TWO travelers were crossing a certain glacier in Switzerland. They were accompanied by a guide, to whom, as it is usual, when there is a possibility of danger, they were roped.
Novices, they were being initiated into all the wondrous sublimities of the Alps. They looked with wonder at the mighty peaks which towered around, and gazed with awe not unmingled with admiration into the depths of the crevasse, whose sides, lined as it were with amethyst and topaz, they beheld for the first time.
A slight fall of snow the previous night had rendered the way across the glacier more than usually dangerous, bridging over as it did the mouth of many a crevasse with a treacherous crust of snow.
Suddenly the guide, who had been carefully leading the way, disappeared with a cry. He had broken this, the frail covering of snow, and been precipitated into the depths of a crevasse, and was now swinging in mid-air.
To mountaineers the situation was fraught with but little danger. To take the strain off the rope, by means of an ax stuck in a cleft of the ice, would have been the work of a moment; when to raise the man from his perilous position would have been an easy matter.
But these men were not mountaineers, and in the horror of the situation they lost their nerve, and allowed themselves to be drawn over the ice, ever nearer to the yawning mouth of the chasm.
The feeling of the guide may well be imagined when he realized that, instead of being raised by his comrades into safety, he was slowly dragging them to meet a similar fate.
With a heroism well-nigh without parallel, even in the annals of Swiss guides, amongst whom heroism is inherent, seizing his knife, without a moment’s hesitation he cut the rope on which his sole chance of life depended, and allowed himself to sink into the crevasse, rather than imperil the lives of those who had committed themselves to his keeping.
As one read the account, an echo of words spoken now nearly two thousand years ago seemed to fall on one’s ear.
“He saved others, Himself He cannot save,” jeered the bystanders as they stood Watching the death throes of Jesus, the Prophet of Nazareth. “Cannot save.” How false — and yet, how true. “Himself He cannot save,” when at His bidding, legions of angels might have flown to His succor. “Cannot save,” when He Who hangs upon the Cross is the Almighty God, the Omnipotent Jehovah.
Yes, “Himself He cannot save,” because to save Himself was to sacrifice others. Did He live — then all the world must die. Did He not drink the bitter cup Himself, then must all mankind drink of the vials of the wrath of God.
“Oh, ‘twas love, ‘twas boundless love,
The love of Christ to me;
That drew my Saviour from above,
To die on Calvary.”
And so the mocking and bitter taunt of the bigoted and relentless priests has become the pride and glory of the Christian Church — the watchword in many a conflict between good and evil, the incentive to numberless deeds of heroism and self-sacrifice.