When JosÈ awoke the next morning he quickly put his hand under his pillow. Yes, the little coffer was there! It had not been a dream. He drew it forth and raised the cover. The yellow bars glittered in the morning rays sifting through the overhanging thatch at the window. He passed his hand gently across them. What a fortunate discovery! And how strangely brought about. They were rich! Now he could take Carmen and flee! His heart leaped within him as he hastily threw on his scant attire and went out into the balsamic air of the tropical morning. Rosendo had gone to the village of Boque, starting before sun-up, so DoÑa Maria announced. 203 Some sudden impulse had seized him, and he had set out forthwith, not stopping to discuss the motive with his faithful consort. JosÈ concluded his desayuno, and then summoned Carmen to the parish house for the day’s lessons. She came with a song on her lips.

“Don’t stop, chiquita! Sing it again––it is beautiful; and my soul drinks it in like heavenly dew!” he cried, as the child danced up to him and threw her plump arms about his neck.

She turned about and sat down on the dusty threshold and repeated the little song. The glittering sunlight streamed through her rich curls like stringers of wire gold. Cucumbra came fawning to her and nestled at her little bare feet, caressing them at frequent intervals with his rough tongue. Cantar-las-horas approached with dignified tread, and, stopping before his adored little mistress, cocked his head to one side and listened attentively, his beady eyes blinking in the dazzling light.

JosÈ marveled anew as he listened. Where had that voice come from? Had either of her parents been so gifted? he wondered. And yet, it was only the voicing of a soul of stainless purity––a conscience clear as the light that gilded her curls––a trust, a faith, a knowledge of immanent good, that manifested daily, hourly, in a tide of happiness whose far verge melted into the shore of eternity. As he sat with closed eyes the adobe hut, with its dirt floor and shabby furnishings, expanded into a castle, hung with richest tapestries, rarest pictures, and glittering with plate of gold. The familiar odors of garlic and saffron, which penetrated from the primitive kitchen of DoÑa Maria, were transmuted into delicate perfumes. The sun drew nearer, and suffused him with its glittering flood. The girl became a white-robed vision, and her song a benediction, voicing “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of good will.”

The song ended, and left the thought with him: “To men of good will?” Yes, to men of God’s will––the will that is good––to men of sound mind––that mind which was in Christ Jesus––the mind that knows no evil! To such is eternal peace.

“Chiquita,” the priest said gently, when the girl returned to him. “Your question was quickly answered yesterday, was it not?”

She laughed up into his face. “It was answered, Padre, before we asked it. God has the answers to all questions that could ever be asked. We would always know the answers if we thought the way He does.”

“But––tell me, chiquita, do you think He put that little box up there in the altar purposely for us?”

“No, Padre––I guess it was hidden there by some man, long ago, who was afraid he would lose it. And since he was afraid he would lose it, why––he did, for now we have it.”

“Yes, the thing that he greatly feared came upon him. But what is your idea regarding the way we happened to find it? Did God lead us to it?”

“God leads to everything good, Padre dear,” was the simple response.

“Of course. But, in this particular case––would we have been led to the little box if you had not asked your question of God?”

“Why not, Padre? People are always led right when they think right.”

“And so thinking right was the cause of this discovery, was it?” he pursued, relentlessly probing her thought to its depths.

“Why––yes, Padre––of course. We had to have money––you said so, you know. And you told me to ask for lots of pesos. Well, we both knew that God had already given us more pesos than we could ever know what to do with––He always does. He just can’t help giving Himself to everybody. And He gave Himself to us––why, we have always had Him! We are in Him, you know. And when anybody just knows that––why, he sees nothing but good everywhere, and he always has all that he needs.”

“All that he wants, you mean, chiquita?”

“No, Padre, not all that he wants. Just all that he needs. You might want all the gold in the world––but you wouldn’t need it.”

“No, that would be only a selfish, human want. It would be covetousness. But––you still think we were led right to the little box, do you?”

“I know it, Padre dear,” she replied emphatically. “When we think good, we see good. It always comes out that way. It is just as sure as getting the right answers to my problems in algebra when I think right about them.”

