The last day of Our Lord's passion

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Preface

This volume contains a narrative of all the incidents in the last day of our Lord's suffering life ; following him from the anest in the garden to the burial in Joseph's sepulchre. It is made up of lectures written in the course of ordinary preparation for the pulpit. By means of the best critical helps, the writer was, in the first instance, at pains to read aright and harmonize the accounts given by the different Evangelists. Out of them he has endeavored to construct a continuous and expanded narrative, intended to bring out, as vividly as possible, not only the sequence of the incidents, but the characters, motives, and feelings of the different actors and spectators in the events described. He has refrained from all critical or doctrinal discussions as alien from the object he had in

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view ; nor has he thought it necessary to burden the following pages with references to all the authorities consulted. The English reader will find in the writings of Alford, Stier, or Ellicott, the warrant for most of those readings of the original and inspired records upon which the following narrative is based.

Edinburgh, May 3, 1862.

Contents

PAGB

The Betrayal and the Betrayer, 9

The Denials, Repentance, and Restoration of S-t.

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“ The night on which he was betrayed” — that long, sleepless, checkered, troubled night — the last night -of our Lord’s suffering life — that one and only night in which we can follow him throughout, and trace his footsteps from hour to hour, — through what strange vicissitudes of scene and incident, of thought and feeling, did our Saviour on that night pass ! The meeting in the upper chamber, the washing of the disciples’ feet, the keeping of the Hebrew passover ; the cloud that gathered round his brow, the sad warnings to Peter, and the terrible ones to Judas ; the institution of his own Supper,

* Matthew xxvi. 47-56; Mark xiv 43-50; Luke xxii. 47-53; John xviii. 2-11.

1* i the tender consolatory discourse, the sublime intercessory prayer; the Garden; its brief and broken prayers, its deep and awful agony ; the approach of the High Priest’s band, the arrest, the desertion by all, the denials by one ; the private examination before Annas, the public arraignment before the Sanhedrim; the silence as to all minor charges, the great confession, the final and formal condemnation to death ; — all these between the time that the sun of that Thursday evening set, and the sun of Friday morning rose upon Jerusalem. We are all, perhaps, more familiar with the incidents of the first half of that night, than with those of the second. Of its manifold sorrows, the agony in the Garden formed the fitting climax. Both outwardly and inwardly, it was to the great Sufferer its hour of darkest, deepest midnight. Let us join him now as he rises from his last struggle in Gethsemane, and follow till we see him laid in Joseph’s sepulchre.

The sore amazement is past. Some voice

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has said to the troubled waters of his spirit, Peace, be still ! Instead of the stir and tumult of the soul, there is a calm and dignified composure, which never once forsakes him, till the same strange internal agony once more comes upon him on the cross. “ Rise,” says Jesus, as for the third and last time he bends over the slumbering disciples in the Garden, “ Rise, let us be going. Lo, he that betrayeth is at hand !” Wakeful as he has been whilst the others were sleeping, has he heard the noise of approaching footsteps ? has he seen the shadows of advancing forms, the flickering light of torch and lantern glimmering through the olive leaves? It was not necessary that eye or ear^ should give him notice of the approach. He knew all that the betrayer meditated when, a few hours before, he had said to him, “ That thou doest, do quickly.” He had seen and known, as though he had been present, the immediate resort of Judas to those with whom he had so recently made his unhallowed bargain, telling them that the hour had come for car-

Tying the projected arrangement into execution, and that he was quite sure that Jesus, as his custom all that week had been, would g.o out to Gethsemane so soon as the meeting in the upper chamber had broken up, and that there they could easily and surely, with- , out any fear of popular disturbance, lay hold of him. The proposal was hailed and adopted with eager haste, for there was no time to be lost, — they had but a single day for action left. The band for seizing him was instantly assembled — ■“ a great multitude,” quite needlessly numerous, even though resistance had been contemplated by the eleven; a band curiously composed, — some Roman soldiers in it from the garrison of Fort Antonia, excited on being summoned to take part in a midnight enterprise of some difficulty and danger; the. captain of the Temple guard, accompanied by some subordinates, private servants of Annas and Caiaphas, the High Priests, with some members even of the Sanhedrim among them ;* a band curiously ao

$ See Luke xxii. 52.

