"What?" exclaimed Mrs. Dallas bewilderedly.
"It is true, mother. I am Christ"s servant. The things are the same.
How should I not be the servant, the _bond-servant_, of Him who has made a free man of me?"
His tone was not excited; it was quiet and sweet; but Mrs. Dallas was excited.
"A free man? My boy, what are you saying? Were you not always free?"
"No, mother. I was in such bonds, that I have been struggling for years to do what was right--what I knew was right--and was unable."
"To do what was right? My boy, how you talk! You _always_ did what was right."
"I was never Christ"s servant, mamma."
"What delusion is this!" cried Mrs. Dallas. "My son, what do you mean?
You were baptized, you were confirmed, you were everything that you ought to be. You cannot be better than you have always been."
He smiled, stooped down and kissed her troubled face.
"I was never Christ"s servant before," he repeated. "But I am His servant now at last, all there is of me. I wanted you to know at once, and Miss Frere, I wanted her to know it. She asked me yesterday whom I was fighting? and I saw directly that I was fighting a won battle; that my reason and conscience were entirely vanquished, and that the only thing that held out was my will. I have given that up, and now I am the Lord"s servant."
"You were His servant before."
"Never, in any true sense."
"My dear, what difference?" asked Mrs. Dallas helplessly.
"It was nominal merely."
"And now?"
"Now it is not nominal; it is real. I have come to know and love my Master. I am His for life and death; and now His commands seem the pleasantest things in the world to me."
"But you obeyed them always?"
"No, mamma, I did not. I obeyed nothing, in the last resort, but my own supreme will."
"But, Pitt, you say you have come to know; what time has there been for any such change?"
"Not much time," he replied; "and I cannot tell how it is; but it seemed as if, so soon as I had given up the struggle and yielded, scales fell from my eyes. I cannot tell how it was; but all at once I seemed to see the beauty of Christ, which I never saw before; and, mamma, the sight has filled me with joy. Nothing now to my mind is more reasonable than His demands, or more delightful than yielding obedience to them."
"Demands? what demands?" said Mrs. Dallas.
Her son repeated the words with which the twelfth chapter of Romans begins.
""I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of G.o.d, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto G.o.d, which is your reasonable service; and be not conformed to this world.""
"But, my dear, that means"--
"It means all."
"How all?"
"There is nothing more left to give, when this sacrifice is presented.
It covers the whole ground. The sacrifice is a living sacrifice, but it gives all to G.o.d as entirely as the offering that imaged it went up in smoke and flame."
"What sacrifice imaged it?"
"The burnt-sacrifice of old. That always meant consecration."
"How do you know? You are not a clergyman."
Pitt smiled again, less brightly. "True, mother, but I have been studying all this for years, in the Bible and in the words of others who _were_ clergymen; and now it is all plain before me. It became so as soon as I was willing to obey it."
"And what are you going to do?"
"Do? I cannot say yet. I am a soldier but just enlisted, and do not know where my orders will place me or what work they will give me. Only I _have_ enlisted; and that is what I wanted you to know at once.
Mother, it is a great honour to be a soldier of Christ."
"I should think,--if I did not see you and hear your voice,--I should certainly think I heard a Methodist talking. I suppose that is the way they do."
"Did you ever hear one talk, mother?"
"No, and do not want to hear one, even if it were my own son!" she answered angrily.
"But in all that I have been saying, if they say it too, the Methodists are right, mother. A redeemed sinner is one bought with a price, and thenceforth neither his spirit nor his body can be his own. And his happiness is not to be his own."
Mrs. Dallas was violently moved, yet she had much self-command and habitual dignity of manner, and would not break down now. More pitiful than tears was the haughty gesture of her head as she turned it aside to hide the quivering lips. And more tender than words was the air with which her son presently stooped and took her hand.
"Mother!" he said gently and tenderly.
"Pitt, I never would have believed this of you!" she said with bitter emphasis.
"You never could have believed anything so good of me."
"What are you going to _do?_" she repeated vehemently. "What does all this amount to? or is it anything but dissenting rant?"
"Anything but that," he answered gravely. "Mother, do you remember the words,--"No man when he hath lighted a lamp covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but putteth it on a stand, that they which enter in may see the light"? Every Christian is such a lighted lamp, intended for some special place and use. My special use and place I do not yet know; but this I know plainly, that my work in the world, one way or another, must be the Lord"s work. For that I live henceforth."
"You will go into the Church?" cried his mother.
"Not necessarily."
"You will give up reading law?"
"No, I think not. At present it seems to me I had better finish what I have begun. But if I do, mother, my law will be only one of the means I have to work with for that one end."
"And I suppose your money would be another?"