“And thinking right about them means using the right rule, does it not?”

“Yes––of course. If I didn’t use the right rule––why, what sort of answers would I get? All jumbled up!”

“Surely––perfect chaos. But still,” vigorously pursuing the subject, “you don’t think we happened upon the little box just by good luck?”

“Padre,” she shook her curls insistently, “things never happen, never! We see only what we think––always!”

“Yes, there surely does seem to be a definite law of cause and effect. But you did not think gold yesterday, chiquita.”

“Oh, Padre dear, what a bother you are! No, I didn’t think gold yesterday. I never think gold. But I always think good. And that is gold and everything else that we need. Can’t you see? And it wasn’t just because I thought good yesterday, but because I think good every day, that I saw the gold. It was because we needed it, and God had already given us all that we needed. And I knew that it just had to come. And so did you. Then, because we really needed it, and knew that it was right and that it must come––well, it did. Can’t you see?” Her little face was very serious as she looked up appealingly into his.

“Yes, chiquita, yes, I see. I just wanted to know how you would explain it. It becomes clearer to me every day that there are no such things as miracles––never were! Christ Jesus never performed miracles, if by that we mean that he set aside God’s laws for the benefit of mankind. But he acted in perfect accord with those laws––and no wonder the results seemed miraculous to dull-witted human minds, who had always seen only their coarse, material thought externalized in material laws and objects, in chance, mixed good and evil, and a God of human characteristics!”

“Yes––I––guess so, Padre dear––only, I don’t understand your big words.”

“Ah, chiquita, you understand far, far better than I do! Why, I am learning it all from you! But come, now for the lessons.”

And JosÈ had learned by this time, too, that between merely recognizing righteousness as right-thinking, and actually practicing it––putting it to the test so as to “prove” God––there is a vast difference. Things cannot be “thought” into existence, nor evils “thought” away––the stumbling block of the mere tyro in the study of mental cause and effect. A vast development in spirituality must precede those “signs following” before mankind shall again do the works of the Master. JosÈ knew this; and he bowed in humble submission, praying for daily light.

At dusk Rosendo returned. “Bien, Padre, I have it now, I think!” he cried excitedly, pacing back and forth in the little room.

“What, Rosendo?” asked the wondering priest.

“The secret of the little box! Come, while we eat I will tell you!”

The little group gathered about the table, while Rosendo unfolded his theory.

“I went to Boque this morning to talk with DoÑa Lucia. She is very aged, the oldest inhabitant in these parts. Bien, I 206 knew that she had known Don Ignacio, although she was not his slave. Her story brought back to me also the things my father had often told me about Don Ignacio’s last trip to SimitÍ. Putting all these things together, I think I now know how the little box came to be hidden in the altar of the old church.”

The old man’s eyes sparkled with happiness, while his auditors drew closer about him to drink in his dramatic recital. For Rosendo, like a true Latin, reveled in a wonder-tale. And his recitals were always accompanied by profuse gesticulation and wonderful facial expressions and much rolling of the eyes.

“Bien,” he continued, “it was this way. Don Ignacio’s possessions in GuamocÓ were enormous, and in the then prosperous city of SimitÍ he had stores and warehouses and much property. When the War of Independence neared its end, and he saw that the Royalist cause was lost, he made a last and flying trip to SimitÍ, going up the Magdalena river from Cartagena in his own champÁn, propelled by some of his still faithful slaves.

“Bien, he found that one of his foremen had just returned from the mountains with the final clean-up from La Libertad arrastras. These had been abandoned, for most of the slaves had deserted, or gone to fight the Spaniards. But the foreman, who was not a slave, but a faithful employe, had cleaned up the arrastras and hidden the amalgam until he could find a favorable opportunity to come down to SimitÍ with it.

