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 (xviii. 3) speaks of the band as made up in part of the servants of “the chief priests and Pharisees,” &c. So that the whole matter, unquestionably, was managed and executed entirely by the Jews; and the progress of