With Rosendo again on the trail, Josè and Carmen bent once more to
their work. Within a few days the grateful Lázaro was sent to
Rosendo's _hacienda_, biding the time when the priest should have a
larger commission to bestow upon him. With the advent of the dry
season, peace settled over the sequestered town, while its artless
folk drowsed away the long, hot days and danced at night in the
silvery moonlight to the twang of the guitar and the drone of the
amorous canzonet. Josè was deeply grateful for these days of unbroken
quiet, and for the opportunity they afforded him to probe the child's
thought and develop his own. Day after day he taught her. Night after
night he visited the members of his little parish, getting better
acquainted with them, administering to their simple needs, talking to
them in the church edifice on the marvels of the outside world, and
then returning to his little cottage to prepare by the feeble rays of
his flickering candle Carmen's lessons for the following day. He had
no texts, save the battered little arithmetic; and even that was
abandoned as soon as Carmen had mastered the decimal system.
Thereafter he wrote out each lesson for her, carefully wording it that
it might contain nothing to shock her acute sense of the allness of
God, and omitting from the vocabulary every reference to evil, to
failure, disaster, sin and death. In mathematics he was sure of his
ground, for there he dealt wholly with the metaphysical. But history
caused him many an hour of perplexity in his efforts to purge it of
the dross of human thought. If Carmen were some day to go out into the
world she _must_ know the story of its past. And yet, as Josè faced
her in the classroom and looked down into her unfathomable eyes, in
whose liquid depths there seemed to dwell a soul of unexampled purity,
he could not bring himself even to mention the sordid events in the
development of the human race which manifested the darker elements of
the carnal mind. Perhaps, after all, she might never go out into the
world. He had not the faintest idea how such a thing could be
accomplished. And so under his tutelage the child grew to know a world
of naught but brightness and beauty, where love and happiness dwelt
ever with men, and wicked thoughts were seen as powerless and
transient, harmless to the one who knew God to be "everywhere." The
man taught the child with the sad remembrance of his own seminary
training always before him, and with a desire, amounting almost to
frenzy, to keep from her every limiting influence and benumbing belief
of the carnal mind.
The decimal system mastered, Carmen was inducted into the elements of
algebra.
"How funny," she exclaimed, laughing, "to use letters for numbers!"
"They are only general symbols, little one," he explained. "Symbols
are signs, or things that stand for other things."
Then came suddenly into his mind how the great Apostle Paul taught
that the things we see, or think we see, are themselves but symbols,
reflections as from a mirror, and how we must make them out as best
we can for the present, knowing that, in due season, we shall see the
realities for which these things stand to the human mind. He knew that
back of the mathematical symbols stood the eternal, unvarying,
indestructible principles which govern their use. And he had begun to
see that back of the symbols, the phenomena, of human existence stands
the great principle--infinite God--the eternal mind. In the realm of
mathematics the principles are omnipotent for the solution of
problems--omnipotent in the hands of the one who understands and uses
them aright. And is not God the omnipotent principle to the one who
understands and uses Him aright in the solving of life's intricate
problems?
"They are so easy when you know how, Padre dear," said Carmen,
referring to her tasks.
"But there will be harder ones, _chiquita_."
"Yes, Padre. But then I shall know more about the rules that you call
principles."
She took up each problem with confidence. Josè watched her eagerly.
"You do not know what the answer will be, _chiquita_," he ventured.
"No, Padre dear. But I don't care. If I use the rule in the right way
I shall get the correct answer, shall I not? Look!" she cried
joyfully, as she held up her paper with the completed solution of a
problem.
"But how do you know that it is correct?" he queried.
"Why--well, we can prove it--can't we?" She looked up at him
questioningly. Then she bent again over her task and worked
assiduously for some moments in silence.
"There! I worked it back again to the starting point. And it is
right."
"And in proving it, little one, you have proved the principle and
established its correctness. Is it not so, _chiquita_?"
"Yes, Padre, it shows that the rule is right."