“Now, when Don Ignacio arrived here, he found the town practically deserted. So he and the foreman retorted the amalgam and melted the gold into bars. But, just as they had completed their task, a messenger came flying to town and reported that a body of Royalist soldiers were at Badillo, and that they had learned that SimitÍ was the bodega of the rich GuamocÓ district, and were preparing to come over and sack the town. They were fleeing down the river to the coast, to get away to Spain as soon as possible, but had put off at Badillo to come over here. Fortunately, they had become very intoxicated, and their expedition was for that reason delayed.

“Bueno, at the news the foreman dropped everything and fled for his life. A few people gathered with the priest in the RincÓn church, the one you are using now, Padre. The priest of the other old church on the hill fled. Caramba, but he was a coward––and he got well paid for it, too! But of that later.

“Don Ignacio’s champÁn was at Badillo, and he had come across to SimitÍ by canoe. Bien, he dared not take this gold back with him; and so he thought of hiding it in one of the churches, for that is always a sacred place. There were people in his own church, and so he hurried to the one on the hill. Evidently, as he looked about in the deserted building for a 207 place to hide the bars, he saw that some of the bricks could easily be removed from the rear of the altar. A couple of hours sufficed to do the work of secreting the box. Then he fled across the shales to the town of Boque, where he got a canoe to take him down to the Magdalena; and there he waited until he saw the soldiers come across and enter the caÑo. Then he fled to Badillo. Don NicolÁs, son of DoÑa Lucia, was his boatman, and he says that he remained with your grandfather at that place over night, and that there they received the report that the Royalists had been terribly whipped in the battle––the battle of––Caramba! I forget––”

“Of Ayacucho,” suggested JosÈ.

“Just so,” resumed Rosendo. “Bien, there was nothing for the poor man to do but hasten down the river to Cartagena as fast as possible, for he knew not what might have befallen his family. He did not dare go back to SimitÍ then for the box. And so the gold was left in the altar.”

“Hombre!” exclaimed JosÈ. “Now I understand what he meant by that note in his old diary, which we had in my father’s house, in Spain! Of course! Arriving in Cartagena he went at once to the Department of Mines and tore out all the pages of the register that contained descriptions of his mineral properties. He intended some day to return to GuamocÓ and again locate them. And meantime, he protected himself by destroying all the registered locations. It was easy for him to do this, influential as he was in Cartagena. And doubtless at that stormy time the office of the Department of Mines was deserted. This note, Rosendo, I have read in his old diary, many times, but never knew to what it referred.”

“Hombre!” ejaculated Rosendo. “Bueno, the soldiers sacked SimitÍ and slaughtered all the people they could find. Then they set fire to the town, and left. My parents had fled to GuamocÓ.

“But now for the old church and the picture of the Virgin that was lost during the terrible storm when the priest fell dead. We will have to guess that later, when peace had been restored, the priest of the old church in prying around the altar discovered the loose bricks and the box behind them. Bueno, the night of the awful storm he had gone secretly to the church to remove the box. I remember that my father said the priest had arranged for my father to take him down to Bodega Central the very next day. You see, he was going to flee with the gold, the rogue! Bien, while he was in the church taking out the loose bricks, that storm broke––and, from what I remember, it was terrible! The heavens were ablaze with lightning; the thunder roared like cannon; and the lake rose right out of its 208 bed! Caramba! The door of the church crashed open, and the wind whistled in and blew out the candles on the altar. The wind also tore loose a beautiful picture of the Virgin that was hanging near the altar. The picture was blown out of its frame and swept off to the hills, or into the lake. It was never seen again, although the frame was found just outside the door. Perhaps it was the extinguishing of the candles and the falling of the picture that frightened the old priest so terribly. At any rate he ran from the church to his house, and when he reached his door he fell dead of apoplexy.

“Bueno, after that you could never get any of the SimitÍ people to enter the church again. They closed the doors and left it, just as it was, for they thought the curse of God had fallen upon it because it had been erected by the enemies of the RincÓn family, whose patron saint was the blessed Virgin herself. Well, the old altar began to crumble, and parts of it fell away from time to time. And when the people heard the bricks falling they said it was the bad angel that the Virgin had locked in there––the angel of Satan that had extinguished the candles on the altar that night of the storm. Caramba! And I believed it, too! I am a fool, Padre, a fool!”

