How many people in the time of the Inquisition, when they were racked to pieces, when thumb-screws agonized them, when water drop by drop fell ceaselessly on their foreheads, and when pincers tore their flesh little by little continuously, renounced their faith and so saved themselves from slow torture! It was not an easy thing to die from starvation in a dark, damp pit, with mire creeping up all about him. It never has been easy to die slowly and alone for the faith; to die for a testimony; to die for a message that involved others much more than one's self. All that was needed to protect him from pain and to preserve his life was silence. If Jeremiah would keep quiet all would be well. But for Jeremiah to keep quiet would be to prove disobedient to a sense of duty implanted by God in his heart. So this gentle nature, that shrank from the horrors of the miry pit, horrors more to be dreaded than the lions' den or the fiery furnace or the executioner's sword, went down into the pit unbroken--precursor of those sweet natures in woman and child that all the beasts of the Colosseum could not dismay, and that all the fires of martyrdom could not weaken. One more experience awaited Jeremiah--_deportation_. So far as we know, it was the closing experience of his life. The dauntless soul had not been suffered to die in the pit. Patriotic men who realized the folly of letting an unselfish, high-minded citizen perish so terribly, and who realized, too, the desirability of preserving alive so wise a counselor, secured permission from the vacillating king to take rags and worn-out garments, and let them down by cords into the pit. "Put now these rags and worn-out garments under thine arm-holes under the cords," they said, "and Jeremiah did so. So they drew up Jeremiah with the cords." Once again he was in his position of responsibility as God's messenger. In that position he held fast to his faithfulness. Then came his final experience. Judah had passed through trial upon trial. Jeremiah had shared in her trials, never running away from them, but always bearing his full brunt of burden and loss. Then he was forced to go away from the land of his love and his tears to Egypt! He did not wish to go. He assured those who headed the movement that it was folly to go. But they took him with them, and carried him, like a captive, off to a foreign land.