, but he virtually denies the character and
even the existence of God. He denies His character, for, if he
believed in His mercy and love, he would flee to instead of from Him;
and he denies His existence, for no one who believed that he was to
meet God on the other side of the veil would dare in this disorderly
way to rush into His presence.

The mode of Judas' suicide was characteristically base. Hanging does
not appear to have been at all usual among the Jews. In the entire Old
Testament there is said to occur only a single case; and, strange to
say, it is that of the man who, in the principal act of his life also,
was the prototype of Judas. Ahithophel, the counsellor and friend of
David, betrayed his master, as Judas betrayed Christ; and he came to
the same ignominious end.

It would seem, further, that the hanging of Judas was accompanied with
circumstances of unusual horror. This we gather from the account in
the beginning of Acts.[4] The terms employed are obscure; but they
probably signify that the suicidal act was attended by a clumsy
accident, in consequence of which the body, being suspended over a
precipice and suddenly dropped by the snapping of the rope, was mangled
in a shocking manner, which made a profound impression on all who heard
of it.[5]

And this sense of his end being accursed was further accentuated in the
minds of the early Christians by the circumstance that the money for
which he had sold Christ was eventually used for the purchase of a
graveyard for burying strangers in. The priests, though they picked up
the coins from the floor over which Judas had strewn them, did not,
scrupulous men, consider them good enough to be put in the sacred
treasury; so they applied them to this purpose. The public wit,
hearing of it, dubbed the place the Field of Blood; and thus the
cemetery became a kind of monument to the traitor, of which he took
possession as the first of the outcasts for whom it was designed.

The world has agreed to regard Judas as the chief of sinners; but, in
so judging, it has exceeded its prerogative. Man is not competent to
judge his brother. The master-passion of Judas was a base one; Dante
may be right in considering treachery the worst of crimes; and the
supreme excellence of Christ affixes an unparalleled stigma to the
injury inflicted on Him. But the motives of action are too hidden, and
the history of every deed is too complicated, to justify us in saying
wh