II. Consider the admirable meekness and charity of Christ upon this occasion. He neither upbraided Judas, nor did He refuse to receive his embrace. He even spoke in a kind and friendly manner to him: " Friend, whereunto art thou come?" By these means he endeavored to regain him. He styled him friend, in order to make him one; he asked him, " why he came thither," to induce him to enter into himself and change his bad resolution, after haying understood the enormity of the crime, which he would commit by betraying his best friend and benefactor, his Master, his Lord and his God. Observe the kind and gentle means which Christ made use of to reclaim even Judas, and learn an important lesson from the example.
III. Christ afterwards said to him, "Judas, dost thou betray the Son of man with a kiss?" (Luke xxii. 48.) What heart, however obdurate, would not these words soften? Yet he is not moved. We justly condemn Judas for his hardness of heart, without reflecting that we are often guilty of the same crime, because we resist the inspirations of God, the remorse of conscience, or its voice, silently asking us, Will you, then, yield to the temptation, will you sin, will you offend God? The crime of the false Apostle was greatly aggravated by the fact of his making a kiss of peace the instrument of his perfidy. Your crimes are aggravated in the same manner, when you render the gifts of God instrumental to guilt and to your own perdition. Let not the misfortune of Judas be a vain warning to you.
WEDNESDAY.
Christ casts His enemies on the Ground.
I. "Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that were to come upon Him," asked the soldiers that came with Judas,
