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.' 'That has been a great puzzle to me,' he said. 'Is it not enough to make you doubt?' 'Can I question the words I have read to you?' 'No, but perhaps your interpretation of them.' 'When you have got down to the simplest possible English, there is no room that I see for interpretation. "Follow me" can mean nothing but "follow me;" and "forsaking all" is not a doubtful expression.' The discussion would probably have gone on still further, but the elder Dallas's step was heard in the house, and Pitt went away with his book. CHAPTER XXXVII. _A STAND_. Mrs. Dallas was very deeply disturbed. She saw in these strange views of Pitt's all sorts of possible dangers to what she had hoped would be his future career in life. Even granting that they were a youthful folly and would pass away, how soon would they pass away? and in the meantime what chances Pitt might lose, what time might be wasted, what fatal damage his prospects might suffer! And Pitt held a thing so fast when he had once taken it up. Almost her only hope lay in Betty's influence.