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Updated: May 13, 2025
They went on, therefore, after this, a good way further, talking of Christian and Faithful; and how Hopeful joined himself to Christian after that Faithful was dead. Now they were come up with the Hill Lucre, where the silver mine was, which took Demas off from his pilgrimage, and into which, as some think, By-ends fell and perished; wherefore they considered that.
Si Matilde no se ha de casar más de una vez con Eduardo, si esa vez que se ha casado no ha hecho realmente locura alguna, supuesto que Eduardo es rico, ¿de qué puede servirle el escarmiento y el ver lo que le hubiera sucedido si hubiera hecho lo que no ha hecho? A ella no, nos contestarán, a los demás que ven la comedia.
In the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich, I read a mind clear of the vice of Demas: lucre had no undue power over you. In the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four shares, keeping but one to yourself, and relinquishing the three others to the claim of abstract justice, I recognised a soul that revelled in the flame and excitement of sacrifice.
So the hapless Jesuits, who had been boasting for years past that the persecuted faithful throughout the island would rise as one man to fight under the blessed banner of the pope and Spain, found that the faithful, like Demas of old, forsook them and "went after this present world;" having no objection, of course, to the restoration of Popery: but preferring some more comfortable method than an invasion which would inevitably rob them of their ancestral lands and would seat needy and greedy Castilians in their old country houses, to treat their tenants as they had treated the Indians of Hispaniola, and them as they had treated the caciques.
But did he add, "Make me a hired servant?" No, he could not, for he had already been received as a son. Our Lord tells us how some hearers may receive the Word immediately with joy, and yet give up when it is the occasion of their being brought into outward perils or difficulties. Paul complained that Demas had forsaken him, and John of many who, he says, "went out from us."
John describes it, hating the light that puts to shame its own self-chosen darkness, and putting it out if it can, where the Pilgrim's fellow, Faithful, seals his testimony with his death, and the Pilgrim himself barely escapes; the "delicate plain" called Ease, and the little hill, Lucre, where Demas stood "gentlemanlike," to invite the passersby to come and dig in his silver mine; Byepath Meadow, into which the Pilgrim and his newly-found companion stray, and are made prisoners by Giant Despair and shut up in the dungeons of Doubting Castle, and break out of prison by the help of the Key of Promise; the Delectable Mountains in Immanuel's Land, with their friendly shepherds and the cheering prospect of the far-off heavenly city; the Enchanted Land, with its temptations to spiritual drowsiness at the very end of the journey; the Land of Beulah, the ante-chamber of the city to which they were bound; and, last stage of all, the deep dark river, without a bridge, which had to be crossed before the city was entered; the entrance into its heavenly gates, the pilgrim's joyous reception with all the bells in the city ringing again for joy; the Dreamer's glimpse of its glories through the opened portals is not every stage of the journey, every scene of the pilgrimage, indelibly printed on our memories, for our warning, our instruction, our encouragement in the race we, as much as they, have each one to run?
It would have been no more than justice to the offender, and it might have deterred others from stumbling in the same way. But no, he does nothing of the kind; his words contain nothing more than the brief, deep, pathetic groan of a wounded heart. He had probably built many hopes upon Demas, and not without reason.
They insisted for some time, but when he refused decisively they yielded. "I know the baker Demas," said Quartus, "in whose mills slaves and hired men are employed. One of those hired men is so strong that he would take the place, not of two, but of four. I myself have seen him lift stones from the ground which four men could not stir."
By this time By-ends and his companions were come again within sight, and they, at the first beck, went over to Demas.
The robbers pick up their idolized leader and pitch him into the tinsel torrent. This is also extremely satisfactory to the wide-awake young Arabs of the cock-loft. The bandits disperse, and Demas indulges in some fifty lines of rhymed reflections, which are interrupted by the approach of the Holy Family, hotly pursued by the soldiery of Herod.
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