- less energy that once won him from the lips of his Master, when
first his searching eye fell on him, the name of the ROCK,—that name by which again he had been consecrated as the mighty foundation-ROCK of the church of God? Was this the chief of the apostles?—the keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven?—binding and loosing on earth what should be bound or loosed in heaven? Where were the brave, high hopes of earthly glory to be won under the warlike banners of his kingly Master? Where was that Master and Lord? The hands of the rude were now laid on him, in insult and abuse,—his glories broken and faded,—his power vain for his own rescue from sufferings vastly greater than those so often relieved by him in others,—his followers dispirited and scattered,—disowning and casting out as evil the name they had so long adored. The haughty lords of Judaism were now exulting in their cruel victory, re-established in their dignity, and strengthened in their tyranny by this long-wished triumph over their deadly foe. He wept for bright hopes dimmed,—for crushed ambition,—but more than all, for broken faith,—for trampled truth,—and for the three fold and perjured denial of his betrayed and forsaken Lord. Well might he weep—
"There's bliss in tears,
When he who sheds them inly feels
Some lingering stain of early years
Effaced by every drop that steals.
The fruitless showers of worldly woe
Fall dark to earth and never rise;
But tears that from repentance flow,
In bright exhalement reach the skies."
The soldiers, &c.—It has been supposed by some that this armed force was a part
of the Roman garrison which was always kept in Castle Antonia, close by the temple;
(see note on page 95;) but there is nothing in the expressions of either of the
evangelists which should lead us to think so; on the contrary, their statement
most distinctly specifies, that those concerned in the arrest were from a totally different
quarter. Matthew (xxvi. 47) describes them as "a great throng, with swords
and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people." The whole expression
implies a sort of half-mob of low fellows, servants and followers of the members of
the Sanhedrim, accompanying the ordinary temple-guard, which was a mere band
of Levite peace-officers under the priests, whose business it was to keep order in the
courts of the temple—a duty hardly more honorable than that of a sweeper or "doorkeeper
in the house of the Lord," from which office, indeed, it was probably not distinct.
These watchmen and porters, for they were no better, were allowed by the
Roman government of the city and kingdom, a kind of contemptuous favor in bearing
swords to defend from profane intrusion their holy shrine, which Gentile soldiers
could not approach as guards, without violating the sanctity of the place. Such a
body as these men and their chance associates, are therefore well and properly described
by Matthew, as a "throng with swords and clubs;" but what intelligent man
would ever have thought of characterizing in this way, a regular detachment of the
stately and well-armed legion which maintained the dignity and power of the Roman
governor of Judea? Mark (xiv. 43) uses precisely the same expression as
Matthew, to describe them: Luke (xxii. 52) represents Jesus as speaking to "the
chief priests and captains of the temple and the elders, who had come against him,
saying, 'Have you come out as against a thief, with swords and clubs?'" John
