And they felt it so.  Their hearts understood, if their heads didn’t yet.  Judas felt those hands reaching to touch his heart.  And he had to set himself afresh to resist that touch.  John felt it, and remained steady.  Peter felt it and came back with flooded eyes.  The fleeing nine felt that touch and yielded to it as they penitently returned.  Love won.  That personal touch did it.

But Jesus feels Judas’ heart hardening as He touches his feet, and the gentle word already spoken availed not.[109] Now His great heart is sorely troubled for Judas.[110] He tries once again to reach his heart and stay his wayward feet.  He reaches for his feet through his heart this time.  They’re all together about the table again.  Quietly, but with tactful indirectness, Jesus lets Judas know that He knows.  He says, “One of you is planning to betray Me.”

The men stare one at another in questioning astonishment.  Peter touches John’s arm and with eye and word quietly asks him to find out.  John reclining next to Jesus asks the question in undertone.  And as quietly Jesus makes reply.  Then the last appeal is made to Judas in the last delicate touch of special personal attention.  Judas’ unchanged spirit makes wordless answer.  The hardening of the purpose is a further opening of a downward door and that door is quickly used by the evil one.

And Judas rises abruptly with jaw set and eye tense, and goes out into the blackest night the clouds ever shut in.  So the first tremendous part of the evening’s drama is now done.  The wooing of Judas has been intense and tender clean up to the last moment, and resisted.  Now that chapter is done.  Another corner is passed.  The extremes have—­parted.  One man has gone out.  Eleven stay in, and in staying come closer.

Believe—­Love—­Obey.

The atmosphere clears now.  That black cloud shifts.  The pressure is relieved.  The air changes.  Breathing is easier.  Jesus did His best to keep Judas in by trying to have him turn something—­some one—­out.  But the something that held the some one is kept within, so the man goes out.  That inside air was getting a bit thick for Judas.  Love’s tender pleading unyielded to makes breathing difficult.

Again Jesus begins talking in the cleared air.  The hour had full come.  The character of the Son of Man would now be revealed,[111] and in being revealed God’s character would also be understood, and God Himself would show what He thought of Jesus by His personal recognition and acknowledgment of Him, and He would do it at once.  The clock is striking the hour.  Now He was going away.  They would not understand.[112]

Then Jesus strikes the great key-note of their future conduct as He goes on. The thing is this:  love one another.  This is the badge He gives them to wear.  It will always identify them as His very own.  Peter picks up the one bit he understands, and is told that he cannot yet follow in the tremendous experience lying just ahead for Jesus, but some day he can, and will.  And then to Peter’s blundering self-confidence comes a plain tender reminder of his weakness.[113] So that wondrous fourteenth chapter that Christendom loves begins back in the thirteenth.