“I have fallen to think much of late,” said the Black Friar, “of one word of His,—assuredly not to pass away, nor be forgotten—‘Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in Heaven.’ Verily, it were awful matter, to draw down on a man’s head this public denying of Jesu Christ.”
“Dear heart!” said Agnes, at once sympathetically and deprecatingly.
“Ah!” he replied, with a sigh of self-distrust: “hope is one matter, and belief another.”
“Dost fear some ill work, trow?” she asked doubtfully.
John Laurence did not answer at once. He spoke after a minute, dreamily, as if to himself; a habit to which Agnes was now quite accustomed.
“‘Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear Him, which after that He hath killed hath power to cast into Hell.’”
The Friar walked on for a few seconds with his usual rapidity, and then suddenly stopped again.
“Men think lightly of these things, dear heart,” said he. “Most men have a far greater care lest they break a limb, or lose an handful of gold, than lest they be cast into Hell. Yet see thou how Christ took the same. And He knew,—as we cannot know,—what is Hell.”
“The good Lord keep us!” ejaculated Agnes fervently.
“Amen!” responded the Black Friar. “‘He shall keep the feet of His saints.’ It is not we that keep ourselves. ’Tis not we that hold Him, no more than the babe holdeth himself in his mother’s arms. And the mother were more like to leave the babe fall into the fire or the water, than He to loose hold upon His trustful child.”