A Red Wallflower Part 70

'What do you mean by "logically"?'

'According to their due and proper sequences.'

'Well, what are you driving at?' asked Miss Frere a little worriedly.

'I will tell you. But I do not mean to drive _you_,' he said, again with a little laugh, as of self-recollection. 'Tell me to stop, if you are tired of the subject.'

'I am not in the least tired; how could you think it? It always delights me when people talk logically. I do not very often hear it.

But I never heard of logical religion before.'

'True religion must be logical, must it not?'

'I thought religion was rather a matter of feeling.'

'I believe I used to think so.'

'And pray, what is it, then, Pitt?' his mother asked.

'Look here, mamma. "If any man will serve me, _let him follow me_."'

'Well, what do you understand by that, Pitt? You are going too fast for me. I thought the love of G.o.d was the whole of religion.'

'But here is the "following," mamma.'

'What sort of following?'

'That is what I am asking. As it cannot be in bodily, so it must be in mental footsteps.'

'I do not understand you,' said his mother, with an air both vexed and anxious; while Miss Frere had now let her embroidery fall, and was giving her best consideration to the subject and the speaker. She was a little annoyed too, but she was more interested. This was a different sort of conversation from any she had been accustomed to hear, and Pitt was a different sort of speaker. He was not talking to kill time, or to please her; he was--most wonderful and rare!--in earnest; and that not in any matter that involved material interests. She had seen people in earnest before on matters of speculation and philosophy, often on stocks and schemes for making money, in earnest violently on questions of party politics; but in earnest for the truth's sake, never, in all her life. It was a new experience, and Pitt was a novel kind of person; manly, straightforward, honest; quite a person to be admired, to be respected, to be-- Where were her thoughts running?

He had sat silent a moment, after his mother's last remark; gravely thinking. Betty brought him back to the point.

'You will tell us what you think "following" means?' she said gently.

'I will tell _you_,' he said, smiling. 'I am not supposed to be speaking to mamma. If you will look at the way Christ went, you will see what following Him must be. In the first place, Self was nowhere.'

'Yes,' said Miss Frere.

'Who is ready to follow Him in that?'

'But, my dear boy!' cried Mrs. Dallas. 'We are human creatures; we cannot help thinking of ourselves; we are _meant_ to think of ourselves. Everybody must think of self; or the world would not hold together.'

'I am speaking to Miss Frere,' he said pleasantly.

'I confess I think so too, Mr. Dallas. Of course, we ought not to be _selfish;_ that means, I suppose, to think of self unduly; but where would the world be, if everybody, as you say, put self nowhere?'

'I will go on to another point. Christ went about doing good. It was the one business of His life. Whenever and wherever He went among men, He went to heal, to help, to teach, or to warn. Even when He was resting among friends in the little household at Bethany, He was teaching, and one of the household at least sat at His feet to listen.'

'Yes, and left her sister to do all the work,' remarked Mrs. Dallas.

'The Lord said she had done right, mamma.'

There ensued a curious silence. The two ladies sat looking at Pitt, each apparently possessed by a kind of troubled dismay; neither ready with an answer. The pause lasted till both of them felt what it implied, and both began to speak at once.

'But, my son'--

'But, Mr. Dallas!'--

'Miss Frere, mamma. Let her speak.' And turning to the young lady with a slight bow, he intimated his willingness to hear her. Miss Frere was nevertheless not very ready.

'Mr. Dallas, do I understand you? Can it be that you mean--I do not know how to put it,--do you mean that you think that everybody, that all of us, and each of us, ought to devote his life to helping and teaching?'

'It can be of no consequence what I think,' he said. 'The question is simply, what is "following Christ"?'

'Being His disciple, I should say.'

'What is that?' he replied quickly. 'I have been studying that very point; and do you know it is said here, and it was said then, "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple"?'

'But what do you mean, Pitt?' his mother asked in indignant consternation.

'What did the Lord mean, mother?' he returned very gravely.

'Are we all heathen, then?' she went on with heat. 'For I never saw anybody yet in my life that took such a view of religion as you are taking.'

'Do we know exactly Mr. Pitt's view?' here put in the other lady. 'I confess I do not. I wish he would say.'

'I have been studying it,' said Pitt, with an earnest gravity of manner which gave his mother yet more trouble than his words. 'I have gone to the Greek for it; and there the word rendered "forsake" is one that means to "take leave of"--"bid farewell." And if we go to history for the explanation, we do find that that was the att.i.tude of mind which those must needs a.s.sume in that day who were disposed to follow Christ.

The chances were that they would be called upon to give up all--even life--as the cost of their following. They would begin by a secret taking leave, don't you see?'

'But the times are not such now,' Miss Frere ventured.

Pitt did not answer. He sat looking at the open page of his Bible, evidently at work with the problem suggested there. The two women looked at him; and his mother got rid as un.o.btrusively as possible of a vexed and hot tear that would come.

'Mr. Dallas,' Miss Frere urged again, 'these are not times of persecution any more. We can be Christians--disciples--and retain all our friends and possessions; can we not?'

'Can we without "taking leave" of them?'

'Certainly. I think so.'

'I do not see it!' he said, after another pause. 'Do you think anybody will be content to put self nowhere, as Christ did, giving up his whole life and strength--and means--to the help and service of his fellow men, _unless_ he has come to that mental att.i.tude we were speaking of?

No, it seems to me, and the more I think of it the more it seems to me, that to follow Christ means to give up seeking honour or riches or pleasure, except so far as they may be sought and used in His service.

I mean _for_ His service. All I read in the Bible is in harmony with that view.'

'But how comes it then that n.o.body takes it,' said Miss Frere uneasily.

'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.