The Paschal supper.
I. THE DUTIFUL MIND IS THE CLEAR-SEEING AND THE PREPARED MIND. What struck the evangelists was the calm foresight and method of Jesus. It was like the strategy of a general; the presence of mind of one who holds the clue to events, because he knows the moral sequence. On another occasion "Jesus himself knew what he would do." Here the disciples "found even as he told them." So generally, "everything will be found as Jesus has declared."
II. THE PUREST SOCIETY IS NOT FREE FROM AN IMPURE LEAVEN. A Judas among the twelve; and an incipient Judas in the conscience of the rest. Better for us, instead of looking round for the Judas, to look into the heart to discover how much of Judas is there.
III. THERE MAY BE A COINCIDENCE OF ]DIVINE APPOINTMENT AND HUMAN GUILT IN THE SAME ACT. It is in the law of things that the good should suffer from human violence. But it is not in the law of things that any man should take part in that violence. We may not be able to seize the secret unity of principle behind the seeming contradiction of the knowledge of God and the responsibility of man. But the latter is our fact, clear and definite. The former is of the "secret things that belong to the Lord our God."—J.