supper-table, and
laid aside His garments, and took a towel, and girded Himself. After
that He poureth water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples'
feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded." Each
separate action is a fresh astonishment and a deeper shame to the
bewildered and conscience-stricken disciples. "Who is not able to
picture the scene,--the faces of John and James and Peter; the intense
silence, in which each movement of Jesus was painfully audible; the
furtive watching of Him, as He rose, to see what He would do; the sudden
pang of self-reproach as they perceived what it meant; the bitter
humiliation and the burning shame?"

But not only is the time noted, in order that we may perceive the
relevancy of the foot-washing, but the Evangelist steps aside from his
usual custom and describes the mood of Jesus that we may more deeply
penetrate into the significance of the action. Around this scene in the
supper-chamber St. John sets lights which permit us to see its various
beauty and grace. And first of all he would have us notice what seems
chiefly to have struck himself as from time to time he reflected on this
last evening--that Jesus, even in these last hours, was wholly possessed
and governed by love. Although He knew "that His hour had come, that He
should depart out of this world unto the Father, yet having loved His
own which were in the world He loved them unto the end." Already the
deep darkness of the coming night was touching the spirit of Jesus with
its shadow. Already the pain of the betrayal, the lonely desolation of
desertion by His friends, the defenceless exposure to fierce, unjust,
ruthless men, the untried misery of death and dissolution, the critical
trial of His cause and of all the labour of His life, these and many
anxieties that cannot be imagined, were pouring in upon His spirit, wave
upon wave. If ever man might have been excused for absorption in His own
affairs Jesus was then that man. On the edge of what He knew to be the
critical passage in the world's history, what had He to do attending to
the comfort and adjusting the silly differences of a few unworthy men?
With the weight of a world on His arm, was He to have His hands free for
such a trifling attention as this? With His whole soul pressed with the
heaviest burden ever laid on man, was it to be expected He should turn
aside at such a call?

But His love made it seem no turning aside at all. His love