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coutred, — with staves as well as swords, with lanterns and torches, that, clear though the , night was — the moon being at the full,* they might hunt their victim out through all the shady retreats of the olive gardens, and prevent the possibility of escape. Stealthily they cross the Kedron, with Judas at their head, and come to the very place where all this while Jesus has been enduring his great agony. Yes ; this is the place where Judas tells them they will be so sure to find him. Now, then, is the time for the lanterns and the torches. They are saved the search. Stepping out suddenly into the clear moonlight, Jesus himself stands before them, and calmly says, “ Whom seek ye ?” There are many in that band who know him well enough, but there is not one of them who has courage to answer — “ Thee.” A creeping awe is already on their spirits. They leave it to others, to those who know him but by name, to say, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus

* We know it was so from the day of the month on which the Passover was celebrated.

says to them, I am he ; and as soon as he has said it, they go backward, and fall every one to the ground. Has some strange sight met their eye, has Jesus been momentarily transfigured as on the Mount, have some stray beams from the concealed glory burst forth upon them, or is it some inward terror shot by a hand invisible through their hearts ? Whatever the spell be that has stripped them of all strength, and driven them backwards to the ground, it lasts but for a brief season. He who suddenly laid it on as quickly lifts it off. But for that short time, what a picture does the scene present ! Jesus standing in the quiet moonlight, calmly waiting till the postrate men shall rise again ; or turning, perhaps, a pensive look upon his disciples cowering under the shade of the olive-trees, and gazing with wonder at the sight of that whole band lying flat upon the ground. For a moment or two, how still it is ! you could have heard the falling of an olive-leaf. But now the spell is over, and they rise. The Boman soldier starts to his

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feet again, as more than half ashamed, not knowing what should have so frightened him. The Jewish officer gathers up his scattered strength, wondering that it had not gone for ever. Again the quiet question comes from the lips of Jesus, Whom seek ye? They say to him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answers, “ I have told you that I am he. If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way : that the saying might he fulfilled which he spake, Of them which thou hast given me I have lost none.”

Perfectly spontaneous, then, on the part of our Divine Redeemer, was the delivering of himself up into the hands of his enemies. He who by a word and look sent that rough hireling band reeling backwards to the ground, how easily could he have kept it there ; or how easily, though they had been standing all around him, could he have passed out through the midst of them, every eye so blinded that it could not see him, every arm so paralyzed that it could not touch him? Judas knew how in such a manner he had previously escaped. He .must have had a strong impression that it would not he so easy a thing to accomplish the arrest, when he told the men, “ Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he ; take him, and hold him fast.” Take him ; hold him ! it will only he if he please to he taken and to he held that they will have any power to do it. This perfect freedom from all outward compulsion, this entirely voluntary surrender of himself to suffering and death, enter as necessary elements into the great Atonement. And is not its essential element — its being made for others — shadowed forth in this outward incident of the Redeemer’s life ? “ Take me,” he said,

“ hut let these go their way.” It was to throw a protecting shield over this little flock, that he put forth his great power over that mixed multitude before him, and made them feel how wholly they were within his grasp. It was to acquire for the time such a mastery over them that they should consent to let his disciples go. It was no part of th§ir purpose beforehand to have done so. They proved

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this, when, the temporary impression over, they seized the young man by the way, whom curiosity had drawn out of the city, whom they took to be one of his disciples, and who with difficulty escaped out of their hands.

“ Take me, hut let these go their way.” John saw, in the freedom and safety of the disciples thus secured, a fulfilment of the Lord’s own saying in the prayer of the Supper-chamber, “ Them that thou gayest me I have kept, and none of them is lost.” We can not imagine that the beloved disciple saw nothing beyond protection from common earthly danger in the expression which he quotes ; hut that he saw, in the very manner in which that kind of protection had been extended, a type or emblem of the higher and spiritual deliverance that Christ has accomplished for his people by his deliverance unto death. Freedom for us, by his suffering himself to be bound ; safety for us, by the sacrifice of himself ; life for us, by the death which he endured : have we not much of the very soul and spirit of the atonement in those few words, “ Take me, but let these go their way ?” It is the spiritual David, the great good Shepherd, saying, “ Let thine hand be laid upon me ; but as for these sheep, not, 0 Lord my God, on them.”

