and believe, that he equally enabled Judas as any other man born in the world, to work out his salvation: but that, by his prescience, he foresaw that he would not be obedient to his laws. Upon no account, therefore, are we to conclude, that, because Judas betrayed his Master, he had less free will than any other individual of the human race. Neither are we to view the

appointment of Judas to the apostleship as incompatible with that pre-eminent wisdom which characterised all the actions of our blessed Lord. Since, long before any intention was manifested by Judas to betray him, Jesus fully exposed his real character to the rest of his disciples, in these words: "Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" John vi. 70. That is, one whose mind is actuated by the most base and inordinate passions.

It has been also absurdly urged by the adversaries of our holy faith, that Judas was induced to betray his Master, in consequence of having discovered that he was an impostor. Or else, say they, the consideration of his power and knowledge, as the Son of God, would have terrified him from doing it. But this frivolous objection is at once refuted, by the contrition which he afterwards expressed to the chief priests and elders. "I have sinned," was his confession to them, "in be

traying innocent blood." The true motive which instigated Judas to that act of perfidy, we take to be the following:-The Jewish nation, it is well known, expected to see, in the person of their promised deliverer, a powerful king, who should liberate them from the galling yoke of the Romans; and this opinion was not confined to the rulers of the Jews, but was as readily embraced by the disciples of our Lord. So rooted was this belief among them, that we even see, not all the repeated avowals of Jesus to the contrary, could erase it from their minds. To the impatience of Judas to participate in the temporal honors and emoluments of his Master's kingdom, we must solely ascribe his subsequent perfidious conduct. So far, indeed, does he seem to have been carried away by the popular prepossessions respecting the character and office of the Messiah, that he did not doubt, upon his delivering Jesus into the hands of the Sanhedrim, that he would immediately assume the ensigns of temporal dominion, and reward his adherents with an abundance of riches; the expectation of which had first led Judas to become a disciple, for he was of a disposition so covetous, we find, as to steal money out of the common bag. The disappointment, then, of obtaining an object, which lay so near his heart, together with

the remorse which he really felt at bringing his Master to an ignominious death, concurred, we may also suppose, in urging him to put an end to his own existence.

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani! that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"-Matthew xxvii. 46.

VARIOUS Solutions have been given oft his tragic exclamation. We shall select those which appear to us most entitled to notice, and leave our readers to draw their own conclusions. It has pleased the enemies of Christianity to insinuate, that the divine founder of it, by the despondency which he shewed in the garden of Gethsemane, on the approach of his trial and death, and the words which he uttered upon the cross, evinced a want of manly fortitude, little calculated to sup. port the truth of those doctrines, which he preached. In reply to these invidious remarks, many learned men contend, that it was not the fear of crucifixion, which so far overcame Jesus, as to throw him into an agony and bloody sweat, but his distress in the garden pro ceeded from the lively sense which he, at that time, had of the miseries of mankind, produced by sin; and that when he cried out, " My God, My God, why

hast thou forsaken me!*" his anguish arose from the inconceivable pains which were inflicted on him by the hand of God, on his making his soul an offering for sin. Others, also, labour to prove, that the perplexity is occasioned by our indistinct notion of the hypostatic union, or else we should have perceived that the divine was, at that moment, so much lost or absorbed in his human nature, as to make him feel a withdrawing of those comforts, which hitherto had always filled his soul, although it is extremely difficult for us to imagine in what that agony consisted.

But, perhaps, the evangelists themselves will afford us a more clear conception of this subject, for in many instances we shall find that they are our best commentators. From them we learn, that the salvation of mankind was the momentous end for which Jesus came into the world; or, according to the scriptural phrase, "to give his life as a ransom for many." Upon this account, therefore, his sorrows, observes a writer of equal piety and judgment, person in this life ever felt.

were such as no other

They arose from causes

* These words, says the learned Bishop Pearce, in his commentary on the Evangelists, p. 199, most probably were not uttered by way of complaint, but by way of pointing out the xxii. Psalm, which begins, with these words, as prophetical of Jesus the speaker.

altogether singular, and from circumstances peculiar to himself. Being of this sort, they were no greater than the cause merited, and the expressions by which he uttered them, are no argument of his pusillanimity or weakness. They were suitable to his feelings, and expressed them as far as it was possible to make them known for it was agreeable to the counsels of God, and for the benefit of men, that the sorrows which the Son of God felt in that hour, should be laid open to the view of the world*."

"And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig-tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, calling to remembrance, said, Master, behold the fig-tree which thou. cursedst is withered away."-Mark xi. 20, 21.

THE Cursing of the fig-tree, like the destruction of the herd of swine, has been represented, by the opponents of revealed religion, as conveying no moral lesson, and in every respect as unbecoming the character of the divine teacher of mankind. In the first place, we must observe, to curse the land or trees signifies in the Hebrew language, simply to make or pronounce them unfruitful, as may be satisfactorily shewn in the following * See the Truth of the Gospel History, by Macknight, Book I. chap. iv.