The child lapsed into silence, while Josè, as was becoming his wont,
awaited the result of her meditation. Then:
"Padre dear, there are rules for arithmetic, and algebra, and--and for
everything, are there not?"
"Yes, child, for music, for art, for everything. We can do nothing
correctly without using principles."
"And, Padre, there are principles that tell us how to live?" she
queried.
"What is your opinion on that point, _queridita_?"
"Just _one_ principle, I guess, Padre dear," she finally ventured,
after a pause.
"And that, little one?"
"Just God."
"And God is--?" Josè began, then hesitated. The Apostle John had dwelt
with the Master. What had he urged so often upon the dull ears of his
timid followers?
The child looked up at the priest with a smile whose tenderness
dissolved the rising clouds of doubt.
"And God is--love," he finished softly.
"That's it, Padre!" The child clapped her little hands and laughed
aloud.
Love! Jesus had said, "I and my Father are one." Having seen him, the
world has seen the Father. But Jesus was the highest manifestation of
love that tired humanity has ever known. "Love God!" he had cried in
tones that have echoed through the centuries. "Love thy neighbor!"
Aye, love everything, everybody! Apply the Principle of principles,
Love, to every task, every problem, every situation, every condition!
For what is the Christ-principle but Love? All things are possible to
him who loves, for Love casteth out fear, the root of every discord.
Men ask why God remains hidden from them, why their understanding of
Him is dim. They forget that God is Love. They forget that to know Him
they must first love their fellow-men. And so the world goes
sorrowfully on, hating, cheating, grasping, abusing; still wondering
dully why men droop and stumble, why they consume with disease, and,
with the despairing conviction that God is unknowable, sinking at last
into oblivion.
Josè, if he knew aught, knew that Carmen greatly loved--loved all
things deeply and tenderly as reflections of her immanent God. She had
loved the hideous monster that had crept toward her as she sat
unguarded on the lake's rim. Unguarded? Not so, for the arms of Love
were there about her. She had loved God--good--with unshaken fealty
when Rosendo lay stricken. She had known that Love could not manifest
in death when he himself had been dragged from the lake that burning
afternoon a few weeks before.
"God is the rule, isn't He, Padre dear?" The child's unexampled eyes
glowed like burning coals. "And we can prove Him, too," she continued
confidently.
_Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open
you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there
shall not be room enough to receive it._
Prove Him, O man, that He is Love, and that Love, casting out hate and
fear, solves life's every problem! But first--_Bring ye all the tithes
into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house._ Bring your
whole confidence, your trust, your knowledge of the allness of good,
and the nothingness of evil. Bring, too, your every earthly hope,
every mad ambition, every corroding fear, and carnal belief; lay them
down at the doorway of mine storehouse, and behold their nothingness!
As Carmen approached her simple algebraic problems Josè saw the
working of a rule infinite in its adaptation. She knew not what the
answers should be, yet she took up each problem with supreme
confidence, knowing that she possessed and rightly understood the rule
for correctly solving it. She knew that speculation regarding the
probable results was an idle waste of time. And she likewise knew
instinctively that fear of inability to solve them would paralyze her
efforts and insure defeat at the outset.
Nor could she force solutions to correspond to what she might think
they ought to be--as mankind attempt to force the solving of their
life problems to correspond to human views. She was glad to work out
her problems in the only way they could be solved. Love, humility,
obedience, enabled her to understand and correctly apply the principle
to her tasks. The results were invariable--harmony and exceeding joy.
Josè had learned another lesson. Again that little hand had softly
swept his harp of life. And again he breathed in unison with its
vibrating chords a deep "Thank God!"
"Padre dear." Carmen looked up from a brown study. "What does zero
really mean?"
"It stands for nothing, child," the priest made reply, wondering what
was to follow this introduction.
"And the minus sign in algebra is different from the one in
arithmetic. What does it mean?"
"Less than nothing."
"But, Padre, if God is all, how can you say there is nothing, or less
than nothing?"
The priest had his answer ready. "They are only human ways of
thinking, _chiquita_. The plus sign always represents something
positive; the minus, something negative. The one is the opposite of
the other."
"Is there an opposite to everything, Padre?"
