in the restfulness of Bethany, when the
Master was taking His sad and solemn Farewell of sky and earth, of friends and
disciples, and told them what was to happen only two days later at the
Passover, it was all settled in the soul of Judas. 'Satan entered' it. Christ
would be crucified; this was quite certain. In the general cataclysm let Judas
have at least something. And so, on that sunny afternoon, he left them out
there, to seek speech of them that were gathered, not in their ordinary
meeting-place, but in the High-Priest's Palace. Even this indicates that it was
an informal meeting, consultative rather than judicial. For, it was one of the
principles of Jewish Law that, in criminal cases, sentence must be spoken in
the regular meeting-place of the Sanhedrin.21
The same inference is conveyed by the circumstance, that the captain of the
Temple-guard and his immediate subordinates seem to have been taken into the
council,22 no doubt to
concert the measures for the actual arrest of Jesus. There had previously been
a similar gathering and consultation, when the report of the raising of Lazarus
reached the authorities of Jerusalem.23
The practical resolution adopted at that meeting had apparently been, that a
strict watch should henceforth be kept on Christ's movements, and that every
one of them, as well as the names of His friends, and the places of His secret
retirement, should be communicated to the authorities, with the view to His arrest
at the proper moment.24
21. Ab.
Zar. 8 b, line before last.
22. St.
Luke xxii. 4.
23. St.
John xi. 47, 48.
24. St.
John xi. 57.
It was probably in professed obedience to this direction, that
the traitor presented himself that afternoon in the Palace of the High-Priest
Caiaphas.25 Those
assembled there were the 'chiefs' of the Priesthood - no doubt, the Temple-officials,
heads of the course of Priests, and connections of the High-Priestly family,
who constituted what both Josephus and the Talmud designate as the
Priestly Council.26
All connected with the Temple, its ritual, administration, order, and laws, would
be in their hands. Moreover, it was but natural, that the High-Priest and his
council should be the regular official medium between the Roman authorities and
the people. In matters which concerned, not ordinary misdemeanours, but
political crimes (such as it was wished to represent the movement of Jesus), or
which affected the status of the established religion, the official
chiefs of the Priest-hood would, of course, be the persons to appeal, in
conjunction with the Sanhedrists, to the secular authorities. This,
irrespective of the question - to which reference will be made in the sequel -
what place the Chief Priests held in the Sanhedrin. But in that meeting in the
Palace of Caiaphas, besides these Priestly Chiefs, the leading Sanhedrists
('Scribes and Elders') were also gathered. They were deliberating how Jesus
might be taken by subtilty and killed. Probably they had not yet fixed on any
definite plan. Only at this conclusion had they arrived - probably in
consequence of the popular acclamations at His Entry into Jerusalem, and of
what had since happened - that nothing must be done during the Feast, for fear
of some popular tumult. They knew only too well the character of Pilate, and
how in any such tumult all parties - the leaders as well as the led - might
experience terrible vengeance.
25. About
Caiaphas, see Book II. ch. xi.
26. The
evidence is collected, although not well arranged, by Wieseler, Beitr.
pp. 205-230.
It must have been intense relief when, in their perplexity, the
traitor now presented himself before them with his proposals. Yet his reception
was not such as he may have looked for. He probably expected to be hailed and
treated as a most important ally. They were, indeed, 'glad, and covenanted to
give him money,' even as he promised to dog His steps, and watch for the
opportunity which they sought. In truth, the offer of the betrayer changed the
whole aspect of matters. What formerly they dreaded to attempt seemed now both
safe and easy. They could not allow such an opportunity to slip; it was one
that might never occur again. Nay, might it not even seem, from the defection
of Judas, as if dissatisfaction and disbelief had begun to spread in the
innermost circle of Christ's disciples?
Yet, withal, they treated Judas not as an honoured associate,
but as a common informer, and a contemptible betrayer. This was not only
natural but, in the circumstances, the wisest policy, alike in order to save
their own dignity, and to keep most secure hold on the betrayer. And, after
all, it might be said, so as to minimise his services, that Judas could really
not do much for them - only show them how they might seize Him at unawares in
the absence of the multitude, to avoid the possible tumult of an open arrest.
So little did they understand Christ! And Judas had at last to speak it out
barefacedly - so selling himself as well as the Master: 'What will ye give me?'
It was in literal fulfilment of prophecy,27
that they 'weighed out' to him28
from the very Temple-treasury those thirty pieces of silver (about 3l.
15s.).29
And here we mark, that there is always terrible literality about the prophecies
of judgment, while those of blessing far exceed the words of prediction. And
yet it was surely as much in contempt of the seller as of Him Whom he sold,
that they paid the legal price of a slave. Or did they mean some kind of legal
fiction, such as to buy the Person of Jesus at the legal price of a slave, so
as to hand it afterwards over to the secular authorities? Such fictions, to
save the conscience by a logical quibble, are not so uncommon - and the case of
the Inquisitors handing over the condemned heretic to the secular authorities
will recur to the mind. But, in truth, Judas could not now have escaped their
toils. They might have 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
27. Zech.
xi. 12.
28. Probably
such was the practice in public payments.
29. The
shekel of the Sanctuary = 4 dinars. The Jerusalem shekel is found, on an
average, to be worth about 2s. 6d.
30. Phil.
ii. 7.
31. Exod.
xxi 32.
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 the
lightning-flash of that night of terrors.
32. St.
John xiii. 27.
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 had done to the Master! Only for one moment did
it seem to lie there; then it was sucked up by the dark waters beneath. And
again the cloud-curtain is drawn, only more closely; the darkness is thicker,
and the storm wilder than before. Out into that darkness, with one wild plunge
- there, where the Figure of the Dead Christ had lain on the waters! And the
dark waters have closed around him in eternal silence.
In the lurid morn that broke on the other shore where the flood
cast him up, did he meet those searching, loving Eyes of Jesus, Whose gaze he
knew so well - when he came to answer for the deeds done in the flesh? And - can there be a store in the Eternal Compassion for the
Betrayer of Christ?
Chapter 7 | Table
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