“I’m afraid,” Haynerd was saying, as he and Father Waite were wending their way to the Beaubien home a few evenings later, “that this Carmen is the kind of girl you read about in sentimental novels; the kind who are always just ready to step into heaven, but who count for little in the warfare and struggle of actual mundane existence. You get me? She isn’t quite true to life, you know, as a book critic would say of an impossible heroine.”

“You mistake, my friend,” replied Father Waite warmly. “She is the very kind we would see oftener, were it not for the belief that years bring wisdom, and so, as a consequence, the little child is crushed beneath a load of false beliefs and human laws that make it reflect its mortal parents, rather than its heavenly one.”

“But I’d like to see her under stress––”

“Under stress! Good heavens, man! You haven’t the slightest conception of the stress she’s been under most of her life! But your criticism unconsciously pays her the highest tribute, for her kind never show by word, deed, or look what they are enduring. That frail-appearing girl has stood up under loads that would have flattened you and me out like gold leaf!”

“Well, she doesn’t look it!” protested Haynerd tenaciously.

“Of course she doesn’t! Her kind never do! She’s so far and away ahead of mortals like you and me that she doesn’t admit the reality and power of evil––and, believe me, she’s got her reasons for not admitting it, too! Don’t presume to judge her yet. Only try humbly to attain a little of her understanding and faith; and try to avoid making yourself ridiculous by criticising what you do not comprehend. That, indeed, has been mankind’s age-long blunder––and they have thereby made asses of themselves!”

Edward Haynerd, or “Ned,” as he was invariably known, 16 prided himself on being something of a philosopher. And in the name of philosophy he chose to be quixotic. That one who hated the dissimulations and shams of our class aristocracy so cordially should have earned his livelihood––and a good one, too––as publisher of the Social Era, a sprightly weekly chronicle of happenings in fashionable society, would have appeared anomalous in any but a man gifted in the Greek sophistries and their modern innumerable and arid offshoots. Haynerd was a laughing Democritus, an easy-going, even-tempered fellow, doomed to be loved, and by the same graces thoroughly cheated by the world in general. He had in his rapid career of some thirty-five years dipped deeply into things mundane, and had come to the surface, sputtering and blowing, with his face well smeared with mud from the shallow depths. Whereupon he remarked that such an existence was a poor way of serving the Lord, and turned cynic. His wit was his saving grace. It was likewise his capital and stock-in-trade. By it he won a place for himself in the newspaper world, and later, as a credit asset, had employed it successfully in negotiating for the Social Era. It taking over the publication of this sheet he had remarked that life was altogether too short to permit of attempting anything worth while; and so he forthwith made no further assaults upon fame––assuming that he had ever done so––but settled comfortably down to the enjoyment of his sinecure. He had never married. And as justification for his self-imposed celibacy he pompously quoted Kant: “I am a bachelor, and I could not cease to be a bachelor without a disturbance that would be intolerable to me.” Yet he was not a misogynist. He simply shirked responsibility and ease-threatening risk.

“You see,” he remarked, explaining himself later to Carmen, “I’m a pseudo-littÉrateur––I conduct a ‘Who’s It?’ for the quidnunces of this blasÉ old burg. And I really meet a need by furnishing an easy method of suicide, for my little vanity sheet is a sort of social mirror, that all who look therein may die of laughter. By the way, I had to run those base squibs about you; but, by George! I’m going to make a retraction in next Saturday’s issue. I’ll put a crimp in friend Ames that’ll make him squeal. I’ll say he has ten wives, and eight of ’em Zulus, at that!”

“Don’t, please!” laughed Carmen. “We have enough to meet, without going out of our way to stir up more. Let it all work out now, as it will, in the right way.”

“In the right way, eh? Is that part of your doctrine? Say, don’t you think that in formulating a new religion you’re carrying coals to Newcastle? Seems to me we’ve got enough now, if we’d practice ’em.”

“My religion, Mr. Haynerd, is only the practice of the teachings of a Nazarene Jew, named Jesus,” she replied gently.

“Well, my religion is Socialism, I guess,” he said lightly.

“So’s mine,” she quickly returned. “I’m a thorough Socialist. So we meet on common ground, don’t we?” She held out her hand, and he took it, a puzzled expression coming into his face.

“Well,” he said, glancing about, “we’ll have to dispute that later. I see Father Waite is about to open this little religious seminar. But we’ll get back to the discussion of myself,” he added, his eyes twinkling. “For, like Thoreau, I prefer to discuss that subject, because there’s no other about which I know so much.”

