of men was now drawing to its
close.

187. The bargain made by Judas to betray his Lord has always been
difficult to understand. The man must have had fine possibilities or Jesus
would not have chosen him for an apostle, nor would the little company
have made him its treasurer (John xii. 6; xiii. 29). The fact that Jesus
early discovered his character (John vi. 64) does not compel us to think
that his selection as an apostle was not perfectly sincere; the man must
have seemed to be still savable and worthy thus to be associated with the
eleven others who were Jesus' nearest companions. It has often been
noticed that he was probably the only Judean among the twelve, for
Kerioth, his home, was a town in southern Judea. The effort has frequently
been made to redeem his reputation by attributing his betrayal to some
high motive--such as a desire to force his Master to use his Messianic
power, and confound his opponents by escaping from their hands and setting
up the hoped-for kingdom. But the remorse of Judas, in which De Quincey
finds support for this theory of the betrayal, must be more simply and
sadly understood. It is more likely that the traitor illustrates Jesus'
words: "No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and
love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye
cannot serve God and mammon" (Matt. vi. 24). The beginning of his fall may
have been his disappointment when Jesus showed clearly that he would not
establish a kingdom conformed to the popular ideas. As the enthusiasm
which drew him to Jesus cooled, personal greed, with something of
resentment at the cause of his disappointment, seem to have taken
possession of him, and they led him on until the stinging rebuke which
Jesus administered to the criticism of Mary at Bethany prompted the man to
seek a bargain with the authorities which should insure him at least some
profit in the general wreck of his hopes. His remorse after he saw in its
bald hideousness what he had done was psychologically inevitable. Although
Jesus was aware of Judas' character from the beginning (John vi. 64), he
that came to seek and to save that which was lost was no fatalist; and
this knowledge was doubtless--like that which he had of the fate hanging
over Jerusalem--subject to the possibility that repentance might change
what was otherwise a certain destiny. As the event turned he could only
say, "Good were it for that man if he had not been