II
It is a great thing--a very great thing--to be able to save those you love by dying for them. I well remember sitting in my study at Hobart one evening, when there came a ring at the bell. A moment later a man whom I knew intimately was shown in. I had seen him a few weeks earlier, yet, as I looked upon him that night, I could scarcely believe it was the same man. He seemed twenty years older; his hair was gray; his face furrowed and his back bent. I was staggered at the change. He sat down and burst into tears.
'Oh, my boy, my boy!' he sobbed.
I let him take his time, and, when he had regained his self-possession, he told me of his son's great sin and shame.
'I have mentioned this to nobody,' he said, 'but I could keep it to myself no longer. I knew that you would understand.'
And then he broke down again. I can see him now as he sits there, rocking himself in his agony, and moaning:
'If only I could have died for him! If only I could have died for him!'
But he couldn't! That was the torture of it! I remember how his heart-broken cry rang in my ears for days; and on the following Sunday there was only one subject on which I could preach. 'And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept; and as he went he cried: O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!'
It was the unutterable grief of David, and of my poor friend, that they could not save those they loved by dying for them. It was the joy of Sydney Carton that he could! He contrived to enter the Conciergerie; made his way to Darnay's cell; changed clothes with him; hurried him forth; and then resigned himself to his fate. Later on, a fellow prisoner, a little seamstress, approached him. She had known Darnay and had learned to trust him. She asked if she might ride with him to the scaffold.
'I am not afraid,' she said, 'but I am little and weak, and, if you will let me ride with you and hold your hand, it will give me courage!'
As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. She had discovered that he was not Darnay.
'Are you dying for him?' she whispered.
'For him--and his wife and child. Hush! Yes!'
'Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?'
'Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last!'
Nobody has ever read A Tale of Two Cities without feeling that this was the moment of Sydney Carton's supreme triumph.
'It is,' he said--and they are the last words in the book--'it is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done!'
He had never tasted a joy to be compared with this. He was able to save those he loved by dying for them!
That is precisely the joy of the Cross! That was the light that shone upon the Saviour's path through all the darkness of the world's first Easter. That is why, when He took the bread and wine--the emblems of His body about to be broken and His blood about to be shed--He gave thanks. It is that--and that alone--that accounts for the fact that He entered the Garden of Gethsemane with a song upon His lips. It was for the joy that was set before Him that He endured the Cross, despising its shame!
'Death!' He said. 'What of Death? I am the Life, not only of Myself, but of all who place their hands in Mine!
'The Grave! What of the Grave? I am the Resurrection!
'I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.'
He felt that it was a great thing--a very great thing--to be able to save those He loved by dying for them.