rce to its own likeness."

But the touch of perfect goodness has often the opposite effect: it
transforms the angel into the toad, which is evil's own likeness.

Christ was now getting into close grips with the enemy He had come to
this world to overcome; and, as it clutched Him for the final wrestle,
it exhibited all its ugliness and discharged all its venom.[9] The claw
of the dragon was in His flesh, and its foul breath in His mouth. We
cannot conceive what such insult and dishonour must have been to His
sensitive and regal mind. But He rallied His heart to endure and not
to faint; for He had come to be the death of sin, and its death was to
be the salvation of the world.

[1] Here would come in the curious little notice in St. Mark: "And
there followed Him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about
his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him; and he left the
linen cloth and fled from them naked"; on which I have not commented,
not well knowing, in truth, what to make of it. It may be designed to
show the rudeness of the soldiery, and the peril in which any follower
of Jesus would have been had he been caught. Some have supposed that
the young man was St. Mark, and that this is the painter's signature in
an obscure corner of his picture. (See Holzmann in _Handcommentar zum
Neuen Testament_.) In the first volume of the _Expositor_ there is a
paper on the subject by Dr. Cox, but it does not throw much light on it.

[2] On the Sanhedrim and the high priests see Schuerer, _The Jewish
People in the Time of Christ_, div. ii., vol. i.

[3] This, many think, is what is given in St. John.

[4] Many think that this is what is given in St. Luke.

[5] The full number was seventy-one, including the president.

[6] See Psalm cx. 1, and Dan. vii. 13.

[7] Even Jost, the Jewish historian, calls it a murder; but he does not
believe that there was an actual trial; and in this Edersheim agrees
with him.

[8] In allusion to His claim to be the Messianic Prophet. The Roman
soldiers, on the other hand, ridiculed His claim to be a King.

[9] "The central figure is the holiest Person in history, but round Him
stand or strive the most opposed and contrasted moral types. . . . The
men who touch Him in this supreme hour of His history do so only to
have their essential character disclosed."--FAIRBAIRN.

CHAPTER III.

THE GREAT DENIAL

To the ecclesiastical trial of our Lord there is a side-pie