band that was thirsting for the blood of the hated Nazarene, and when they came into his presence betrayed him with a hypocritical kiss.

The Gospel of John, written long after those of the other evangelists, had for a definite purpose the emphasizing of the deity of Christ. Sometimes his narratives leave out incidents that make prominent his human characteristics, as when, in the present instance, the agony of Gethsemane is omitted, and the attributes of foreknowledge and omnipotence are clearly ascribed to him.

Many things, both in the teachings and work of Jesus, are wholly inexplicable, unless we recognize his assumption of the attributes and functions of Deity. Admit that he possessed and employed these, and much of the mystery of his life and work is solved. We have the key of his gospel, the explanation of its after-triumphs in the centu ries, the secret of its irresistible power over men's hearts, and its ineffaceable impress upon human character and institutions.

Two attributes of Deity are clearly manifest in this dark hour, as though he would have all forever clearly understand that the triumph of his enemies was by permission of lis sovereign will, and his death a free voluntary offering for the sins of men. The testimony of the other evangelists strongly supplements this position; for one of them tells us of the miraculous healing of the high priest's servant's car, that had been cut off by one of his followers; while another chronicles the saying of Jesus that if he wished he might call to his aid legions of the angels; but perhaps the most remarkable exhibition of superhuman power connected with this night of the betrayal is the one given in our lesson, "When therefore he said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground." Is it not worthy of notice, in connection with this sublime incident, that the answer in the Greek is not as in our translation

of the New Testament, "I am he," but rather the old Hebrew form of the name of God, I AM? The answer, an assertion of Deity-the result an involuntary prostration before the manifested God.

Under the shadow of the palms, in that historic garden, the light from flaming torches playing fitfully between their fronded branches, there was for the moment as real a manifestation of Deity as when the same I AM lighted with visible presence the flaming bush, that burned with unearthly brightness, and yet was not consumed. Before yielding up his body to the sufferings of the cross, and his soul to the inconceivable tortures of a world's sin, he gives one last demonstration that he took willingly upon himself sin's awful penalty that he might save the race from its guilt and power. One might suppose that such a manifestation of superhuman power might have deterred his relentless enemies from the further prosecution of their cruel purpose; but it must be remembered that these recreant Jews had sinned against such light and knowledge, nianifested by him and through him for months, that they had already set aside and trampled upon so many evidences of his divine power and beneficent purposes that they were no longer moved by influences to which human nature would be ordinarily amenable. Constant, persistent and deliberate sinning against light and knowledge had wrought in them its inevitable results. Their hearts had become so hardened that nothing could move them, their wills had crystallized, set in the infernal purpose of compassing the death of this godlike man, and nothing would turn them from it. Such are the awful possibilities of deliberate and persistent sin against the clear-shining light of God's grace. Hearts become hard as the nether millstone. They are insensible to all the gracious influences of the divine love, even to the monitions and impulses of the divine Spirit. Such ones, to employ the words of the great Teacher, "are

condemned already." They have sinned away the day of grace, not because God's divine compassion changes, but because sin has so affected their moral nature that there is nothing left in it to respond to divine influences. seems to be a law of our spiritual nature that it becomes benumbed, hardened, by turning away from the light of God and rejecting his gracious offerings of mercy. If this process is deliberately continued, the soul may become wholly insensible to gospel influences, the Holy Spirit may cease to strive with such ones, and they are given over to a "reprobate mind" (Rom. 1:28). They are in this awful condition of impenitency, not by an arbitrary decree, but by a law of God written in their own natures, whereby the gospel becomes "a savour from death unto death" to those who reject it, and "from life unto life" to those who receive it (2 Cor. 2:16).

After this final display of divine power, Jesus suffers himself to be led away to the farcical examinations before the high priests, Herod and Pilate, that preceded his predetermined crucifixion.

His mission of teaching, of healing and of guiding was accomplished; the hour of sacrifice, so often foretold by him, had come, and he was ready to meet it. It is a sad commentary upon our human nature that in these last and darkest hours of his life he should have been betrayed by one of his own familiar friends and chosen disciples. But the sad fact has too many parallels in human history to discredit it or make it even exceptional. His great prototype, David, had a somewhat similar experience in the base defection in the crisis of his life of Ahithophel. The poet king wails out his bitter plaint in one of his Psalms, which might fittingly be called the Dirge of Human Friendship. It was an unconscious prophecy of what should be reproduced in the world's tragedy of "Great David's Greater Son."

How striking the parallel between Ahithophel and Judas, in many points, but especially in their deaths! Each at last miserably perished, meeting a self-inflicted death, the fitting close of a wretched tragedy. Victims of unavailing remorse, they vainly hoped to drown the tortures of memory and conscience by a plunge into the vortex of death. Easy, indeed, to kill the body, but what power shall quench the undying life of the soul? We may not follow the archtraitor into the dread unknown, or picture by word or limner's skilful touch the soul-agonies of eternal remorse, which in itself is a hell, wider, deeper and darker than ever the immortal genius of Dante painted.

Elijah Horr.

CHRIST BEFORE THE HIGH PRIEST

JOHN 18: 15-27

“And Simon Peter followed Jesus,” etc.

In the interval which divides Pilate's hall from Gethsemane, in John's narrative, we have the scene of the Messiah before the high priest. Between the garden and the palace we behold Jesus coming unto his own and his own receiving him not. In human loneliness amid the olive trees Jesus was with his Father in prayer. In the Roman procurator's palace he was before the alien and the stranger. Midway between these experiences he came to his ownpeople, priest, disciples and fellow countrymen, only to be rejected. The early word of the prophet was fulfilled. The later writing of the fourth evangelist stated a fact. "He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not."

I. Jesus came as a prophet.

The true prophetic messenger of God, whose function and calling were so grandly illustrated in Elijah, who wrote nothing; in Hosea, whose sermons are heart-throbs; in Isaiah, whose written eloquence is still a quenchless fire, was not, according to heathen and false modern notions, a mere foreteller. The prophets were preachers of righteousness. They were teachers of eternal truths. Some, like Elisha, were gentle ministrants, who went about doing good. Their supreme purpose was to utter forth and to express the divine message and purpose, to reveal the love and justice of God, to proclaim his tender invitations and