In The French Revolution, A Young Man Was ...

In the French revolution, a young man was condemned to the guillotine and shut up in one of the prisons. He was greatly loved by many, but there was someone who loved him more than all the others put together. That one was his own father, and the love he bore his son was proved in this way: when the lists were called, the father--whose name was exactly the same as the son’s--answered to the name, and the father rode in the gloomy tumbrel out to the place of execution, and his head rolled beneath the axe instead of his son’s, a victim to mighty love. See here an image of the love of Christ to sinners. For thus Jesus died for the ungodly.

-- Charles Haddon Spurgeon,