“Nor so little,” she added, laughing and squeezing his hand as she turned from him.

The little coterie took their places around the dining room table, which was well strewn with books of reference and writing materials. Father Waite rapped gently for order. A deep, reverent silence fell upon the group. They had begun their search for God.

“Friends,” began Father Waite slowly, “we are inaugurating to-night a mission of the most profound significance. No question so vitally touches the human race as the one which we shall reverently discuss in this and subsequent meetings. I thought as I came in here to-night of the wisdom of Epictitus, who said, ‘What do I want? To acquaint myself with the true order of things and comply with it.’ I am sure no statement so fully expresses our common desire as that.”

“Just so!” interrupted Haynerd. “If Adam was a Baptist, I want to know and comply with the fact.”

A general laugh followed. Then Father Waite held up a hand and again became serious.

“Can we treat lightly even the Adam story, when we consider how much misery and rancor its literal acceptance has caused among mankind? No. Out of deepest sympathy for a world in search of truth, let us pity their stumblings, and take heed that we fall not ourselves.”

He paused. A hush lay upon the room. Carmen’s hand stole toward the Beaubien’s and clasped it tightly.

“In these days, as of old, it is still said, ‘There is no God!’ And yet, though the ignorant and wilful admit it not, mankind’s very existence is a function of their concept of a Creator, a sole cause of all that is. No question, economic, social, political, or other, is so vitally related to humanity as this: ‘Is there a God?’ And the corollary: ‘What is His relation to me?’ For there can be nothing so important as a knowledge 18 of truth. Can the existence of a God be demonstrated? Can He be shown to be beneficent, in view of the world’s testimony? What is our source of truth? If the Bible, then can its authenticity be established? The greatest of our so-called civilizations are known as Christian. But who can say by them what Christianity really is?”

“I am quite prepared to say what it is not!” again interrupted Haynerd.

“Doubtless,” resumed Father Waite. “And so are we all. But at present we are seeking constructive criticism, not solely destructive. There has been quite enough of that sort in the world. But, to go a step further, can we say positively that the truth is to be found even in Christianity?”

“Please explain your question,” said Miss Wall, with a puzzled look.

“The first essential is always facts,” he continued. “The deduction of right conclusions will follow––provided, as Matthew Arnold so tersely said, we have sufficient delicacy of perception, subtlety, wisdom, and tact. And, I may add, sufficient freedom from prejudice and mental bias––ah, there is the stumbling block!”

“Matthew Arnold,” ventured Haynerd, “was dubbed a first-class infidel, as I recall it.”

“Doubtless. As have been many of the world’s most earnest searchers. Yet he enunciated much truth, which we to-day are acknowledging. But, to resume, since Christianity as we know it is based upon the personality of a man, Jesus, we ask: Can the historicity of Jesus be established?”

“What! Do you mean: did he ever live?” queried Miss Wall in greater surprise than before.

“Yes. And if so, is he correctly reported in what we call the Gospels? Then, did he reveal the truth to his followers? And, lastly, has that truth been correctly transmitted to us?”

“And,” added Hitt, “there is still the question: Assuming that he gave us the truth, can we apply it successfully to the meeting of our daily needs?”

“The point is well taken,” replied Father Waite. “For, though I may know that there are very abstruse mathematical principles, yet I may be utterly unable to demonstrate or use them. But now,” he went on, “we are brought to other vital questions concerning us. They are, I think, points to which the theologian has given but scant thought. If we conclude that there is a God, we are confronted with the material universe and man. Did He create them? And what are their natures and import?”

“Well!” ejaculated Haynerd. “Seems to me you’ve cut out 19 a large assignment for this little party. Those are questions that the world has played football with for thousands of years. Do you think we can settle them in a few evenings’ study? I think I’ll be excused!”

“No! We can’t spare you,” laughed Father Waite. Then he glanced at Carmen, who had sat quiet, apparently unhearing, during the remarks. “I think you will hear things soon that will set you thinking,” he said. “But now we are going to let our traveled friend, Mr. Hitt, give us just a word in summation of his thought regarding the modern world and its attitude toward the questions which we have been propounding.”

The explorer leaned back in his chair and assumed his customary attitude when in deep thought. All eyes turned upon him in eager expectation.

