ng light of the torches there was that in His appearance which
made it impossible for the bluntest and rudest soldier to lay a hand
upon Him. Discipline was forgotten; the legionaries who had thrown
themselves on spear-points unawed by the fiercest of foes saw in this
unarmed figure something which quelled and bewildered them.

But this proof of His superiority was lost upon His disciples. They
thought that armed force should be met by armed force. Recovering from
their discomfiture, and being ashamed of it, the soldiers and servants
of the Sanhedrim advance to bind Jesus. Peter, who had with some dim
presentiment of what was coming possessed himself of a sword, aims a
blow at the head of Malchus, who having his hands occupied in binding
Jesus can only defend himself by bending his head to one side, and so
instead of his life loses only his ear. To our Lord this interposition
of Peter seemed as if he were dashing out of His hand the cup which the
Father had put into it. Disengaging His hands from those who already
held them He said, "Suffer ye thus far"[20] (Permit Me to do this one
thing); and laying His hand on the wound He healed it, this forgiving
and beneficent act being the last done by His unbound
hands--significant, indeed, that such should be the style of action from
which they prevented Him by binding His hands. Surely the Roman officer
in command, if none of the others, must have observed the utter
incongruity of the bonds, the fatuous absurdity and wickedness of tying
hands because they wrought miracles of healing.

While our Lord thus calmly resigned Himself to His fate, He was not
without an indignant sense of the wrong that was done Him, not only in
His being apprehended, but in the manner of it. "Are ye come out as
against a thief with swords and with staves? I sat daily teaching in the
Temple, and ye laid no hold on Me." Many of the soldiers must have felt
how ungenerous it was to treat such a Person as a common felon,--coming
upon Him thus in the dead of night, as if He were one who never appeared
in the daylight; coming with bludgeons and military aid, as if He were
likely to create a disturbance. Commonly an arrest is considered to be
best made if the culprit is seized red-handed in the very act. Why,
then, had they not thus taken Him? They knew that the popular conscience
was with Him, and they dared not take Him on the streets of Jerusalem.
It was the last evidence of their inability to understand