ut to this disastrous issue _any_ cherished sin may also in its own way
lead; for the more comprehensive lesson which this sin of Judas brings
with it is the rapidity of sin's growth and the enormous proportions it
attains when the sinner is sinning against light, when he is in
circumstances conducive to holiness and still sins. To discover the
wickedest of men, to see the utmost of human guilt, we must look, not
among the heathen, but among those who know God; not among the
profligate, dissolute, abandoned classes of society, but among the
Apostles. The good that was in Judas led him to join Christ, and kept
him associated with Christ for some years; but the devil of
covetousness that was cast out for a while returned and brought with him
seven devils worse than himself. There was everything in his position to
win him to unworldliness: the men he lived with cared not one whit for
comforts or anything that money could buy; but instead of catching their
spirit he took advantage of their carelessness. He was in a public
position, liable to detection; but this, instead of making him honest
perforce, made him only the more crafty and studiedly hypocritical. The
solemn warnings of Christ, so far from intimidating him, only made him
more skilful in evading all good influence, and made the road to hell
easier. The position he enjoyed, and by which he might have been for
ever enrolled among the foremost of mankind, one of the twelve
foundations of the eternal city, he so skilfully misused that the
greatest sinner feels glad that he has yet not been left to commit the
sin of Judas. Had Judas not followed Christ he could never have attained
the pinnacle of infamy on which he now for ever stands. In all
probability he would have passed his days as a small trader with false
weights in the little town of Kerioth, or, at the worst, might have
developed into an extortionous publican, and have passed into oblivion
with the thousands of unjust men who have died and been at last forced
to let go the money that should long ago have belonged to others. Or had
Judas followed Christ truly, then there lay before him the noblest of
all lives, the most blessed of destinies. But he followed Christ and yet
took his sin with him: and thence his ruin.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] More exactly, L3 10 8, the legal value of a slave.

VIII.

_JESUS ANNOUNCES HIS DEPARTURE._

"When therefore he was gone out, Jesus saith, Now is the Son of man