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If it is asked why we assert that Demas had forsaken God, the answer is evident; it is because he forsook Paul, who was the representative of God's cause. This is never the work of a day, though it may sometimes appear such. A professedly religious man commits a flagrant act of sin or perhaps a punishable crime which places him at once among the open enemies of religion.
I believe that for one professing Christian whose earnestness is lost by reason of intellectual doubts, or by some grave sin, there are a hundred from whom it simply oozes away unnoticed, like wind out of a bladder, so that what was once round and full becomes limp and flaccid. If Demas begins with loving the present world, it will not be long before he finds a reason for departing from Paul.
Barabbas proposes to go around to the cider-cellars, but Demas confides to him that he is enslaved by a dream of a child, who said to him, "Follow me to Paradise;" that he had come down to Jerusalem to seek and find the mysterious infant of his vision.
But at the same time prepare me also a lodging: for I hope that through your prayers I shall be given unto you. There salute thee Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ Jesus; Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, my fellow-labourers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit. Amen. Written to Philemon from Rome, by Onesimus one of his household.
The tone in which the great apostle mentions Demas, in his second letter to Timothy, is very touching. We might have expected him to give vent to his feelings in bitter invective as is customary in such cases and to denounce the cowardliness of this desertion in language aflame with indignation.
CHR. Ah, my brother! this is a seasonable sight; it came opportunely to us after the invitation which Demas gave us to come over to view the Hill Lucre; and had we gone over, as he desired us, and as thou wast inclining to do, my brother, we had, for aught I know, been made ourselves like this woman, a spectacle for those that shall come after to behold.
This important question is very solemnly argued in Bunyan's Law and Grace. He may be received into church-fellowship-and, like the foolish virgins, be clear from outward pollution-have gone forth from the rudiments and traditions of men-and had their lamps, but still lost their precious souls. They may bear office in the church, as Judas carried the bag, and as Demas!
There can be no plural to "eternity," and it is surely an absurdity to talk about "the eternities" and "the eternities of the eternities." The translators have rendered these passages: "The harvest is the end of the world." "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world." If it was right to include it in Mark iii. 29, it was wrong to exclude it in the two last-named passages.
Demas and Gestas have a quarrel, in which Gestas is rather roughly handled, and goes off growling like every villain, qui se respecte, "I will have r-revenge."
Demas will be at his mine within the week. Strive with him, lest I faint by the way. 'Ye're unco lavish wi' the words, sir, was her only comment. We parted with regret, and there was nearly a row when I tried to pay for the tea. I was bidden remember her to one David Tudhole, farmer in Nether Mirecleuch, the next time I passed by Wamphray.
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