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 XXXI.

"LORD, HELP ME!"

We are drawing near to the end.

Not Judas alone but all those who looked for a Messiah who should be the temporal Ruler and Liberator of His people, were grievously disappointed when our Lord declared that He had not come to be a king of the world. It was an earthly kingdom that they wanted, not the Kingdom of Heaven of which He spoke.

According to the rabbis, the Messiah was to march at the head of His people against all heathen nations, to make them subject to the Jews, and to rule from Jerusalem over the whole earth. There was to be a reign of a thousand years, a reign of prosperity, glory and pleasure for the people of God. The fruit trees and the harvest fields were to yield their produce continually, and every product of every clime was to be found in Palestine in an abundance such as the wildest imagination only could conceive. Jewish children were brought up from their earliest years with these expectations, and even our Lord's disciples were full of such earthly hopes. So that when, about this time, their Master began to break gently to them that He was going to redeem the world, not by fighting against the Romans, but by shedding His Blood, they could not understand what He meant.

His enemies—the priests, the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Herodians—were glad to see the people disappointed, and their enthusiasm for Jesus of Nazareth cooling. They told them that a poor, unlearned man, the son of a carpenter, could never be the glorious Mes