“We are all fools, Rosendo, when we yield ourselves to superstition and false belief,” said JosÈ solemnly. “But you have worked out a very ingenious story, and I doubt not you have come very near to accounting in the right way for the presence of the little box in the altar. But now, amigo, come with me to my house. I would discuss a plan with you.

“It is this, Rosendo,” he said, when they were alone. “We now have gold, and the way has been providentially opened. Carmen is in great danger here. What say you, shall we take her and leave SimitÍ?”

Rosendo’s face became grave. He did not reply for some moments.

“Padre,” he said at length, “you are right. It would be best for her if we could get her away. But––you would have to leave the country. I see now that neither she nor you would be safe anywhere in Colombia if you left SimitÍ.”

“True, Rosendo,” replied JosÈ. “And I am sure that no country offers the asylum that America does––the America of the north. I have never been there, amigo; but of all countries I learn that it is the most tolerant in matters religious. And it offers the greatest opportunities to one, like Carmen, just entering upon life. We will go there. And, Rosendo, prepare yourself and DoÑa Maria at once, for we had best start without delay.”

But Rosendo shook his head. “No, Padre,” he said slowly. 209 “No. I could not go to the North with you; nor could Maria.”

“But, Rosendo!” exclaimed the priest impatiently, “why?”

“Bien, Padre, we are old. And we know not the language of those up there. Nor the customs. We could not adapt ourselves to their ways of life––no, not at our age. Nor could we endure the change of climate. You tell me they have cold, ice, snow, up there. What could we do? We would die. No, we must remain here. But––” his voice choked.

“Bien, Padre, do you go, and take the girl. Bring her up to be a power for good in that great land. We––Maria and I––will remain in SimitÍ. It is not permitted that we should ever leave. This has always been our home, and here we will die.”

JosÈ exclaimed again in impatience. But the old man was immovable.

“No, Padre, we could not make so great a change. Anywhere in Colombia would be but little different from SimitÍ. But up north––in that great country where they do those wonderful things you have told me about––no, Padre, Maria and I could not make so great a change.

“But, Padre,” he continued, “what will you do––leave the Church? Or will you still be a priest up there?”

The question startled JosÈ rudely. In the great joy which the discovery of the gold had stimulated, and in the thought of the possibilities opened by it, he had given no heed to his status respecting the Church. Yet, if he remained in the Church, he could not make this transfer without the approval of the Vatican. And that, he well knew, could not be obtained. No, if he went, he must leave behind all ecclesiastical ties. And with them, doubtless, the ties which still bound him to his distant mother and the family whose honored name he bore. It was not so easy a matter to take the girl and leave SimitÍ, now that he gave the project further consideration.

And yet he could not abandon the idea, however great his present sense of disappointment. He would cling to it as an ideal, some day to be realized, and to be worked up to as rapidly as might be, without exciting suspicion, and without abruptly severing the ties which, on serious reflection, he found he was not morally strong enough as yet to break.

“Bien, Rosendo,” he concluded in chastened tones. “We will think it over, and try to devise ways to accomplish the greatest good for the child. I shall remain here for the present.”

Rosendo’s face beamed with joy. “The way will be shown us some time, Padre!” he exclaimed. “And while we wait, we will keep our eyes open, no?”

Yes, JosÈ would keep his eyes open and his heart receptive. 210 After all, as he meditated the situation in the quiet of his little cottage that evening, he was not sorry that circumstances kept him longer in SimitÍ. For he had long been meditating a plan, and the distraction incident upon a complete change of environment certainly would delay, if not entirely defeat, its consummation. He had planned to translate his Testament anew, in the light of various works on Bible criticism which the explorer had mentioned, and which the possession of the newly discovered gold now made attainable. He had with him his Greek lexicon. He would now, in the freedom from interruption which SimitÍ could and probably would afford for the ensuing few months, give himself up to his consecrated desire to extract from the sacred writings the spiritual meaning crystallized within them. The vivid experiences which had fallen to him in SimitÍ had resulted in the evolution of ideas––radically at variance with the world’s materialistic thought, it is true––which he was learning to look upon as demonstrable truths. The Bible had slowly taken on a new meaning to him, a meaning far different from that set forth in the clumsy, awkward phrases and expressions into which the translators so frequently poured the wine of the spirit, and which, literally interpreted, have resulted in such violent controversies, such puerile ideas of God and His thought toward man, and such religious hatred and bigotry, bloodshed, suffering, and material stagnation throughout the so-called Christian era. He would approach the Gospels, not as books of almost undecipherable mystery, not as the biography of the blessed Virgin, but as containing the highest human interpretation of truth and its relation to mankind.

