But Jesus answered the words of Judas as He answered the silence of Simon. He did not affront those who had affronted Him, but he defended the woman at His feet. And Jesus said, “Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always. She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.” The inexpressible sadness of this prophecy escaped perhaps those who sat about Him. They could not be persuaded that Jesus, in order to overcome, should be overcome: that in order to triumph eternally He must die. But Jesus felt the day drawing near, “But me ye have not always, she is come to anoint my body to the burying.” The woman listened in terror to this confirmation of her presentiment and another burst of tears rained down from her eyes. Then with her face hidden in her loosened hair, she went away as silently as she had come. The disciples were silent, not convinced, but abashed. To hide his chagrin Simon filled the guest’s cup with better wine, but in the yellow light of the lamps the silent table seemed a banquet of ghosts among whom had passed the shadow of death. “WHO AM I?” And yet the disciples knew. Those words of death were not the first they had heard from Jesus’ lips. They should have remembered that day, not long before, when on a solitary road near Cæsarea, Jesus had asked what people said of Him. They should have remembered the answer which flashed out like sudden flame, the impetuous outcry of belief from Peter’s heart; and the splendor which had shone on three of them on the summit of the mountain; and the exact prophecies of Christ as to the manner of His death. They had heard and they had seen, and still they hoped on,—all but one. The truth shone out in them at moments like lightning-flashes in the dark. Then the night fell blacker than ever. The new man in their hearts who recognized Jesus as the Christ, the man born for the second time, the Christian, disappeared to give way to the Jew, deaf and blind, who saw nothing beyond the Jerusalem of bricks and stone.