“The world,” he began reflectively, “presents to me to-day the most interesting aspect it has assumed since history began. True, the age is one of great mental confusion. Quite as true, startling discoveries and astounding inventions have so upset our staid old mediaeval views that the world is hurriedly crowding them out, together with its God. Doctrines for which our fathers bled and burned are to-day lightly tossed upon the ash heap. The searchlight is turned never so mercilessly upon the founder of the Christian religion, and upon the manuscripts which relate his words and deeds. Yet most of us have grown so busy––I often wonder with what––that we have no time for that which can not be grasped as we run. We work desperately by day, building up the grandest material fabric the world has ever seen; and at night we repair the machine for the next day’s run. Even our college professors bewail the lack of time for solid reading and research. And if our young pursue studies, it is with the almost exclusive thought of education as a means of earning a material livelihood later, and, if possible, rearing a mansion and stocking its larder and garage. It is, I repeat, a grandly materialistic age, wherein, to the casual observer, spirituality is at a very low ebb.”

He thrust his long legs under the table and cast his eyes upward to the ceiling as he resumed:

“The modern world is still in its spiritual infancy, and does not often speak the name of God. Not that we are so much irreverent as that we feel no special need of Him in our daily pursuits. Since we ceased to tremble at the thunders of Sinai, and their lingering echoes in bulls and heresy condemnations, we find that we get along just as well––indeed, much better. And it really is quite bad form now to speak continually of God, or to refer to Him as anything real and vital. To be on 20 such terms of intimacy with Him as this girl Carmen is––in thought, at least––would be regarded to-day as evidence of sentimentalism and weakness.”

He paused again, to marshal his thought and give his auditors an opportunity for comment. Then, as the silence remained unbroken, he continued:

“Viewing the world from one standpoint, it has achieved remarkable success in applying the knout to superstition and limitation. But, like a too energetic housekeeper, it has swept out much that is essential with the dÉbris. When spirituality ceases to be real or vital to a people, then a grave danger threatens them. Materiality has never proved a blessing, as history shows. Life that is made up of strain and ceaseless worry is not life. The incessant accumulation of material wealth, when we do not know how really to enjoy it, is folly. To pamper the flesh, to the complete ignoring of the spirit, is suicide. The increased hankering after physical excitements and animal pleasures, to the utter abandonment of the search for that which is real and satisfying, is an exhibition of gross, mesmeric stupidity, to say the least. It shows that our sense of life is awry.”

“But the world is surely attempting its own betterment,” protested Haynerd.

“I grant you that,” replied Hitt. “But legislation and coercion are the wrong means to employ. They restrain, but they do not cure. They are only narcotics.”

“Oh, well, you are not going to change the race until the individual himself changes.”

“Have I disputed that?” said Hitt. “Quite the contrary, that is the pith of my observations. Reform is a hearthside affair. And no sane man will maintain that general reform can ever come until the individual’s needs are met––his daily, hourly, worldly needs.”

“I think I get your point,” said Father Waite. “It is wholly a question of man’s concept of the cause of things, himself included, and their purpose and end, is it not?”

“Quite so,” replied Hitt. “The restless spirit of the modern world is hourly voicing its discontent with a faltering faith which has no other basis than blind belief. It wants demonstrable fact upon which to build. In plain words, mankind would be better if they but knew how!”

“Well, we show them how,” asserted Haynerd. “But they don’t do as we tell ’em.”

“Are you quite sure that you show them how?” asked Hitt. “What do you ever do toward showing them how permanently to eradicate a single human difficulty?”

“Oh, well, putting it that way, nothing, of course.”

“Quite so, my friend. The relief we afford is but temporary. And so the world continues to wait for surcease from woe in a life beyond the grave. But now, returning to our survey, let me say that amid all the folly of vain pursuits, of wars and strife, of doleful living and pitiable dying, there are more encouraging and hopeful signs hung out to the inquiring thought to-day than ever before in history. If I misread not, we are already entered upon changes so tremendous that their end must be the revolutionizing of thought and conduct, and hence of life. Our present age is one of great extremes: though we touch the depths, we are aiming likewise at the heights. I doubt if there ever was a time when so many sensed the nothingness of the pleasures of the flesh. I doubt if ever there was such a quickening of the business conscience, and such a determined desire to introduce honesty and purity into our dealings with one another. Never was the need of religion more keenly felt by the world than it is to-day; and that is why mankind are willing to accept any religious belief, however eccentric, that comes in the guise of truth and bearing the promise of surcease from sin, sickness, and sorrow here this side of the grave. The world was never so hungry for religious truth; and this fact is a perpetual challenge to the Church. There is a tremendous world-yearning to know and to do better. And what is its cause? I answer, a growing appreciation of the idea that ‘the kingdom of harmony is within you.’”

“Jesus said that,” murmured Carmen, looking up.