“I seek knowledge,” he repeated aloud, as he paced back and forth through his little living room at night; “but it is not a knowledge of Goethe, of Kant, or Shakespeare; it is not a knowledge of the poets, the scientists, the philosophers, all whom the world holds greatest in the realm of thought; it is a knowledge of Thee, my God, to know whom is life eternal! Men think they can know Homer, Plato, Confucius––and so they can. But they think they can not know Thee! And yet Thou art nearer to us than the air we breathe, for Thou art Life! What is there out in the world among the multifold interests of mankind that can equal in importance a demonstrable knowledge of Thee? Not the unproven theories and opinions, the so-called ‘authority’ of the ancient Fathers, good men though they may have been; not modern pseudo-science, half-truths and relative facts, saturated with materialism and founded on speculation and hypothesis; but real knowledge, a knowledge of Thee that is as demonstrable as the simplest rule in mathematics! 211 Alas! that men should be so mesmerized by their own beliefs as to say Thou canst not be known. Alas! for the burden which such thinkers as Spencer have laid upon the shoulders of stumbling mankind. For God can be known, and proven––else is Jesus responsible for the most cruel lie ever perpetrated upon the ignorant, suffering world!”

And so, putting aside a portion of his gold––his by right of inheritance as well as discovery––for the future purchase of such books and aids as he might require, JosÈ set his house in order and then plunged into such a search of the Scriptures as rendered him oblivious to all but the immediate interests of Carmen and her foster-parents. The great world again narrowed into the rock-bound confines of little SimitÍ. Each rushing morn that shot its fiery glow through the lofty treetops sank quickly into the hush of noon, while the dust lay thick, white, and hot on the slumbering streets of the ancient town; each setting sun burned with dreamy radiance through the afternoon haze that drew its filmy veil across the seething valley; each night died into a stillness, lonely and awful. Nature changed her garb with monotonous regularity; the drowsing children of this tropic region passed their days in dull torpidity; JosÈ saw nothing of it all. At times a villager would bring a tale of grievance to pour into his ears––perhaps a jaguar had pounced upon his dog on his little finca across the lake, or a huge snake had lured a suckling pig into its cavernous maw. At times a credulous woman would stop before his open door to dilate upon the thick worms that hung upon the leaves of the algarrobas and dropped their wool-like fibers upon the natives as they passed below, causing intermittent fevers. Perhaps an anxious mother would seek him for advice regarding her little son, who had eaten too much dirt, and was suffering from the common “jipitera,” that made his poor little abdomen protrude so uncomfortably. Again, Rosendo might steal in for a few moments’ mysterious, whispered talk about buried treasure, or the fables of El Dorado and ParimÉ. JosÈ had time for them all, though as he listened his thought hovered ever about the green verge of Galilee.

