All over the Highlands the name of Hector M’Phail is mentioned with peculiar veneration. Tradition has handed down many striking illustrations of the zeal for salvation of souls that consumed him. But for seven long years his ministry proved unedifying. “The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed.” The elders and others soon found out that they had simply an amiable formalist for a minister, and they “spoke often one to another” and to God at prayer-meetings for the conversion of their blind leader.
The most immediate, and to this audience, the most impressive suggestion conveyed in this half sentence is, that a preacher of the Divine Law and Christian Gospel may be a castaway. Nay, when we remember who was the “I myself ” that wrote these lines, we perceive that even an Apostle, an inspired preacher, was not, on that account, beyond the peril. We have the still more positive confirmation of fact; for an older Apostle than Paul, one of the original twelve, called and endowed with power by Christ himself, fell by transgression from “this ministry and apostleship,” perished by suicide in the field he had purchased with the reward of iniquity, and went from Aceldama to what was, in a more fearful sense, “his own place,” a castaway.
We do not usually pause to think what we might learn from Judas Iscariot. He is rightly regarded by Christians as the cruel traitor who sold his Master, Jesus Christ, for thirty pieces of silver. He is rightly judged to have been a hypocrite and a deceiver. But even so, we would be wise to pause and reflect on the rather surprising fact that Judas’ life and conduct have valuable lessons to teach us today, 2,000 years after he committed suicide.
