Momentous changes, of far-reaching effect, had come swiftly upon Josè
de Rincón during the last few days, changes which were destined after
much vacillation and great mental struggle to leave a reversed
outlook. But let no one think these changes fortuitous or casual, the
chance result of a new throw of Fate's dice. Josè, seeing them dimly
outlined, did not so regard them, but rather looked upon them as the
working of great mental laws, still unknown, whose cumulative effect
had begun a transformation in his soul. How often in his seminary days
he had pondered the scripture, "He left not Himself without witness."
How often he had tried to see the hopeless confusion of good and evil
in the world about him as a witness to the One who is of purer eyes
than to behold evil. And he had at last abandoned his efforts in
despair. Yet that there must be something behind the complex phenomena
which men call life, he knew. Call it what he would--law, force, mind,
God, or even X, the great unknown quantity for which life's intricate
equations must be solved--yet _something_ there was in it all which
endured in an eternal manifestation. But could that something endure
in an expression both good and evil?
He had long since abandoned all study of the Bible. But in these last
days there had begun to dawn upon him the conviction that within that
strange book were locked mysteries which far transcended the wildest
imaginings of the human mind. With it came also the certainty that
Jesus had been in complete possession of those sacred mysteries. There
could be no question now that his mission had been woefully
misunderstood, often deliberately misinterpreted, and too frequently
maliciously misused by mankind. His greatest sayings, teachings so
pregnant with truth that, had they been rightfully appropriated by
men, ere this would have dematerialized the universe and revealed the
spiritual kingdom of God, had been warped by cunning minds into crude
systems of theology and righteous shams, behind which the world's
money-changers and sellers of doves still drove their wicked traffic
and offered insults to Truth in the temple of the Most High.
Oh, how he now lamented the narrowness and the intellectual
limitations with which his seminary training had been hedged about!
The world's thought had been a closed book to him. Because of his
morbid honesty, only such pages reached his eye as had passed the
bigoted censorship of Holy Church. His religious instruction had been
served to him with the seal of infallible authority. Of other systems
of theology he had been permitted only the Vatican's biased
interpretation, for the curse of Holy Church rested upon them. Of
current philosophical thought, of Bible criticism and the results of
independent scriptural research, he knew practically nothing--little
beyond what the explorer had told him in their memorable talks a few
weeks before in Cartagena. But, had he known it, these had unbarred
the portals of his mind to the reception of the new ideas which, under
a most powerful stimulus, were now flowing so steadily through them.
That stimulus was Carmen.
To meet with a child of tender years who knows no evil is, after all,
a not uncommon thing. For, did we but realize it, the world abounds in
them. They are its glory, its radiance--until they are taught to heed
the hiss of the serpent. Their pure knowledge of immanent good would
endure--ah, who may say how long?--did not we who measure our wisdom
by years forbid them with the fear-born mandate: "Thus far!" What
manner of being was he who said, "Suffer little children to come unto
me, and forbid them not?" Oh, ye parents, who forbid your little ones
to come to the Christ by hourly heaping up before them the limitations
of fear and doubt, of faith in the power and reality of sin and evil,
of false instruction, and withering material beliefs! Would not the
Christ pray for you to-day, "Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do"?
When Josè met Carmen she was holding steadfastly to her vision--the
immanence and allness of God. Each day she created the morrow; and she
knew to a certainty that it would be happy. Would he, clanking his
fetters of worldly beliefs, be the one to shatter her illusion, if
illusion it be? Nay, rather should he seek to learn of her, if; haply
she be in possession of that jewel for which he had searched a vain
lifetime. Already from the stimulus which his intercourse with the
child had given his mental processes there had come a sudden
liberation of thought. Into his freer mentality the Christ-idea now
flowed.
Mankind complain that they cannot "prove" God. But Paul long since
declared emphatically that to prove Him the human mind must be
transformed. In the light of the great ideas which had dawned upon him
in the past few days--the nature of God as mind, unlimited, immanent,
eternal, and good; and the specious character of the five physical
senses, which from the beginning have deluded mankind into the false
belief that through them comes a true knowledge of the cosmos--Josè's
mentality was being formed anew.
Hegel, delving for truth in a world of illusion, summed up a lifetime
of patient research in the pregnant statement, "The true knowledge of
God begins when we know that things as they are have no truth in
them." The testimony of the five physical senses constitutes "things
as they are." But--if Josè's reasoning be not illogical--the human
mind receives no testimony from these senses, which, at most, can
offer but insensate and meaningless vibrations in a pulpy mass called
the brain. The true knowledge of God, for which Josè had yearned and
striven, begins only when men turn from the mesmeric deception of the
physical senses, and learn that there is something, knowable and
usable, behind them, and of whose existence they give not the
slightest intimation.
It was Saturday. The church edifice was so far put in order that Josè
found no reason for not holding service on the morrow. He therefore
announced the fact, and told Carmen that he must devote the day to
preparation. Their lessons must go over to Monday. Seeking the
solitude of his house, Josè returned to his Bible.
