Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/451

 idea whatever but that of worldly honors, triumphs, and rewards to be won in his service! Peter, indeed, is not very distinctly specified as betraying any remarkable regard for his own individual interest, and on several occasions manifested, certainly by starts, much of a true self-sacrificing devotion to his Master; yet his great views in following Jesus were unquestionably of an ambitious order, and his noblest conception was that of a worldly triumph of a Messiah, in which the chosen ones were to have a share proportioned no doubt to their exertions for its attainment. The two Boanerges betrayed the most determined selfishness, in scheming for a lion's share in the spoils of victory; and the whole body of the disciples, on more than one occasion, quarreled among themselves about the first places in Christ's kingdom. Judas therefore, was not greatly worse than his fellow-disciples,—no matter how bad may have been his motives; and probably at the beginning maintained a respectable stand among them, unless occasion might have betrayed to them the fact, that he was mean in money matters. But he, after espousing the fortunes of Jesus, doubtless went on scheming for his own advancement, just as the rest did for theirs, except that probably, when those of more liberal conceptions were contriving great schemes for the attainment of power, honor, fame, titles, and glory, both military and civil, his penny-saving soul was reveling in golden dreams, and his thoughts running delightedly over the prospects of vast gain to be reaped in the confiscation of the property of the wealthy Pharisees and lawyers, that would ensue immediately on the establishment of the empire of the Nazarene and his Galileans. While the great James and his amiable brother were quarreling with the rest of the fraternity about the premierships,—the highest administration of spiritual and temporal power,—the discreetly calculating Iscariot was doubtless expecting the fair results of a regular course of promotion, from the office of bag-carrier to the strolling company of Galileans, to the stately honors and immense emoluments of lord high-treasurer of the new kingdom of Israel; his advancement naturally taking place in the line in which he had made his first beginning in the service of his Lord, he might well expect that in those very particulars where he had shown himself faithful in few things, he would be made ruler over many things, when he should enter into the joy of his Lord,—sharing the honors and profits of His exaltation, as he had borne his part in the toils and anxieties of his humble fortunes. The careful management of his little