“He but amplified and gave form to the great fact that there was an influence for better things always existent in the ancient Jews, that ‘something not ourselves,’ if you will, ‘that makes for righteousness.’ And he showed that that influence could be outwardly externalized in freedom from the ills which beset humanity.”

“Very good,” put in Haynerd. “And then, what?”

“That ‘something not ourselves’ is the germ of the true idea of God,” answered Hitt.

“Which makes God––?”

“Wholly mental.”

“Spirit?”

“Mind,” offered Carmen.

“The terms are synonymous,” said Hitt. “And now let me conclude with a final observation. Mankind’s beliefs are in a whirl. Ecclesiasticism is dying. Orthodoxy and conservatism are hanging desperately to the world’s flying skirts, but they will eventually drop off. No change in thought has been greater 22 than that concerning God. The absentee Lord who started the universe and then withdrew has gone to the scrap heap, with the ridiculous views of predestination and infant damnation. The idea of a God who at divers times interfered with His creation and temporarily set aside His own laws to convince puny man of His greatness, is likewise obsolescent. The world is slowly growing into a conception of a creator, of some kind, but at least mental, and universally present. Nay, more, available for all our problems and needs. And the end will be the adoption of that conception, enlarged and purified still further, and taken into the minutest affairs of our daily life––as this girl has done. The day of patient suffering in this world, under the spell of a promise of compensating reward in the heavenly future, has all but passed. We are gradually becoming conscious of the stupendous fact that the kingdom of all harmony, immortality, and good, is right here within us––and therefore can be naught but a consciousness of absolute good, perfectly attainable by humanity as the ‘old man’ of Paul is laid off, but not gained, necessarily, through what we call death.”

The silence which followed was broken at length by Miss Wall. “And what constitutes the ‘old man’?” she asked.

“Largely, I think,” said Hitt, “the belief that matter is real.”

“What?” exclaimed Haynerd, almost rising from his chair. “Matter, real?”

Hitt laughed. “I stand on my statement,” he replied.

Father Waite rose slowly, as if lost in thought. “History shows,” he said, meditatively, “that man’s progress has been proportionate to his freedom from the limitation of ignorance and undemonstrable belief. And that freedom has come as man’s concept of God has grown less and less material, and more and more spiritual. From the animal nature of the savage, to whom all is matter, down––or up––to the man of to-day, to whom mind is assuming ever greater ascendency, man’s progress has been marked by a throwing off of limiting beliefs, theological or other, in material power and substance. The development of the least material forces, steam, electricity, the X-ray, has come only as the human mind has thrown off a portion of its hampering material beliefs. I am astounded when I think of it, and of its marvelous message to future generations! For, from the premise that the creator of all things is spirit, or mind, as you will, comes the corollary that the creation itself must of necessity be mental. And from this come such deductions as fairly make me tremble. Carmen has told me of the deductions which her tutor, the priest JosÈ, drew from the single premise that the universe is infinite in extent––a premise which I think we all will accept.”

“There can be no question about it,” said Hitt, nodding his head.

“Well,” continued Father Waite, “that granted, we must likewise grant its creator to be infinite, must we not?”

“Certainly.”

“And that puts the creator out of the matter-class entirely. The creator must be––”

“Mind,” said Carmen, supplying the thought ever-present with her.

“I see no other conclusion,” said Father Waite. “But, that granted, a flood of deductions pours in that sends human beliefs and reasoning helter-skelter. For an infinite mind would eventually disintegrate if it were not perfect in every part.”

“Perhaps it is already disintegrating, and that’s what causes the evil in the world,” hazarded Haynerd.

“Utterly untenable, my friend,” put in Hitt. “For, granted an infinite mind, we must grant the concomitant fact that such a mind is of very necessity omnipotent, as well as perfect. What, then, could ever cause disintegration in it?”

“You are right,” resumed Father Waite. “And such a mind, of very necessity perfect, omnipotent, and, of course, ever-present, must likewise be eternal. For there would be nothing to contest its existence. Age, decay, and death would be unknown to it. And so would evil.”

“And that,” said Carmen, rising, “is my God.”

Father Waite nodded significantly to the others, and sat down, leaving the girl facing them, her luminous eyes looking off into unfathomed distances, and her face aglow with spiritual light.

