The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 1 — Section 40

for what ia built upon it. Likely enough his tendencies may have looked this way. He may have knowu a shade too well the use and "the love of money; " but evidence there ia none that he loved money as a miser loves it. Nor did it seem to atick to his fingers as it does to those of an essentially covetous man-not, for instance, when he threw it down on the temple floor at the priests' feet. May not other causes, that moved in deeper groove, and mined their unsuspected approaches in darker and more t-0rtuous chnuncl, have determined this monstrous deformity of growth? We believe thnt we have before us, in the unenviable, unwelcome riddle of this character: 1. A man to whom ambition (very probably native to him) was the misguiding, the fatuous, the disastrous light. This covetousness was in him; it had been looking out for its own food; it had compa.ratively long time looked in vain. But now, in what the history of two thousand years, perha.ps ra.ther of four thousand years, has shown to be the most dangerous direction of all, the opportunity seemed to open itself within the ecclesiastical sphere. He sees a.nd snatches a.t the opportunity. Here is a manifest novelty--J esus ! His pretensions are great, and are far from lacking proba- bility. The mighty works he docs are supported by significant indications, though not so popular, by mighty words, and deeper still by the framework of cherished prophecies not unknown to Judas, and with which just now the very air, natural, political, religious, ie rife. The thought enters his mind to become a disciple-it is not aJ,together business, for his heart owns to a gentle upheaving of enthusiasm towards Jesus, He essays to become a disciple, puts himself in the way, keeps near and in the right company, and finds himself" called" in the sacred circle. Adventure, religiousness, and a practical good chance seemed all combined. 2. A man with an immense power of self-deception, No fonn of deception is more aggravated in its character and in its effects than self- deccption. The victi.IDizer is the same with the victim. The deadliest harm suffered from another may have, even in the supreme moment, some possible compensation for the sufferer, in high moral feeling, in the exercise of high moral grace, such as forgive- ness, or patience under unmerited, uncaused suffering, nay, in the bare thought that one is suffering th1·ough another. For now, at all events, the vicariousness of suffering, in a wide range of degree, has a charm of real glory. But to have the very faculty of self-deception is to have one of the worst of enemies while character grows, one of the most vengeful of enemies when the day of settlement comes. And Judas, whether in aiming to become a disciple or in only consenting to it, had little idea of the amount of his unfittedness for it. And so the months that flew on increased the unlittedness and the ignorance by equal strides. 3. A man of amazing power of veiliog his real self behind an impassive exterior, when he gradually cama to know that real self, and of keeping his own secret. (1) Was it not getting time for conscience to show itself in the cheek for Judas, when Jesus said," Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a. devil?" (2) Was ever more perilous stuff pent up in the breast, and yet not a sign of it on the countenance, nor even in a faltering tone of voice, when, that Last Supper evening, Judas found himself compelled to join the inquirers, and brought his lips al.so to say," Lord, is it I?" (3) Was it not the very incarnation of the own devil's deliberateness and of matchless coolness when Judas not only headed the cowed procession, armed with swords and staves, and lighted with lanterns and torches, into the garden, but that, when he "fell to the groand," he had nerve enough so soon to find his feet, and to go on with his work as though he had not fallen, and surpassed himself in then stepping forth to the very van of the troop, who had hitherto covered him in part--to say "Hail!" to the Master, no longer his, and to" kiss" him? The very highest moral efforts have been sometimes accomplished just so much the more effectively because they have been accompanied by a certain force of moral nervous exertion. On this occasion the very highest immoral effort bore witness to a destitu- tion of nervous sensibility hitherto incredible. Surely to the end of the world Judas will hold a.ll his own the first place for secretiveness and deliberateness and unper- turbedness, both in darkest design and in execution of it. His calm, balanced, impas- ~ive bearing serves him with every one, except with him "who knows the hearts of all men." 4. A man who, finding that he is playing a losing game, or thinking so, dares to attempt to retrieve what he counts his error, by heading a dark and desperate scheme, aod by providing himself (for this was the probable reason of his occasional ,. thefts," and ofhiR asking payment for the betrayal) with something in cnm~ensati~n ot VH, I, 1-26,] THE ACTS OF 'l'HE APOSTLES. 35