I  simply  said,  he  was  sincere  in  his  remorse.  A  thief  may  behave  honestly
sometimes.  The  unjust  steward  was  commended  by  his  lord.  Yet  I  have
heard  of  commentators  of  the  Rationalistic  school  who  were  as  much  offend
ed  with  the  Bible  as  your  friend  is  with  me,  because  it  commends  a  man
who  had  tampered  with  his  master's  accounts.  The  Bible,  however,  com
mends  him  ;  and  Christ  puts  him  forth  as  a  pattern  to  Christians,  not  be
cause  he  had  acted  honestly  in  all  cases,  but  because  he  had  done  wisely  in
one.  He  who  commended  him  as  wise  in  that  act  did  not  exactly  say  that
his  waste  and  duplicity  were  objects  of  admiration.  And  if  I  assert  that
Judas  was  sincere  in  his  remorse,  it  requires  some  ingenuity  to  pervert  this
into  an  opinion  that  he  was  sincere  in  his  kissing  his  Redeemer.  The  suicide
of  Judas  was  the  act  of  a  man  sincere,  even  to  agony,  in  his  remorse.  Did
he  pretend  to  cast  down  the  gold?  Did  he  pretend  the  pangs  which  drove
him  to  despair  ?  I  say,  further,  all  suicide  is  sincere.  I  stated  that  for  the
express  purpose  of  showing  that  sincerity  does  not  make  the  matter  better,
and  that  remorse  is  not  penitence.  Your  correspondent,  without  having
heard  the  sermon,  hears  of  a  detached  expression,  and  charitably  assumes
that  it  was  part  of  the  "apology  "  for  Judas.  It  formed,  in  fact,  part  of  the
demolition  of  a  supposed  apology  that  might  be  made  for  him.