By his side worked Carmen, delving assiduously into the mysteries of mathematics and the modern languages. When the day’s work closed for them both, he often asked her to sing to him. And then, leaning back with closed eyes, he would yield himself to the soft dreams which her sweet voice called up from his soul’s unfathomed depths. Often they walked together by the lake on a clear night; and on these little excursions, during which they were never beyond Rosendo’s watchful eye, JosÈ reveled in the girl’s airy gaiety and the 212 spontaneous flow of her sparkling thought. He called her his domestic sunbeam; but in his serious moments––and they were many––he studied her with a wistful earnestness, while he sought to imbibe her great trust, her fearlessness, her unswerving loyalty to the Christ-principle of immanent Good. He would never permit restraint to be imposed upon her, even by Rosendo or his good wife. She knew not what it was to be checked in the freest manifestation of her natural character. But there was little occasion for restraint, for Carmen dwelt ever in the consciousness of a spiritual universe, and to it paid faithful tribute. She saw and knew only from a spiritual basis; and she reaped the rewards incident thereto. His life and hers were such as fools might label madness, a colorless, vegetative existence, devoid of even the elemental things that make mundane existence worth the while. But the appraisal of fools is their own folly. JosÈ knew that the torrid days which drew their monotonous length over the little town were witnessing a development in both himself and the child that some day would bear richest fruit. So far from being educated to distrust spiritual power, as are the children of this world, Carmen was growing up to know no other. Instead of the preponderance of her belief and confidence being directed to the material, she was developing the consciousness that the so-called evidence of the physical senses is but mortal thought, the suppositional opposite of the thought of the infinite God who says to mankind: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” JosÈ knew that his method of education was revolutionary. But he also knew that it was not wholly his; that the child had really taken this course herself, as if led thereto by a power beyond them both.

And so he watched her, and sought to learn from her as from Christ’s own loving and obedient disciple. It was because of his obedience to God that Jesus was able to “prove” Him in the mighty works which we call miracles. He said, “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God.” Plain enough, indeed! And Carmen did do His will; she kept the very first Commandment; she walked by faith, and not by the sight of the human senses. She had been called an “hada,” a witch, by the dull-witted folk of SimitÍ; and some day it would be told that she had a devil. But the Master had borne the same ignominy. And so has every pioneer in Truth, who has dared to lay the axe at the roots of undemonstrable orthodox belief and entrenched human error.

JosÈ often trembled for the child when he thought of the probable reception that awaited her in the world without, in 213 case she ever left SimitÍ. Would her supreme confidence in good ever be weakened by an opposite belief in evil? Would her glorious faith ever be neutralized or counterbalanced by faith in a power opposed to God? He wondered. And sometimes in the fits of abstraction resulting from these thoughts, the girl would steal up to him and softly whisper, “Why, Padre, are you trying to make two and two equal seven?” Then he would laugh with her, and remember how from her algebraic work she had looked up one day and exclaimed, “Padre––why, all evil can be reduced to a common denominator, too––and it is zero!”

As recreation from the task of retranslating his Greek Testament, JosÈ often read to Carmen portions from the various books of the Bible, or told her the old sacred stories that children so love to hear. But Carmen’s incisive thought cut deep into them, and JosÈ generally found himself hanging upon the naÏve interpretations of this young girl. When, after reading aloud the two opposing accounts of the Creation, as given in the first and second chapters of Genesis, she asked, “But, Padre, why did God change His mind after He made people and gave them dominion over everything?” JosÈ was obliged to say that God had not made a mistake, and then gone back afterward to rectify it; that the account of the Creation, as given in Genesis, was not His, but was a record of the dawning upon the human thought of the idea of the spiritual Creation; that the “mist” which went up from the earth was suppositional error; and that the record of the Creation which follows after this was only the human mind’s interpretation of the real, spiritual Creation, that Creation which is the ever unfolding of infinite Mind’s numberless, perfect ideas. The book of Genesis has been a fetish to human minds; and not until the limitations imposed by its literal interpretation were in a measure removed did the human mentality begin to rise and expand. And when, reading from Isaiah, the grandest of the ancient prophets, the ringing words, “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?” the child asked him if that did not refer to the very kind of people with whom they had daily intercourse, he had been obliged to say that it did, and that that sort of man was far, very far, from being the man of God’s own creating.

“The mist, child, which is mentioned in the second chapter of Genesis, is said to have gone up from the ground. That is, it went up from matter. And so it is typical of materialism, from which all evil comes. The material is the direct opposite of the spiritual. Every bit of evil that men think they can see, or know, or do, comes as testimony of the five material 214 senses. These might well be called the ‘ground’ senses. In the book of Genesis, you will notice that the account of the real comes first; then follows the account of its opposite, the unreal man of dust.”

