'I suppose,' said Pitt slowly, 'for the same reason that has kept me for years from accepting it;—because it was so difficult.'
'But religion cannot be a difficult thing, my dear son,' said Mrs.
Dallas.
He looked up at her and smiled, an affectionate, very expressive, wistful smile.
'Can it not, mother? What mean Christ's words here,—"Whosoever doth not take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple"? The cross meant shame, torture, and death, in those days; and I think in a modified way, it means the same thing now. It means something.'
'But Mr. Pitt, you do not answer my argument,' Miss Frere repeated. 'If this view is correct, how comes it that nobody takes it but you?'
'Your argument is where the dew is after a hot sun,—nowhere. Instead of nobody taking this view, it has been held by hundreds of thousands, who, like the first disciples, have forsaken all and followed Him. Rather than be false to it they have endured the loss of all things, they have given up father and mother, they have borne torture and faced the lions. In later days, they have been chased and worried from hiding-place to hiding-place, they have been cut down by the sword, buried alive, thrown from the tops of rocks, and burned at the stake. And in peacefuller times they have left their homes and countries and gone to the ends of the earth to tell the gospel. They have done what was given them to do, without regarding the cost of it.'
'Then you think all the people who fill our churches are no Christians!'
'I say nothing about the people who fill our churches.'
Pitt rose here.
'But, Mr. Dallas, how can all the world be so mistaken? Our clergymen, our bishops, do not preach such doctrine as you do, if I understand you.'