Little as we sometimes remember it, we all spend our allotted days under sentence of death. Though He was in perfect health, our Lord lived His life seeing thus the end. He faced many dangers, from tempest, from plague, from contagion of the leprous, from wild men and wild beasts; but He was never nervous-never worried. He quietly went on, doing the next thing, in full assurance that He was safe until His time should come. When hostility thickened around Him, He displayed no bravado, but regarded death as a grave fact, not to be treated lightly, as if it does not matter, but to be undertaken, like a journey, with steady courage and with wise preparation. Gradually He withdrew from Galilee, where had been the sphere of His social work; and as His disciples accompanied Him, they were "amazed" and filled with an ever-deepening awe. He said good-by to Capernaum and Bethsaida, those cities which had seen so much of Him and believed so little. Occasionally--as at Jericho, where He healed two blind men--He performed some miracle, showing that His powers were undiminished--that it was not some impostor, but the Restorer of the ear of Malchus, whom they crucified. But He spent much time in retirement, living at Bethany with Martha and Mary; and in Him, at thirty-three years old, we see the dignity and the peace of old age. He was not embittered by apparent failure, but became the Friend and Companion of His disciples in the difficulties of their declining years. If they have to cross the Brook Kidron--which means "full of blackness"--the torrent that flows inexorably between the old Jerusalem and Mount Olivet, the threshold of the new, He went there first, and we can trace His footsteps. Long afterwards, His Apostles were constantly helped by the knowledge that they were dying, not alone, but with Him. And when John saw Him in splendor, one thing that he noticed was that the Ancient of Days, who was killed so young, wore above His brow a crown of snowy hair. I know of nothing, even in Scripture, more astounding in its inspired audacity than this declaration of the truth that in one awful day of suffering the hair of the Son of Man thus changed to pure white.
The Bequest of Christ
Having no earthly property, His last will and testament was in unusual form. "Not as the world giveth," said He, "give I unto you." There was nothing in writing-no copyrights, no lawyers to be consulted, no deeds to be signed, no codicils. "My peace I leave with you"--that was His bequest as He went hence, and on that benefaction His heirs paid legacy duty, not in money, but with their heart's blood. Never were death-duties so ruthlessly levied, yet so cheerfully paid, as in the Early Christian Church. Knowing that His possessions consisted entirely of those whom He had won, He named His Father and theirs as Executor, Trustee, and Guardian. In due legal phrase, uttered on His knees, He said: "Father, I will that they whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am."They were His investments, and with an intense tenacity He declared that not one of them should be lost. His title to His own was complete." Thine they were"--by creation and eternal right--"and Thou gavest them Me"; the chain of ownership was complete, and must be maintained until the whole estate is redeemed and an account of it rendered. He did not test success in life by accumulated cash, but by the love of men and women and children. And even by that test, He died poor, for His friends were few and their loyalty failed. Yet, patient, He did not complain. He did indeed say, "I have given all, yet you are only twelve men, and one is a devil" but in His very redeeming effort He remained utterly humble--"having loved His own, He loved them unto the end."
It was never His custom to condemn anything without giving something better. When Satan tempted Him in the wilderness, He turned away from earthly glory, as of no account; but on approaching the cross, with its exposure and shame, glory became His favorite word. Napoleon himself did not use it more often, and it was the thought of glory that sustained Him amid the gloom. To the Herods who tried Him, glory was a garment that has to be put on--a robe of gold or silver, that flashes only in the sun, with multitudes to applaud. Thus it was that one of those Herods stood forth in the theater of Cęsarea, like a god to look at, but smitten at his vitals with a loathsome malady. To Jesus, the glory of a person is not put on, but revealed. When He was transfigured, it was not His robe that in itself glistened--no fuller on earth could have so illuminated it. What shone was the Man within the vestment. The face of Moses, when he saw the skirts of God, was radiant by reflection; but when Jesus prayed to His Father, His countenance glowed not with the Divinity above it, but with the Divinity behind it. Here was the difference between the outside Light that lighteth every man, and the inner Light that is God's special gift. He did not need, like Herod, a sun to shine on Him. He was the Sun, shining amid that darkness. He was the Light of the world--the Light which kindles every light that truly shines among men.
Nor did His glory depend on the applause of a great audience. On no fewer than three occasions, He disclosed what was meant by His combat with Death. One each of these occasions, He limited the eye-witnesses of His power to three men only, Peter and James and John. They alone were with Him when He raised the daughter of Jairus. They alone were with Him when He talked with Moses and Elijah of His approaching decease. They alone were with Him when He underwent His agony in the Garden. He showed them, first, that death can be conquered. He showed them, next, that the greatest of men--men of law and men of prophecy, men who live the eternal life--desire the conquest of death. He showed them, finally, that the conquest of death is God's will also. Yet they did not understand it. When the little girl was given back to her parents, the three disciples were doubtless astonished. But on the Mountain they slept, and in the Garden their slumber was so sound that thrice He endeavored to awake them.
