V
I began by saying that it is a great thing--a very great thing--to be able to save those you love by dying for them.
I close by stating the companion truth. It is a great thing--a very great thing--to have been died for.
On the last page of his book Dickens tells us what Sydney Carton would have seen and said if, on the scaffold, it had been given him to read the future.
'I see,' he would have exclaimed, 'I see the lives for which I lay down my life--peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy--in that England which I shall see no more. I see her with a child upon her bosom who bears my name. I see that I hold a sanctuary in all their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed; and I know that each was not more honored and held sacred in the other's soul than I was in the souls of both!'
'I see that I hold a sanctuary in all their hearts!'--it is a lovely phrase.
It is a great thing--a very great thing--to have been died for!
Wherefore let each man be at some pains to build in his heart a sanctuary to Him who, for us men and for our salvation, laid down His life with a song!