(Translated from the French.)
Two philosophers of the sect of Pythagoras, Damon and. Pythias, 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 some one should remain in his place as surety for his return. His 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. Every one (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 not return. They blamed the folly of so rash a surety, and, pitied his blind tenderness.
In the meanwhile the scaffold was prepared. The people had already assembled in crowds, and they were about to conduct the innocent Pythias to death. Suddenly Damon arrives, and delivers his generous friend. All Syracuse, astonished, cry out loudly for the pardon of the criminal. The tyrant grants it readily, and, touched with a fidelity so extreme, entreats them to receive him as a third into so grand a union.
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 form one in a union so true. But what is all this as compared, with the love of him who
“Did a servant’s form assume,
Beset with sorrows round” —
who entered not merely a prison, but a world of sinners, where, if “the filthy conversation of the wicked vexed the righteous soul” of Lot in Sodom (there for his own sake), every thought, word, and deed of those around him, though free and scathless in the midst of it all, must have been a’ constant and. unceasing source of sorrow to his holy loving heart? 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 wast slain;
What love with thine can vie?”
And such a death! Not all the cruel mockery, not 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 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, bearing our sins, he was forsaken of God, whose delight he had been from eternity! Then, and then only, is wrung from his lips that most solemn, all-significant, and most 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 form one in a union so grand in his estimation, a union which a moment might dissolve; while to thousands the offer of eternal union in life to 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 eye, 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 they recall its wondrous ways, its infinite offers, its gracious pleadings, there in “outer darkness” where hope can never more come to their relief. “Why will you die?”
O blessed Saviour, is thy love
So great, so full, so free?
Fain would we have our thoughts, our hearts,
Our lives, engaged with thee.
No man of greater love can boast
Than for his friend to die;
Thou for thine enemies wast slain!
What love with thine can vie?