A Missed Opportunity
The bitterest of His sorrows at that period was the sense that His own friends--having been shown so much--did not understand Him. In the end, He won the allegiance of His brothers, but for years they refused belief. Peter and James and John loved Him dearly. Night or day, they were ready to follow Him. They and the other disciples were struck with grief when He talked of going up to Jerusalem to die, and said that they also would go up to die with Him. Immediately before His arrest Peter repeated the assurance, and quite sincerely; undoubtedly he meant it. But when it came to the point, he with the others forsook Him and fled; and when Peter returned to His presence in the judgment-hall, it was only to deny Him thrice. There came a time when all these Apostles were proud and glad to suffer with Christ, to be crucified with Him, and share the glory that has radiance amid shame. But when, in the flesh, He gave them the opportunity, telling them that by losing life they would find it, they missed their chance. It was alone that He trod the wine-press whence flows our happiness. It was no apostle, but a thief, that accompanied Him to paradise, and to save that thief He died first, There was a sense in which His bodily presence did not vin His disciples, and, studying their failure, who understand what He meant when He said that it wag expedient--note that word, a very strong one--that He should go away; expedient, because then there would come to them the Spirit--the Comforter--to make them all that I-le desired them to be.
Frequently we can detect symptoms of what pain He suffered through "His own." There was Peter persuading Him to surrender Jerusalem without a struggle; as if there could be one spot in earth or heaven where the writ of the King of kings does not run! There was Peter again--himself a slumberer--seeking to limit His revelation on the Mount to himself and his friends--to shut the Christ up in a tabernacle, as the Devil would have set Him on a pinnacle--making of Him no more than another Moses and another Elijah, and testing every circumstance of religion, not by the question, What is a saving faith for the world ? but by the question, What is good and comfortable and blessed for the believer? There were James and John, begging like the Pharisees for chief places in the king. dom; and the other disciples, led away by the example of the more favored of their number, constantly quarreled as to who should be greatest. As He met the parents of the epileptic boy whom they could not help, what hurt Him so terribly was the evidence that they were utterly unable to carry on His work. And to this disappointment was added later the haunting fear that, sifted by Satan like wheat, their personal faith might fail. He prayed for Peter, He prayed for them all, as no mother has ever prayed, even for her only son. And His prayers availed. They were not assisted by those of the Virgin Mary, nor by the intercession of patriarchs. His intercessions were themselves complete.
The uttermost misery of that time was the treachery of Judas Iscariot. Of the other disciples, we know that one was a fisherman, another was a Zealot, another a civil servant, and so on. Judas was simply a man. He was a well-chosen man, like the other Apostles. Born and bred in a village, his character was excellent; he was vigorous, and, to all appearances, he faithfully fulfilled his duty. Obviously, there had to be somebody able and willing to handle the finances of the little mission. It was so in the Early Church. There was nothing dishonorable in the duty which Jesus laid upon Judas. And if Judas undertook it, this showed that Jesus was never under the necessity of distributing alms--that it was not money which uplifted the fallen.
The Seen and the Unseen
John tells us bluntly that the Iscariot was guilty of embezzlement. That is a gross and terrible sin, but it begins with an error which is quite common in all classes of society. Judas simply regarded God's money as if it were his own; he carried the bag, and kept what was put therein. One is amazed by the little that he got out of it. When he was about to take his life, what he threw down in the Temple was neither more nor less than thirty pieces of silver, the amount of his bribe; nor is there one tittle of evidence that he ever enriched himself beyond that sum. There is no suggestion that this man spent a farthing on himself; his was not the sin of Ananias and Sapphira, who kept back part of the price. The trouble with him was essentially that his faith depended on endowments; that he relied on the seen and loved the seen, instead of the unseen--because he felt that the seen belonged to him, whereas the unseen claimed him. He wanted the power of money, because that power seemed to make him independent of the Saviour. He would do good himself, instead of revealing the good in Christ. He began by denying that adoration of the Saviour is worth three hundred pence. He ended by valuing the Saviour's life at thirty pieces of silver.
And Jesus, whose friendship was exquisitely sensitive, did not once ask him for a single mite. When he wanted a penny to illustrate His teaching, it was not Judas who brought it. When He had need of a Mater with which to pay a tax, it was to Peter, not to Judas, that He turned; and He preferred the fish's mouth to that purse with its strings so tightly drawn. He was not one who went for money to those who had it. He only loved the "cheerful giver." The estrangement between Him and, Judas was unseen by others, No one objected to Judas sitting with Him at the Last Supper. When Judas went out, they only thought that he had business to transact--to buy something, to give something--as if any business could have taken precedence over communion with the Lord. The business, alas, was not buying, not giving. It was selling; and he who would have sold our Redeemer's alabaster box was now ready to sell the Saviour Himself.