d
elders, while the final preparations for the crucifixion of the Lord
were in progress, he implored the priestly rulers to take back the
accursed wage they had paid him, crying in an agony of despair: "I have
sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." He may have vaguely
expected a word of sympathy from the conspirators in whose wickedly
skilful hands he had been so ready and serviceable a tool; possibly he
hoped that his avowal might stem the current of their malignancy, and
that they would ask for a reversal of the sentence. But the rulers in
Israel repulsed him with disgust. "What is that to us?" they sneered,
"see thou to that." He had served their purpose; they had paid him his
price; they wished never to look upon his face again; and pitilessly
they flung him back into the haunted blackness of his maddened
conscience. Still clutching the bag of silver, the all too real
remembrancer of his frightful sin, he rushed into the temple,
penetrating even to the precincts of priestly reservation, and dashed
the silver pieces upon the floor of the sanctuary.[1299] Then, under the
goading impulse of his master, the devil, to whom he had become a
bond-slave, body and soul, he went out and hanged himself.

The chief priests gathered up the pieces of silver, and in sacrilegious
scrupulosity, held a solemn council to determine what they should do
with the "price of blood." As they deemed it unlawful to add the
attainted coin to the sacred treasury, they bought with it a certain
clay-yard, once the property of a potter, and the very place in which
Judas had made of himself a suicide; this tract of ground they set apart
as a burial place for aliens, strangers, and pagans. The body of Judas,
the betrayer of the Christ, was probably the first to be there interred.
And that field was called "Aceldama, that is to say, The field of
blood."[1300]

NOTES TO CHAPTER 34.

1. Annas, and His Interview with Jesus.--"No figure is better known in
contemporary Jewish history than that of Annas; no person deemed more
fortunate or successful, but also none more generally execrated than the
late high priest. He had held the pontificate for only six or seven
years; but it was filled by not fewer than five of his sons, by his
son-in-law Caiaphas, and by a grandson. And in those days it was, at
least for one of Annas' disposition, much better to have been than to be
high priest. He enjoyed all the dignity of the office, and all its
in