not to me." Those by a life of love and
service had chosen eternal life, but these by a life of selfishness had
chosen death.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE HOLY SUPPER.

There were two more days before the Passover Feast when Jesus would eat
the Paschal Supper with His disciples. He spent the time with them
trying to help them to bear the great trial that was before them, and
which would shake their faith in Him to the utmost. They still
believed that some great miracle would break around them like light in
the darkness, and that Jesus would be acknowledged as the Messiah for
whom the whole nation was waiting and yet the shadow grew deeper. The
faith of one had failed. Judas had secretly hoped that Jesus would be
made king, and that His disciples would be honored with riches and
power, but little by little this hope had been dying, and little by
little his heart had been turning away from his Master and his
brethren, until, with the resolve to forsake the Lord, he opened the
door of his heart to Satan, who began to enter in and possess him.

The high priest and the elders were plotting against Jesus in their
council, and Judas, leaving Bethany and the company of the Lord and His
disciples, went over the road he had so often walked with Jesus with a
thought from Satan burning in his heart. He loved money more than
everything else, and there was but one thing that would bring it now
since all hope of Jesus becoming a king was past.

He went to the Temple and asked to be taken before the rulers, and he
said to them, "What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you?"
There was a bargain made at once, and out of the Temple treasury they
weighed him thirty pieces of silver, and he carried them away with the
promise that he would watch Jesus, and tell them when and where they
could take Him. He did not remember that five hundred years before the
prophet Zechariah had written, "So they weighed for my price thirty
pieces of silver."

On Thursday morning, the first day of the Feast, Jesus sent Peter and
John to prepare a place where He should hold the Paschal Supper with
His disciples in the evening. He told them to go into the city, and
there they would meet a man bearing a pitcher of water, and if they
would follow him he would show them a large upper room furnished.
There they were to make ready the Passover.

[Illustration: The Passover supper]

They found it as He had said, and when the lamb had been sl