“My God is infinite Good, to whom evil is unknown,” she said. “And good includes all that is real. It includes wisdom, intelligence, truth, life, and love––none of them material. How do I know? Oh, not by human reasoning, whereby you seek to establish the fact of His existence, but by proof, daily proof, and in the hours when the floods of suppositional evil have swept over me. You would rest your faith on your deductions. But, as Saint Gregory said, no merit lies in faith where human reason supplies the proof; and that you will all some day know. Yes, my God is Mind. And He ceaselessly expresses Himself in and through His ideas, which He is constantly revealing. And He is infinite in good. And these ideas express that goodness and infinitude, from the tiniest up to the idea of God himself. And that grandest idea is––man. Oh, no, not the men and women you think you see about you in your daily walk. No! no! They but counterfeit the divine. But the man that Jesus always saw back of every human concept. 24 That man is God’s own idea of Himself. He is God’s image and likeness. He is God’s reflection. That is the man we shall all put on when we have obeyed Paul and put off the old man, its counterfeit.”

“Then, Carmen,” said Father Waite, “you believe all things to be mental?”

“Yes, everything––man himself––and matter.”

“But, if God is mind, and infinite, He must include all things. Hence He must include this imperfect representation, called the physical man. Is it not so?”

“No,” returned the girl emphatically. “Did not Jesus speak often of the one lie about his Father, God? The material man and the material universe are but parts of that lie. And a lie is always a supposition; not real. All evil is contained in that supposition––a supposition that there is power and life and substance apart from God.”

“But who made the supposition?” queried Haynerd.

“A supposition is not made,” replied Carmen quietly. “Its existence is suppositional.”

“I don’t quite get that,” interposed Miss Wall, her brows knitting.

Carmen smiled down at the inquiring woman. “Listen,” she said. “The creator of all things is mind. You admit that. But you would have that mind the creator of evil, also. Yet, your own reasoning has shown that, on the premise of mind as infinite, such mind must be forever whole, harmonious, perfect. The thoughts and ideas by which that mind expresses itself must be likewise pure and perfect. Then that creative mind can not create evil. For, a mind that creates evil must itself be evil. And, being infinite, such a mind must include the evil it creates. We would have, then, either a mind wholly evil, or one of mixed evil and good. In either case, that mind must then destroy itself. Am I not right?”

“Your reasoning is, certainly,” admitted Miss Wall. “But, how to account for evil, when God is infinite good––”

“To account for it at all,” replied Carmen, “would be to make it something real. Jesus would account for it only by classing it as a lie about God. Now God, as the creative mind, must likewise be truth, since He is perfection and harmony. Very well, a lie is always the opposite of truth. Evil is the direct opposite of good.”

“Yes,” said Father Waite, nodding his head as certain bright memories returned to him. “That is what you told me that day when I first talked with you. And it started a new line of thought.”

“Is it strange that God should have a suppositional 25 opposite?” asked Carmen. “Has not everything with which you are concerned a suppositional opposite? God is truth. His suppositional opposite is the great lie of evil. God is good. Hence the same opposite. God is spirit. The suppositional opposite is matter. And matter is just as mental as the thoughts which you are now holding. God is real. Good is real. And so, evil and the lie are unreal.”

“The distinction seems to me theoretical,” protested Miss Wall.

Hitt then took the floor. “That word ‘real,’” he said, “is perhaps what is causing your confusion. The real is that which, according to Spencer, does not pass away. We used to believe matter indestructible, forever permanent. We learn that our views regarding it were very incorrect. Matter is quite destructible.”

“And yet,” said Father Waite, “in this universe of constant change, something endures. What is it but the mind that is God, expressing itself in such immaterial and permanent things as law, love, life, power?”

“Exactly,” replied Hitt. “But now we have been brought back again to the question of matter. If we can prove that matter is mental, and not real substance, we will have established Carmen’s premise that everything is mental. Then there remains but the distinction between the mind that is God, and its suppositional opposite, as expressed in human existence. Let us conclude, therefore, that to-night we have established, at least as a working hypothesis, that, since a thing existing implies a creator; and since the existent universe, being infinite, demands an infinite creator; and since a creator can not be infinite without being at once mind, perfect, eternal, omnipotent, omniactive, and good, we are fully justified in assuming that the creator of all things still exists, and is infinite, ever-present mind. Further than that we are not prepared to go, until we have discussed the questions of matter and the physical universe and man. Let us leave those topics for a subsequent meeting. And now I suggest that we unite in asking Carmen to sing for us, to crown the unity that has marked this discussion with the harmony of her own beautiful voice.”

A few moments later, about the small upright piano which the Beaubien had rented for Carmen, the little group sat in reverent silence, while the young girl sent out through the little room the harmonious expression of her own inner life, the life that had never left heaven for earth.