Judas stood with those to whom Jesus said, Whom seek ye ? Along with them he reeled back and fell to the ground. Along with them he speedily regained his standing posture, and was a listener as the Lord said, I have told you that I am he ; inviting them to do with him as they wished. There is a pause, a hesitation ; for who will be the first to lay hand upon him ? Judas will relieve them of any lingering fear. He will show them how safe it is to approach this Jesus. Though the stepping forth of Christ, and the questions and answers which followed, have done away with all need of the preconcerted signal, he will yet go through all that he had engaged to do ; or, perhaps, it is almost a mechanical impulse upon which he acts, for he had fixed on the thing that he was to do toward accomplishing the arrest ; he had

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conned his part well beforehand, and braced himself up to go through with it. Hence, when the time for action comes, he stops not to reflect, but lets the momentum of his predetermined purpose carry him along. He salutes Jesus with a kiss. If ever a righteous indignation might legitimately be felt, surely it was here. And if that burning sense of wrong had gone no further in its expression than simply the refusal of such a salutation, would not Christ have acted with unimpeachable propriety ? But it is far above this level that Jesus will now rise. He will give an example of gentleness, of forbearance, of longsuffering kindness without a parallel. Jesus accepts the betrayer’s salutation. He does more. He says a word or two to this deluded man ; — “ Friend, wherefore art thou come ?” Is it possible that thou canst imagine, after all that passed between us at the supper-table, that I am ignorant of thy purpose in this visit ? I know that purpose well ; thou knowest that I do ; if not, I will make a last attempt to make thee know and feel it now. Thought of, cared for, warned in so many ways, art thou really come to betray such a Master as I have ever been to thee ? But though thou hast made up thy mind to such a deed, how is it that thou choosest such a cloak as this beneath which to conceal thy purpose ? The deed is bad enough itself without crowning it with the lie of the hypocrite,— “ Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss ?”— *the last complaint of wounded love, the last of the many and most touching appeals made to the conscience and heart of the betrayer ; rebuke and remonstrance in the words, but surely their tone is one more of pity than of anger ; surely the wish of the speaker was to arrest the traitor, if it were not yet too late. Had Judas yielded even at that last moment ; with a broken and a contrite heart had he thrown himself at his Master’s feet, to bathe with tears the feet of him whose cheek he had just polluted with his unhallowed kiss ; looking up through those tears of penitence, had he sought mercy of the Lord, how freely would

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that mercy have been extended to him ! who can doubt that he would have been at once forgiven ? But he did not, he would not yield ; and so on he went, till there was nothing left to him hut the horror of that remorse which dug for him the grave of the suicide.

We often wonder, as we read his story, how it was ever possible, that, in the face of so many, such explicit, solemn, affectionate appeals, this man should have so obstinately pursued his course. We should wonder, perhaps, the less, if we only reflected what a blinding, hardening power any one fixed idea, any one settled purpose, any one dominant passion, in the full flush and fervor of its ascendency, exerts upon the human spirit ; how it blinds to consequences that are then staring us in the very face ; how it deadens to remonstrances to which, in other circumstances, we should at once have yielded ; how it carries us over obstacles that at other times would at once have stopped us ; nay, more, and what perhaps is the most striking feature of the whole, how the very interferences, for which otherwise we should have been grateful, are resented ; how the very appeals intended and fitted to arrest, become as so many goads driving us Dn the more determinedly upon our path. So it was with Judas. And let us not think that we have in him a monstrous specimen of almost superhuman wickedness. We should be nearer the truth, I suspect, if we took him as an average specimen of what the passion of avarice, or any like passion, when once it has got the mastery, may lead any man to be and do. For we have no reason to believe of Judas, that from the first he was an utter reprobate. Our Lord we scarcely can believe would have admitted such a man to the number of the twelve. Can it be believed of him that when he first joined himself to Jesus, it was to make gain of that connexion ? There was but little prospect of worldly gain in following the Nazarene. Nor can we fairly attribute that obstinacy which J udas showed in the last great crisis of his life, to utter deadness of

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conscience, utter hardness of heart. The man who no sooner heard the death-sentence given against his Master, than — without even waiting to see if it would be executed — he rushed before the men by whom that sentence had been pronounced — the very men with whom he had made his unholy covenant, from whom he had got but an hour or two before the price of blood — exclaiming in the bitterness of his heart, “ I have sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent blood — the man who took those thirty pieces of silver, which his itching palm had so longed to clutch, but which now were burning like scorching lead the hand that grasped them, and flung them ringing on the temple floor, and hurried to a lonely field without the city walls and hanged himself, dying in all likelihood before his Master — let us not think of him that he was utterly heartless — that he had a conscience seared as with a hot iron.

