sanctification, and those several benefits which, in this life, do either
accompany or flow from them. They looked forward with equal eagerness to
the day when he should become a great and good man, preaching the gospel
of the crucified Son to spellbound throngs.

[Illustration: "They looked forward with equal eagerness to the day when
he should become a great and good man."]

Together they began again the study of the Scriptures, the little boy now
entering seriously upon that work of writing commentaries which had once
engaged Allan. In one of these school-boyish papers the old man came upon
a passage that impressed him as notable. It seemed to him that there was
not only that vein of poetic imagination--without which one cannot be a
great preacher--but a certain individual boldness of approach, monstrous
in its naïve sentimentality, to be sure, but indicating a talent that
promised to mature splendidly.

"Now Jesus told his disciples," it ran, "that he must be crucified before
he could take his seat on the right hand of God and send to hell those who
had rejected him. He told them that one of them would have to betray him,
because it must be like the Father had said. It says at the last supper
Jesus said, 'The Son of Man goeth as it is written of him; but woe unto
that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed; it had been good for that man
if he had not been born.'

"Now it says that Satan entered into Judas, but it looks to me more like
the angel of the Lord might have entered into him, he being a good man to
start with, or our Lord would not have chosen him to be a disciple. Judas
knew for sure, after the Lord said this, that one of the disciples had got
to betray the Saviour and go to hell, where the worm dieth not and the