“Surely, Padre!” she exclaimed. “The plus sign is followed by a minus sign, isn’t it? And the man made of dust is the real man with a minus sign before him.”

“The man of dust is the human mind’s interpretation of the spiritual man, dear child,” returned JosÈ. “All human beings are interpretations by the mortal, or human, mind of infinite Mind, God, and His spiritual Creation. The interpretation is made in the human mind, and remains there. The human mind does not see these interpretations outside of itself––it does not see real men, and houses, and trees, outside of itself––but it sees its mental interpretations of God, which it calls men, and houses, and trees, and so on. These things are what we might call mental concepts. They are the man and the creation spoken of in the second chapter of Genesis after the mist went up from matter, from the ground, from materialism, resulting in the testimony of the physical senses.”

“But, Padre, they are not real––these mental concepts?”

“No. They are illusions. They are formed in mentalities that are themselves wrong interpretations of the infinite Mentality, called God. They are formed without any rule or principle. They are made up of false thoughts, false opinions, beliefs of power opposed to God, beliefs in evil, in sickness, disaster, loss, and death. They are the results of educated and inherited and attached beliefs. They are largely made up of fear-beliefs. The human mentalities see these various beliefs combined in what it calls men and women, houses, animals, trees, and so on, all through the material so-called creation. It is this wrong interpretation that has caused all the suffering and sorrow in the world. And it is this false stuff that the good man Jesus finally said he had overcome.”

“How did he do it, Padre?”

“By knowing its nothingness, and by knowing the Allness of his Father, infinite Mind. He called this false stuff a lie about God. And he overcame that lie by knowing the truth––just as you overcome the thought that you cannot solve your algebraic problems by knowing the truth that will and does solve them.”

“But, Padre, you said once that Jesus was the best man that ever lived. Was he just a man?”

“Yes, chiquita. That is, the human minds all about him saw their mental concepts of him as a man. But he was a human concept that most clearly represented God’s idea of 215 Himself. Mortal, human minds are like window-panes, chiquita. When a window-pane is very dirty, very much covered with matter, only a little light can get through it. Some human minds are cleaner, less material, than others, and they let more light through. Jesus was the cleanest mind that was ever with us. He kept letting more and more light––Truth––through himself, until at last all the matter, even the matter composing the material concept that people called his earthly body, dissolved in the strong light, and the people saw him no more. That is called the Ascension.”

“And––Padre, don’t we have to do that way, too?” she asked earnestly.

“Just so, chiquita. We must, every one of us, do exactly as Jesus did. We must wash ourselves clean––wash off the dirty beliefs of power apart from God; we must wash off the beliefs of evil as a power, created in opposition to Him, or permitted by Him to exist and to use His children; we must wash off beliefs of matter as real and created by Him. We must know that matter and all evil, all that decays and passes away, all discord and disease, everything that comes as testimony of the five physical senses, is but a part of the lie about Him, the stuff that has the minus sign before it, making it less than nothing. We must know that it is the suppositional opposite of the real––it is an illusion, seeming to exist, yet evaporating when we try to define it or put a finger on it, for it has no rule or principle by which it was created and by which it continues to exist. Its existence is only in human thought.”

No, JosÈ assured himself, the Gospels are not “loose, exaggerated, inaccurate, credulous narratives.” They are the story of the clearest transparency to truth that was ever known to mortals as a human being. They preserve the life-giving words of him whose mission it was to show mankind the way out of error by giving them truth. They contain the rule given by the great Mathematician, who taught mankind how to solve their life-problems. They tell the world plainly that there seems to exist a lie about God; that every real idea of the infinite Mind seems to have its suppositional opposite in a material illusion. They tell us plainly that resisting these illusions with truth renders them nugatory. They tell us clearly that the man Jesus was so filled with truth that he proved the nothingness of the lie about God by doing those deeds that seemed marvelous in the eyes of men, and yet which he said we could and should do ourselves. And we must do them, if we would throw off the mesmerism of the lie. The human concept of man and the universe must dissolve in the light of the truth that comes through us as transparencies. And it were well if we set about 216 washing away the dirt of materialism, that the light may shine through more abundantly.

