[Illustration: THEN THE HIGH PRIEST TORE HIS CLOTHES.] And for this they all condemned Him to be guilty of death. XIX. The King of the Jews When the chief priests of the Jews had determined to kill the Lord Jesus, after examining Him for many hours on the dreadful night when all His disciples had forsaken Him and Peter had denied Him, they consulted together as to how they could carry out their wicked plan. The morning dawned before they had decided what to do; and at length, as they did not like to put Him to death themselves, they thought the best way would be to take Him to Pilate the Roman governor, for they thought that he would do what they wished. The Jews and the High Priest had asked Jesus whether He was really the Christ, the Son of God; and the Lord Jesus, to leave them without excuse, told them plainly that He was, and that hereafter they would see Him sitting in heaven, and coming back to earth in the clouds. At this they had been fearfully angry, and had torn their clothes, and had bound Him and led Him away to Pilate, in the hopes that Pilate would at once order Him to be put to death. * * * * * * * Now we are told in Matthew's Gospel that Judas, who had betrayed his Master with a kiss, saw Jesus led away to Pilate. He knew by this that the chief priests had condemned Him to death, and, too late, Judas repented of the wicked thing he had done. Jesus had told the disciples when they sat down to the Passover supper, that one of them should betray Him, and Judas had asked, among the rest, "Lord, is it I?" And Jesus had told him, that though He must die to save the world, yet it was woe to the man who should betray Him. But Judas thought of the thirty pieces of silver which he was going to earn for doing this sad deed, and he left the supper table and went out into the dark night. Judas had made his decision against Jesus! Oh, children! Let our decision be for Jesus! All through our lives, let our one purpose be that He shall be our Lord and our King. We shall not be sorry by and by that we have decided so. But Judas had made his evil choice; he had set going a thing which he could not now stop. And when he realized that the chief priests had really condemned Jesus, Judas would have given everything he possessed to undo what he had done. But it was too late. He hurried back to the chief priests with the money in his hand, and he exclaimed, "I have sinned; I have betrayed the innocent One!" But they said, "What is that to us? You must see to that!" So he threw down the thirty pieces of silver in the Temple, and went and hanged himself. Oh, poor Judas! What good was his money to him then? "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"