“And when it was evening He cometh with the twelve. And as they sat and were eating, Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, One of you shall betray Me, _even_ he that eateth with Me. They began to be sorrowful, and to say unto Him one by one, Is it I? And He said unto them, _It is_ one of the twelve, he that dippeth with Me in the dish. For the Son of man goeth, even as it is written of Him: but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had not been born.”—MARK xiv. 17-21 (R.V.). In the deadly wine which our Lord was made to drink, every ingredient of mortal bitterness was mingled. And it shows how far is even His Church from comprehending Him, that we think so much more of the physical than the mental and spiritual horrors which gather around the closing scene. But the tone of all the narratives, and perhaps especially of St. Mark’s, is that of the exquisite Collect which reminds us that our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, as well as to suffer death on the cross. Treason and outrage, the traitor’s kiss and the weakness of those who loved Him, the hypocrisy of the priest and the ingratitude of the mob, perjury and a mock trial, the injustice of His judges, the brutal outrages of the soldiers, the worse and more malignant mockery of scribe and Pharisee, and last and direst, the averting of the face of God, these were more dreadful to Jesus than the scourging and the nails. And so there is great stress laid upon His anticipation of the misconduct of His own. As the dreadful evening closes in, having come to the guest chamber “with the Twelve”—eleven whose hearts should fail them and one whose heart was dead, it was “as they sat and were eating” that the oppression of the traitor’s hypocrisy became intolerable, and the outraged One spoke out. “Verily I say unto you, One of you shall betray Me, even he that eateth with Me.” The words are interpreted as well as predicted in the plaintive Psalm which says, “Mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, which did also eat of My bread, hath lifted up his heel against Me.” And perhaps they are less a disclosure than a cry. Every attempt to mitigate the treason of Judas, every suggestion that he may only have striven too wilfully to serve our Lord by forcing Him to take decided measures, must fail to account for the sense of utter wrong which breathes in the simple and piercing complaint “one of you ... even he that eateth with Me.” There is a tone in all the narratives which is at variance with any palliation of the crime.