I was taken aback by this. For I perceived that the sense required a metaphorical rendering, and, at the same time, that such a metaphor was almost impossible among any Jews, _before Christ’s crucifixion_. At first I tried to justify it from Paul’s epistles, which declared that, in Christ’s death, “_all died_”—meaning that all, by sympathy, died to sin and rose again to righteousness. Paul said also “I have been crucified with Christ,” and “our old man”—meaning “our old human nature”—“has been crucified with Him,” and “the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” But these expressions were all based on the Christian belief that the “cross” was the way to “resurrection.” They were quite intelligible after the resurrection, but not before it. Then I tried to imagine myself in the circle of disciples surrounding Socrates in prison, and the Master, with the bowl of poison in his hands, preparing to drink it, and looking up to us and saying, “If you intend to be disciples worthy of me, you too must be prepared to take up the hemlock bowl.” What, I asked, should I have understood by this? It seemed to me that the words could only mean “You, too, must be prepared to be put to death by your countrymen.” Now as the hemlock bowl was the regular penalty among the Athenians, so the cross (as Scaurus had said) was the regular penalty among the Romans _but not among the Jews_. So, when I tried honestly to respond to Scaurus’s appeal, and to imagine myself in the crowd following Jesus, and the Master turning round to us, and saying, “Take up your cross,” I was obliged to admit, “I should have taken the Master to mean, ‘If you are to be worthy followers of mine, you must be prepared _to be put to death as rebels by the Romans_’.” Scaurus took the same view. “Well,” he continued, “I will anticipate your answer, for it seems to me you can only come to one conclusion. You, in the crowd, would take the words to mean that you must follow your Master to the death against the Romans. But all intelligent readers of the Christian books ought to know that he could not have said that. He was a visionary, and utterly averse to violence, so averse that he was on one occasion reproached for his inaction by John the Baptist—who once said to him, in effect, ‘Why do you leave me in prison? Why do you not stir a hand to release me?’ Moreover, if Jesus had said this, what would the chief priests have needed more than this, to get Pilate to put him to death: ‘This man said to the rabble, If you are intending to follow me, you must go with the cross on your shoulders’? ‘Can you prove this?’ would have been Pilate’s reply. They would have proved it. Then sentence would have followed at once as a matter of course. And who can deny that it would have been just?”