THE SEVEN SLEEPERS OF EPHESUS.--An allusion was made in this column a
few weeks ago to the long sleep of Rip Van Winkle, whose story is told
by Washington Irving. Rip was the village good-for-nothing, a
kind-hearted fellow, who had the bad habit of drinking to excess, and
who spent hours in lounging about with his dog and gun when he ought to
have been earning food for his family. It was little wonder that Dame
Van Winkle scolded and stormed.
Rip's home was in a nook of the Catskill Mountains. One day he wandered
off in search of game. He met some queer old fellows playing at
nine-pins, and they left their keg of liquor where Rip could taste it,
while they gravely rolled their balls about. Rip took several tastes,
and finally fell asleep.
He supposed that he had slept only one night; but when he awakened,
stiff and sore, and made his way down the hills to the settlement,
tradition says that he had slept no less than twenty years. His wife was
dead. His old comrades were gone. His little girl had a chubby child of
her own in her arms. The war of the Revolution had been fought. The face
of the world had changed.
Now the Postmistress wants to tell you something very curious about this
legend of Rip Van Winkle. Like many other myths, it is found, in
different forms, in far-away countries and remote periods. The Greeks
had something like it in the exquisite story of the shepherd Endymion;
but Endymion did not grow old and gray in his slumbers, as Rip did. In
Scandinavian mythology there is a legend of Siegfrid lying sound asleep,
but awaiting, a call to fight when his country shall need him. In
Bohemia three miners are supposed to be dreaming in the heart of the
lonely hills. But the most picturesque of all the stories is the one I
am about to tell you of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. It is also very
ancient.
In the days of the Emperor Diocletian the Christians at Ephesus were
persecuted. All who refused to worship idols were condemned to death.
Maximian, Malchus, Marcian, Dionysius, John, Serapion, and Constantine
were seven young men of noble birth. They said they would never deny
their Lord and Master Jesus Christ. The Emperor gave them a few days to
consider their course, telling them that they would certainly be
executed unless they obeyed him. They divided their goods among the
poor, and retired together to a cave in Mount Celion, where they fell
asleep.
Diocletian hunted for them everywhere, but they could not be found. He
blocked up with great stones the mouth of the very cavern in which they
were, thinking that if they were hidden in its recesses they would not
escape his wrath, but would die of hunger.
More than two centuries passed away. Then, according to tradition, an
Ephesian building a stable on the side of Mount Celion took a fancy to
the big stones in the cave's mouth. He carried them away, daylight
poured in, the sounds of the outside world penetrated the silence, and
the Seven Sleepers rubbed their eyes, awoke, and felt hungry. It was to
them as though they had slept but one day.
Malchus went into the city to buy some food. Everything was strange to
him. Everywhere, on houses and temples, he saw the sign of the cross. He
heard men using Christ's name. When he went into a baker's shop to buy a
loaf, and offered in payment a coin more than two hundred years old, the
people stared, and the baker, who happened to be a coin collector,
wanted to know where he had discovered so great a treasure. And Malchus,
bewildered and confused, was taken before the Governor and the Bishop,
and to them he told simply how he and his friends had gone to hide from
danger, and how they had fallen asleep, and had just awakened. Then he
led the great men and the crowd who followed them to the place where his
six companions were impatiently waiting for him to return.
There they were, young, beautiful and blooming. But they were in a world
which they did not know, and which did not know them, so the beautiful
story says that God kindly took them to Himself before long in the sweet
sleep which has no waking on earth.
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