Judas Iscariot closes the list, cold and venomous as a snake.
Enthusiasm in him there was none. The problem of his character is too
complex to be entered on here. But we may lay to heart the warning
that, if a man is not knit to Christ by heart's love and obedience,
the more he comes into contact with Jesus the more will he recoil from
Him, till at last he is borne away by a passion of detestation. Christ
is either a sure foundation or a stone of stumbling.



'HE IS BESIDE HIMSELF'


'And when His friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on Him:
for they said, He is beside Himself'--Mark iii. 21.

There had been great excitement in the little town of Capernaum in
consequence of Christ's teachings and miracles. It had been
intensified by His infractions of the Rabbinical Sabbath law, and by
His appointment of the twelve Apostles. The sacerdotal party in
Capernaum apparently communicated with Jerusalem, with the result of
bringing a deputation from the Sanhedrim to look into things, and see
what this new rabbi was about. A plot for His assassination was
secretly on foot. And at this juncture the incident of my text, which
we owe to Mark alone of the Evangelists, occurs. Christ's friends,
apparently the members of His own family--sad to say, as would appear
from the context, including His mother--came with a kindly design to
rescue their misguided kinsman from danger, and laying hands upon Him,
to carry Him off to some safe restraint in Nazareth, where He might