securing their prey. As the fate of his Master approached nearer to its bloody catastrophe, the anguish of Judas became more intense, and his crime showed itself in all its horrors. Perhaps he did not apprehend that the priests would have pushed their malignity to the extreme of death. At any rate, his own malice and cupidity were wholly terrified away, and he resolved to make one wild effort to save the victim. He rushed to the conclave, with the now hateful silver grasped convulsively in his hand, and reaching it out to his employers, he exclaimed, 'I have sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent blood.' Deluded man! Innocent or guilty it was the same to them, so long as they could destroy him. And they said, What is that to us? See thou to that!' Stung to the quick by this cold and insulting reply, and feeling himself cast away like a tool which has been broken in the using, and having now no refuge from the fiends that were pursuing him, existence became a burthen too heavy for him to bear; and he threw the pieces of silver on the pavement of the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.'

I know not how others may feel on perusing the history of this wretched man, but for my own part, I confess that my indignation is plentifully mingled with pity. How dark was the close of his short career! How terrible was the punishment of his guilt; death by his own hands! The price of blood lies scattered at the feet of the priests; the betrayer has come to his end, even before the betrayed; his apostleship is ended; no softened multitude will listen to the tidings

of salvation from his lips; no converts to a pure and purifying faith will bow to receive the waters of baptism from his hands; no countries will contend for the honor of his grave; no churches will call themselves by his name; no careful disciples compose his limbs ; no enthusiastic devotees gather up his bones; his dust is scattered to the winds; his name is only preserved by its eternal ignominy. He was a martyr-the first martyr-but it was to avarice. He has had his followers, too; but they have been only those, who, as wicked and as wretched as himself, have, from that day to this, and in the countless forms of selfishness, sold, for a few pieces of silver, their consciences, their Saviour, and their souls.

By an observable coincidence, it so happened that the money which Judas had received and returned, became desecrated by his touch. There was a Jewish law, which forbade that the price of blood should be put into the treasury. The priests, therefore, though they gathered up the pieces which the traitor had thrown down before them, were unable to appropriate them to the uses of the temple, and after consulting together, agreed to purchase with them a field in the vicinity of Jerusalem, called the Potter's Field, to bury strangers in. The piece of ground thus purchased, acquired the significant and fearful name of The Field of Blood.

When the tragedy of the crucifixion was over, and the eleven, comforted and reassured by the appearance of their risen Lord, had assembled together in Jerusalem, with the other disciples, to the number of

about an hundred and twenty, Peter proposed to the company that a disciple should be chosen by lot to take the ministry and apostleship, from which Judas, by transgression, fell.' In the address which he made on this occasion, he gives an account of the death of Judas, which differs somewhat from the relation of Matthew. Now this man,' he says, 'purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.' Several explanations have been given to reconcile this discrepancy, either of which is sufficiently probable to answer the purpose. The most common one is, that Judas hung himself, as Matthew relates, and afterwards, by some accident, fell from the place where he was suspended, and was mangled in the shocking manner described by Peter.

According to the apostle's recommendation, his brethren proceeded to fill the traitor's forfeited place; and the lot fell upon Matthias, who had long been a disciple of Jesus, and is conjectured to have been one of the seventy. Thus was the miserable Judas, the apostate, the suicide, rejected from the apostolic company, even after his death, and his name and his memory blotted out, as entirely as was possible, from the records of the faithful. With the passage of scripture which were applied on this occasion by Peter, we will conclude his mournful biography. For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein; and his bishopric let another take.'

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

THE lives and characters of the twelve apostles of Christ have now been separately considered; but there are some general reflections upon them, regarded collectively, which naturally suggested themselves during the course that we have been through, and which may not prove uninteresting or uninstructive to those who have accompanied me in the way.

We find, with respect to the circumstances of their external condition-their country, their fortunes, their education-that they were such as most readily presented themselves to the search of Jesus, and yet not such, by any means, as we should suppose would have been effective in the accomplishment of his designs.

In the first place, the apostles were all Galileans; natives or inhabitants of the district of Galilee. This country constituted the northern portion of Palestine, and its people, though hardy and brave, were not much respected by the Jews of Jerusalem, who regarded them as illiterate and unpolished, and unworthy of producing a prophet. The Pharisees, reproving Nic

odemus for the interest which he expressed in Jesus, said to him, tauntingly, 'Art thou also of Galilee ? Search, and look; for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.' The very speech of the Galileans was a provincial dialect, and betrayed their remoteness from the capital; as we have seen was the case with Peter in the palace of Caiaphas. In short they were looked down upon by the more cultivated, and, if I may use the epithet, Attic part of the nation, as a rude, unenlightened, Baotian branch of the common Jewish family. Jesus, though born in Bethlehem, was brought up in Nazareth, which was the most despised town in this most despised province; and therefore in selecting Galileans to be his apostles, he selected those who were nearest to him, and with whom he was most familiar. And yet what materials were they for constructing and building up a new religion, which was to be the wonder, the beauty, and the glory of the earth! How little adapted they seem to be for their lofty destination! They are the last men, these poor Galileans, the very last men, as we should suppose, to confound the learned, to resist the mighty, to convert the world. They do not seem to be made for such a work. There is no fitness in them to be instructers and reformers. Their very birthplace forbids it. The choice of them, therefore, to be the intimate disciples of Christ, and the founders of a new religious system, appears to me to be a mark of the divine mission of Christ, and the divine character and origin of Christianity. To my ear the language of it is this; The person, who, undertaking to introduce a peculiar