the work of Satan using a man as his scarcely responsible tool to
effect a purpose which needs never again to be effected.

If we ask what precisely it was in the crime of Judas that makes us so
abhor it, manifestly its most hateful ingredient was its treachery. "It
was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it; but it
was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance." Caesar
defended himself till the dagger of a friend pierced him; then in
indignant grief he covered his head with his mantle and accepted his
fate. You can forgive the open blow of a declared enemy against whom you
are on your guard; but the man that lives with you on terms of the
greatest intimacy for years, so that he learns your ways and habits, the
state of your affairs and your past history--the man whom you so confide
in and like that you communicate to him freely much that you keep hidden
from others, and who, while still professing friendship, uses the
information he has gained to blacken your character and ruin your peace,
to injure your family or damage your business,--this man, you know, has
much to repent of. So one can forgive the Pharisees who knew not what
they did, and were throughout the declared opponents of Christ; but
Judas attached himself to Christ, knew that His life was one of unmixed
benevolence, was conscious that Christ would have given up anything to
serve him, felt moved and proud from time to time by the fact that
Christ loved him, and yet at the last used all these privileges of
friendship against his Friend.

And Judas did not scruple to use this power that only the love of Jesus
could have given him, to betray Him to men whom he knew to be
unscrupulous and resolved to destroy Him. The garden where the Lord
prayed for His enemies was not sacred to Judas; the cheek that a seraph
would blush to kiss, and to salute which was the beginning of joy
eternal to the devout disciple, was mere common clay to this man into
whom Satan had entered. The crime of Judas is invested with a horror
altogether its own by the fact that this Person whom he betrayed was the
Son of God and the Saviour of the world, the Best-beloved of God and
every man's Friend. The greatest blessing that God had ever given to
earth Judas was forward to reject: not altogether unaware of the majesty
of Christ, Judas presumed to use Him in a little money-making scheme of
his own.

The best use that Judas could think of putting Jesus to,