e Son of God, and all the balance reprobates and devils?

But the most inconsistent and unreasonable phase of the whole thing is
yet to come. If salvation is attainable only through the merits of the
"death on the Cross" of Jesus Christ, then Jesus _had to be crucified_.
It was a part of the "eternal plan." No other death would do. If
Jesus had died a natural death there could have been no salvation. He
must needs be punished, killed for the sins of Adam and all mankind.
He was "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." To carry out
this "divine purpose" somebody had to crucify him. Every actor in this
great "drama of redemption" was a necessary factor. No one was either
unnecessary or unimportant. Judas was necessary to betray him into the
hands of his enemies. He and the part he performed were necessarily as
much a fore-ordained and eternally predestinated factor in the "scheme
of redemption" as that of Jesus himself. The Jewish priests who
prosecuted him before Pilate were as equally necessary as the subject
of the prosecution. The Jewish nation whom they represented, or some
other nation, was equally necessary as a background for this
prosecution, in whose name it was conducted. Pilate or some other was
necessary as the judge to hear the trial and pronounce the sentence of
death before it could be carried out. And finally, the Roman soldiers
were necessary to execute the sentence. All these, Jesus, Judas, the
priests, the Jewish nation, Pilate and the Roman soldiers, were
necessary links in the one great chain of the "scheme of redemption,"
or "plan of salvation" by the vicarious atonement of the Son of God on
the Cross. If either one of them had failed, the chain would have been
broken, God's eternal plans and purposes thwarted, and man left without
redemption to eternally perish!

And yet poor Judas was driven by remorse to a suicide's grave, and
according to the doctrines of the Church, for these nineteen hundred
years has been justly writhing, frying and burning in the bottomless
pit of eternal torments, and will continue so to suffer forever,--and
for what? For faithfully performing and fulfilling that part in the
scheme of redemption which he was, by the eternal decrees of God,
foreordained and predestinated from before the foundation of the world
to perform; and which he could neither escape nor avoid, without
breaking the chain, and thus defeating the eternal purposes of God in
the r