Jesus did not say that his great deeds were accomplished contrary to law, but that they fulfilled the law of God. The law is spiritual, never material. Material law is but human limitation. Ignorance of spiritual law permits the belief in its opposite, material law, or laws of matter. False, human beliefs, opinions, and theories, material speculations and superstitions, parade before the human mind as laws. Jesus swept them all aside by knowing that their supposed power lay only in human acceptance. The human mind is mesmerized by its own false thought. Even Paul at times felt its mesmerism and exclaimed: “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.” The very idea of good stirs up its opposite in the human consciousness. But Paul rose above it and saw its nothingness. Then he cried: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” He recognized the spiritual law that Jesus employed; and with it he overcame the mesmerism of the lie.

“To be a Christian, then,” said JosÈ, “means not merely taking the name of Christ, and, while morally opposing sin, succumbing to every form of mesmerism that the lie about God exerts. No, it is infinitely more! It means recognizing the nature of God and His Creation, including Man, to be wholly spiritual––and the nature of the material creation and mankind as their opposite, as mental concepts, existing as false interpretations of the spiritual Universe and Man, and as having their place only in the false human consciousness, which itself is a mental activity concerned only with false thought, the suppositional opposite of God’s thought. It means taking this Truth, this spiritual law, as we would take a mathematical rule or principle, and with it overcoming sin, sickness, discord of every name and nature, even to death itself. What, oh, what have so-called Christians been doing these nearly two thousand years, that they have not ere this worked out their salvation as Jesus directed them to do? Alas! they have been mesmerized––simply mesmerized by the lie. The millennium should have come long, long ago. It would come to-day if the world would obey Jesus. But it will not come until it does obey him.”

Day after day, week after week, month after month, JosÈ delved and toiled, studied and pondered. The books which he ordered through the Empresa Alemania, and for which for some two months he waited in trembling anticipation and fear lest they be lost in transit, finally arrived. When Juan brought them up from Bodega Central, JosÈ could have wept for joy. Except for the very few letters he had received at rare intervals, 217 these were the only messages that had penetrated the isolation of SimitÍ from the outside world in the two long years of his exile. His starving mind ravenously devoured them. They afforded his first introduction to that fearlessly critical thought regarding things religious which has swept across the world like a tidal wave, and washed away so many of the bulwarks of superstition and ignorance bred of fear of the unknown and supposedly unknowable.

And yet they were not really his first introduction to that thought, for, as he pored over these books, his heart expanded with gratitude to the brusque explorer whom he had met in Cartagena, that genial, odd medley of blunt honesty, unquibbling candor, and hatred of dissimulation, whose ridicule of the religious fetishism of the human mentality tore up the last root of educated orthodox belief that remained struggling for life in the altered soil of his mind.

But, though they tore down with ruthless hand, these books did not reconstruct. JosÈ turned from them with something of disappointment. He could understand why the trembling heart, searching wearily for truth, turned always from such as they with sinking hope. They were violently iconoclastic––they up-rooted––they overthrew––they swept aside with unsparing hand––but they robbed the starving mortal of his once cherished beliefs––they snatched the stale and feebly nourishing bread from his mouth, and gave nothing in return. They emptied his heart, and left it starving. What did it boot to tell a man that the orthodox dream of eternal bliss beyond the gates of death was but a hoax, if no substitute be offered? Why point out the fallacies, the puerile conceptions, the worse than childish thought expressed in the religious creeds of men, if they were not to be replaced by life-sustaining truth? If the demolition of cherished beliefs be not followed by reconstruction upon a sure foundation of demonstrable truth, then is the resulting state of mind worse than before, for the trusting, though deceived, soul has no recourse but to fall into the agnosticism of despair, or the black atheism of positive negation.

“Happily for me,” he sighed, as he closed his books at length, “that Carmen entered my empty life in time with the truth that she hourly demonstrates!”