He began with Genesis. "In the beginning--God." Not, as in the codes
of men, God last, and after every material expedient has been
exhausted--but "to begin with." Josè could not deny that for all that
exists there is a cause. Nor can the human mind object to the
implication that the cause of an existing universe must itself
continue to exist. Even less can it deny that the framer of the
worlds, bound together in infinite space by the unbreakable cables of
infinite laws, must be omnipotent. And to retain its omnipotence, that
cause must be perfect--absolutely good--every whit pure, sound, and
harmonious; for evil is demonstrably self-destructive. And, lastly,
what power could operate thus but an infinite intelligence, an
all-inclusive mind?
Now let the human mentality continue its own reasoning, if so be that
it hold fast to fact and employ logical processes. If "like
produces like"--and from thistles figs do not grow--that which mind
creates must be mental. And a good cause can produce only a good
effect. So the ancient writer, "And God saw every thing that He had
made, and, behold, it was very good." The inspired scribe--inspired?
Yes, mused Josè, for inspiration is but the flow of truth into one's
mentality--stopped not until he had said, "So God created man in
His own image"--
Wait! He will drive that home.
--"in the image of God"--not in the image of matter, not in the
likeness of evil--"created He him." But what had now become of that
man?
So Jesus, centuries later, "God is spirit," and, "That which is born
of the Spirit is spirit." Or, man--true man--expresses mind, God, and
is His eternal and spiritual likeness and reflection. But, to make
this still clearer to torpid minds, Paul wrote, "For in Him we live,
and move, and have our being." Then he added, "To be spiritually
minded is life." As if he would say, True life is the _consciousness_
of spiritual things only.
Is human life aught but a series of states of consciousness? And is
consciousness aught but mental activity?--for when the mind's activity
ceases, the man dies. But mental activity is the activity of thought.
"It is the activity of thought," said Josè aloud, "that makes us
believe that fleshly eyes see and ears hear. We see only our thoughts;
and in some way they become externalized as our environment."
His reasoning faculty went busily on. Thought builds images, or mental
concepts, within the mind. These are the thought-objects which mankind
believe they see as material things in an outer world. And so the
world is within, not without. Jesus must have known this when he said,
"The kingdom of heaven is within you." Did he not know the tremendous
effects of thought when he said, "For as a man thinketh, so is he"? In
other words, a man builds his own mental image of himself, and conveys
it to the fellow-minds about him.
Josè again opened his Bible at random. His eye fell upon the
warning of Jeremiah, "Hear, O earth, behold I will bring evil
upon this people, _even the fruit of their thoughts_!" Alas! he
needed no warning to show him now the dire results of his own past
wrong thinking. Evil is but wrong thinking wrought out in life
experience. And so the chief of sins is the breaking of the very
first Commandment, the belief in other powers than God, the
infinite mind that framed the spiritual universe.
"But we simply can't help breaking the Commandment," cried Josè, "when
we see nothing but evil about us! And yet--we are seeing only the
thoughts in our own minds. True--but how came they there? And whence?
From God?"
Josè was quite ready to concede a mental basis for everything; to
believe that even sin is but the thought of sin, false thought
regarding God and His Creation. But, if God is all-inclusive mind, He
must be _the only thinker_. And so all thought must proceed from Him.
All thought, both good and evil? No, for then were God maintaining a
house divided against itself. And that would mean His ultimate
dissolution.
Infinite, omnipotent mind is by very logic _compelled_ to be perfect.
Then the thoughts issuing from that mind must be good. So it must
follow that evil thoughts come from another source. But if God is
infinite, there is no other source, no other cause. Then there is but
the single alternative left--_evil thoughts must be unreal_.
What was it that the explorer had said to him in regard to Spencer's
definition of reality? "That which endures." But, for that matter,
evil seems to be just as enduring as good, and to run its course as
undeviatingly. After all, what is it that says there is evil? The five
physical senses. But that again reduces to the thought of evil, for
men see only their thoughts. These so-called senses say that the world
is flat--that the sun circles the earth--that objects diminish in size
with distance. They testify not to truth. Jesus said that evil, or the
"devil," was "a liar and the father of lies." Then the testimony of
the physical senses to evil--and there is no other testimony to its
existence and power--is a lie. A lie is--what? Nothing. Reason has had
to correct sense-testimony in the field of astronomy and show that the
earth is not flat. Where, indeed, has reason not had to correct
sense-testimony? For Josè could now see that all such testimony was
essentially false. "Things as they are have no truth in them." In
other words, sense-testimony is false belief. Again, a lie. And the
habitat of a lie is--nowhere. Did the world by clinging to evil and
trying to make something of it, to classify it and reduce it to
definite rules and terms, thus tend to make it real? Assuredly so. And
as long as the world held evil to be real, could evil be overcome?
Again, no. A reality endures forever.
Josè arose from his study. He believed he was close to the discovery
of that solid basis of truth on which to stand while teaching Carmen.
At any rate, her faith, which he could no longer believe to be
baseless illusion, would not be shattered by him.