What was the state of the three youths?

St. John Chrysostom says, “Again, I ask, was the virtue of the “three children” corrupted by the troubles which beset them? … did they not have to make a long journey from home, and when they had arrived in the foreign country were they not cut off from fatherland and home and temple, and altar and sacrifices, and offerings, and drink offerings, and even the singing of psalms? … Were they not given up into the hands of barbarians, wolves rather than men? … They did not consider that this difficulty or the absolute power of him who possessed the state sufficed to justify their compliance; but they employed every device and expedient to enable them to avoid the sin, although they were abandoned on every side … For Nebuchadnezzar bound them and cast them into the furnace, yet he burnt them not, but rather benefited them, and rendered them more illustrious … For if captivity, and bondage, and loneliness and loss of country and all kindred and death, and burning, and a great army and a savage tyrant could not do any damage to the innate virtue of the three children captives, slaves, strangers though they were in a foreign land, but the enemy’s assault became to them rather the occasion of greater confidence: what shall be able to harm the temperate man? There is nothing, even should he have the whole world in arms against him. But, some one may say, in their case God stood beside them, and plucked them out of the flame. Certainly He did; and if you will play your part to the best of your power, the help which God supplies will assuredly follow .”⁶⁶²