What, then, is the true explanation of his character and career ? Let us assume that, when he first united himself to Christ, it was not of deliberate design to turn that connexion into a source of profit. He found, however, as time run on, that to some small extent it could be so employed. The little company that he had joined had chosen him to be their treasurer, to hold and to dispense the slender funds which they possessed. Those who are fond of money, as he was, are generally careful in the keeping, thrifty in their use of it. Judas had those faculties in perfection, and they won for him that office of trust, to him so terribly dangerous. The temptation was greater than he could resist. He became a pilferer from that small bag. Little as it had to feed upon, his passion grew. It grew, for he had no higher principle, no better feeling, to subdue it. It grew, till he began to picture to himself what untold wealth was in store for him when his Master should throw off that reserve and disguise which he had so long and so studiously preserved, and take to himself his power, and set up his kingdom — a kingdom which he, in common with all the apostles, believed was

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to be a visible and temporal one. It grew, till delay became intolerable. At the supper in Bethany, it vexed him to see that box of ointment of spikenard which might have been sold for three hundred pence, wasted on what seemed to him an idle piece of premature and romantic homage. It vexed him still more to hear his Master rebuke the irritation he had displayed, and speak now once again, as he had been doing so often lately, of his death and burial, as if the splendid vision of his kingdom were never to be realized. Could nothing be done to force his Master on to exercise his kingly power ? These Scribes and Pharisees, who hated him so bitterly, desired nothing so much as to get him into their hands. If once they did so, would he not, in self-defence, be obliged to put forth that power which Judas knew that he possessed ? And were he to do so, things could not remain any longer as they were. The Passover — this great gathering of the people — would soon go past, and he, Judas, and the

rest, have to resume their weary journeyings 2 on foot throughout Judea. Thus and then it was, that, in all likelihood, the thought flashed into the mind of the betrayer to go and ask the chief priests what they would give him if he delivered Jesus into their hands. They offered him thirty pieces of silver, a very paltry bribe — the price in the old Hebrew code of a slave that was gored by an ox — less than £5 of our money ; — a bribe insufficient of itself to have tempted even a grossly avaricious man, in the position in which Judas was, to betray his Master, knowing or believing that it was unto death. Why, in a year or two Judas might have realized as much as that by petty pilferings from the apostolical bag. But this scheme of his would bring his Master to the test. It would expedite what, to his covetous, ambitious heart, had seemed to be that slow and meaningless course to a throne and kingdom which his Master had been pursuing. Not suspecting what the immediate and actual issue was to be, he made his unholy compact with the High Priests. He

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made it on the Wednesday of the Passion week. Next evening he sat with Jesns in the supper-chamber. He found himself detected ; more than one terrible warning was sounded in his ears. Strange, you may think, that instead of stopping him in his course, these warnings suggested, perhaps for the first time, the thought that what he had engaged to do might be done that very night. The words, “What thou doest do quickly,” themselves gave eagerness and firmness to his purpose ; for, after all, though Jesus seemed for the time so much displeased, — let this scheme hut prosper, — let the kingdom be set up, and would he not be sure to forgive the offence that had hastened so happy a result ?

Have we any grounds for interpreting in this way the betrayal ? Are we right in attributing such motives to Judas? If not, then how are we to explain his surprise when he saw his Master, though still possessing all his wonderful power, as he showed by the healing of the servant’s ear, allow himself to be bound and led away like a felon ? How are we to explain the consternation of Judas when he learned that though Jesus publicly, before the Sanhedrim, claimed to be' the Christ, the Son of God, the King of Israel, yet, instead of there being any acquiescence in that claim, a universal horror was expressed, and on the very ground of his making it, he was doomed to the death of a blasphemer ? Then it was, when all turned out so differently from what he had anticipated, that the idea of his having been the instrument of his Master’s death entered like iron into the soul of Judas. Then it was, that, overwhelmed with nameless, countless disappointments, vexations, self-reproaches, his very living to see his Master die became intolerable to him, and in his despair he flung his ill-used life away.

