TWO Greek philosophers, Damon and Pythias, of the sect of the Pythagoreans, were united by a friendship so firm and constant that they were willing, if necessary, even to die for each other.
Dionysius the Elder, the tyrant of Syracuse, condemned Damon to death. The unfortunate man humbly entreated the prince to allow him to depart for a few days to visit his broken-hearted family, and to settle his affairs, promising to return by a certain day.
Dionysius consented, on condition that someone should remain in his place as surety for his return.
Damon's friend, Pythias, having been apprised of the conditions, did not wait for Damon to have recourse to him; he offered himself as substitute for his friend, and, having been accepted, he willingly repaired to the public prison, and Damon was immediately set at liberty. Everyone (the tyrant especially) waited with impatience for the issue of so uncertain and extraordinary an event.
The day fixed for the execution approached, yet Damon did riot return. People blamed the folly of so rash a surety, and pitied his blind tenderness.
In the meanwhile the scaffold was prepared.
Crowds had already assembled, and officers were about to conduct the innocent Pythias to death.
Suddenly Damon arrived and delivered his generous friend. All Syracuse, astonished, cried out loudly for the pardon of the criminal.
The tyrant granted it readily; and, touched with a fidelity so extreme, entreated them to receive him as a third participator in their virtuous friendship.
One hardly knows which to admire most, the devotion of Pythias, or the faithfulness of Damon. Each was willing to be sacrificed for the other to a tyrant's cruelty. Devoted to his friend, Pythias is a willing surety, and, if needful, is prepared to die for him. Faithful to his promise, at all cost to himself, Damon returns, that he who had stood surety for his life may be saved from a cruel death.
The heart even of a tyrant is touched, and he desires to share in a union so true. But what is all this compared with the love of Him who
“Did a servant's form assume,
Beset with sorrow round";
who entered not merely a prison, but a world of sinners, where He endured the constant “contradiction of sinners against Himself"?
Nor was He only willing to die if needful, but came on purpose to give Himself a ransom for many; laying down His life, which not all the power of man and Satan could have taken from Him had He not "offered Himself"; saying, as they fell to the ground before Him, "If ye seek me, let these go their way.”
Nor was it for a friend He died.
“Thou for Thine enemies want slain;
What love with Thine can vie?”
And such a death! Not all the cruel mockery, nor all the torture of the Roman scourge, not all that the rage and malice of men and Satan could bring upon Him, could wring one resentful exclamation from His patient, suffering lips. Deeply as He felt it all, and all the more deeply because He loved men with a love no mere human heart can fathom or understand, all was as nothing compared with that awful moment when, the Bearer of our sins, He was forsaken of God, whose delight He had been from eternity. Then, and then only, is wrung from His holy lips that most solemn, significant and bitter cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?”
Alas, why? Let those who love His name reply, and, in the presence of such love, ever “stand in awe, and sin not.”
The heart of a tyrant could be touched by the love of Damon and Pythias; yet thousands have heard, and do hear, of the LOVE OF CHRIST unmoved. A tyrant could desire to have part in a union so admirable in his estimation, but a union which a moment might dissolve; while to thousands of men the offer of eternal union in life with Him who is the “chiefest among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely," falls unheeded on the ear; “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life," the trifles of time, anything, everything is preferred before Him, nay, death itself is chosen rather than CHRIST; and the love that would have saved, instead of being the source of eternal joy, must become to those who have rejected it, a cause of intolerable anguish when, in "outer darkness," they recall its wondrous ways, its glorious offers, its gracious pleadings. Then hope can never more come to their relief.
J. L. K.
“Pray!" said a mother to her dying child;
“Pray!" and in token of assent he smiled.
Most willing was the spirit; but so weak
The failing frame, that he could scarcely speak.
At length he cried, “Dear mother, in God's
book
Is it not written, Unto Jesus look?
I can look up; I have no strength for prayer:
'LOOK UNTO ME, AND BE YE SAVED,' is there.”