Accept such solution, and the story of the betrayal of our Lord becomes natural and consistent ; reject it, and have you not difficulties in your way not to be got over by any amount of villany that you may attribute to the trai-

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tor ? But does not this solution take down the crime of Judas from that pinnacle of almost superhuman and unapproachable guilt on which many seem inclined to place it ? It does ; but it renders it all the more available as a beacon of warning to us all. For if we are right in the idea we have formed of the character and conduct of Judas, there have been many since his time, there may be many still, in the same way, and from the operation of the same motives, betrayers of Christ. For everywhere he is a Judas, with whom his worldly interests, his worldly ambition, prevail over his attachment to Christ and to Christ’s cause ; who joins the Christian society, it may not be to make gain thereby, — but who, when the occasion presents itself, scruples not to make what gain he can of that connexion ; who, beneath the garb of the Christian calling, pursues a dishonest traffic ; who, when the gain and the godliness come into collision, sacrifices the godliness for the gain. How many such Judases the world has seen, how much of that Judas spirit there may be in our own hearts, I leave it to your knowledge of yourselves and your knowledge of the world to determine.

Let us now resume our narrative of the arrest. Whatever lingering reluctance to touch Christ had been felt, that kiss of Judas removed. They laid their hands upon him instantly thereafter, grasping him as if he were a vulgar villain of the highway, and binding him after the merciless fashion of the Romans. This is what one, at least, of his followers can not bear. Peter springs forth from the darkness, draws his sword, and aims at the head of the first person he sees ; who, however, bends to the side, and his ear only is lopped off. To Christ an unwelcome act of friendship. It ruffles his composure, it impairs the dignity of his patience. For the first and only time a human creature suffers that he may be protected. The injury thus done he must instantly repair. They have his hand within their hold, when, gently saying to them, “ Suffer ye thus far,” he releases it from their grasp, and, stretching it out

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touches the bleeding ear, and heals it : — the only act of healing wrought on one who neither asked it of him, nor had any faith in his healing virtue ; but an act which showed how full of almighty power that hand was which yet gave itself up to ignominious bonds. Then said Jesus to Peter, “ Put up again thy sword into his place : for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I can not now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels ? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be ? The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it ?” He was drinking then, even at that time, of the same cup in regard to which he had been praying in the Garden. Not only his agonies in Gethsemane and on the Cross, but all his griefs, internal and external, were ingredients in that cup which, for us and for our salvation, he took, and drank to the very dregs — a cup put by his Father’s hand into his, and by him voluntarily taken, that the will of his Father might be done, and that the Scriptures might he fulfilled. All this about the cup, and his Father, and the Scriptures, spoken for the instruction and reproof of Peter, must have sounded not a little strange to those Chief Priests and scribes and elders who have come out to be present, at least, if not to take part in the apprehension, and who are now standing by his side. But for them, too, there must be a word, to show them that he is after all a very brother of our race, who feels as any other innocent man would feel if bound thus, and led away as a malefactor. “ And Jesus said unto the chief priests, and captains of the temple, and the elders, which were come to him, Be ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and staves ? When I was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hands against me : but this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” A short hour of fancied triumph theirs ; the powers of darkness permitted for a short season to prevail : but beyond that hour, light, and a full, glorious, eternal triumph his.

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“Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.” That utter desertion had been one of the incidents of this night of sorrows upon which his foreseeing eye had already fixed. “ The hour cometh,” he had said to them in the upper chamber, “ yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone : and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” It was only during that hurried march from the Garden to the judgment-hall that Jesus was left literally and absolutely alone : not one friendly eye upon him ; not one friendly arm within his reach. But this temporary solitude, was it not the type of the inner, deeper solitude, in wdiich his whole earthly work was carried on ? — not the solitude of the hermit or the monk, — he lived ever with and among his fellow-men ; not the solitude of pride, sullenly refusing all sympathy and aid ; not the solitude of selfishness, creating around its icy centre a cold, bleak, barren wilderness; not the solitude of sickly sentimentality, forever crying out that it can find no one to un- 2* derstand or appreciate. No ; but the solitude of a pure, holy, heavenly spirit, into all whose deeper thoughts there was not a single human being near him or around him who could enter ; with all whose deeper feelings there was not one who could sympathize ; whose truest, deepest motives, ends, and objects, in living and dying as he did, not one could comprehend. Spiritually, and all throughout, the loneliest man that ever lived was J esus Christ. But there were hours when that solitude deepened upon his soul. So was it in the Garden, when, but a stone-cast from the nearest to him upon earth, even that broken, imperfect sympathy which their looking on him and watching with him in his great sorrow might have supplied, was denied to him, and an angel had to be sent from heaven to cheer the forsaken one of earth. So was it upon the cross, in that dread moment, when he could no longer even say, u I am not alone, for my Father is with me when there burst from his dying lips that cry — a cry from the darkest, deepest, dreariest loneliness into