The priest hesitated. Then:
"No, _chiquita_--not a _real_ opposite. But," he added hastily, "we
may suppose an opposite to everything."
A moment's pause ensued. "That is what makes people sick and unhappy,
isn't it, Padre?"
"What, child?" in unfeigned surprise.
"Supposing an opposite to God. Supposing that there can be nothing,
when He is everywhere. Doesn't all trouble come from just supposing
things that are not so?"
Whence came such questions to the mind of this child? And why did they
invariably lead to astonishing deductions in his own? Why did he
often give a great start as it dawned again upon him that he was not
talking to one of mature age, but to a babe?
He tore a strip from the paper in his hand. Relatively the paper had
lost in size and quantity, and there was a distinct separation.
Absolutely, such a thing was an impossibility. The plus was always
positive and real; the minus was always relative, and stood for
unreality. And so it was throughout the entire realm of thought.
_Every real thing has its suppositional opposite._ The difficulty is
that the human mind, through long ages of usage, has come to regard
the opposite as just as real as the thing itself. The opposite of love
is hate; of health, disease; of good, evil; of the real, the
counterfeit. God is positive--Truth. His opposite, the negative, is
supposition. Oh, stupid, blundering, dull-eared humanity, not to have
realized that this was just what Jesus said when he defined evil as
the lie about God! No wonder the prophet proclaimed salvation to be
righteousness, right thinking! But would gross humanity have
understood the Master better if he had defined it this way? No, they
would have stoned him on the spot!
Josè knew that when both he and Rosendo lay sick unto death Carmen's
thought had been positive, while theirs had been of the opposite sign.
Was her pure thought stronger than their disbelief? Evidently so. Was
this the case with Jesus? And with the prophets before him, whom the
world laughed to scorn? The inference from Scripture is plain. What,
then, is the overcoming of evil but the driving out of entrenched
human beliefs?
Again Josè came back to the thought of Principle. Confucius had said
that heaven was principle. And heaven is harmony. But had evil any
principle? Mankind are accustomed to speak lightly and knowingly of
their "principles." But in their search for the Philosopher's Stone
they have overlooked the Principle which the Master used to effect his
mighty works--"that Mind which was in Christ Jesus." The Principle of
Jesus was God. And, again, God is Love.
The word evil is a comprehensive term, including errors of every sort.
And yet, in the world's huge category of evils is there a single one
that stands upon a definite principle? Josè had to admit to himself
that there was not. Errors in mathematics result from ignorance of
principles, or from their misapplication. But are the errors real and
permanent?
"Padre, when I make a mistake, and then go back and do the problem
over and get it right, what becomes of the mistake?"
Josè burst out laughing at the tremendous question. Carmen joined in
heartily.
"But, Padre," she pursued, "there are rules for solving problems; but
there isn't any rule or principle for making mistakes, is there?"
"Surely not, child!" Josè replied.
"And if I always knew the truth about things, I couldn't make
mistakes, could I?"
"No."
Josè waited for her further comments. They came after a brief
meditation.
"Well, then, God doesn't know anything about mistakes--does He?"
"No, _chiquita_."
"And He knows everything."
"Yes."
"Then, Padre dear, nobody can know anything about mistakes. People
just think they can--don't they?"
Josè thought hard for a few moments. "_Chiquita_, can you know that
two and two are seven?"
"Why, Padre dear, how funny!"
"Yes--it does seem strange--now. And yet, I used to think I could know
things just as absurd."
"Why, what was that, Padre?"
"I thought, _chiquita_, that I could know evil--something that God
does not and can not know."
"But--could you, Padre?"
"No, child. It is absolutely impossible to know--to really _know_--error
of any sort."
"If we knew it, Padre, it would have a rule; or as you say, a
principle, no?"
"Exactly, child."
"And, since God is everywhere, He would have to be its principle."
"Just the point. Now take another of the problems, _chiquita_, and
work on it while I think about these things," he said, assigning
another of the simple tasks to the child.
For an idea was running through the man's thought, and he had traced
it back to the explorer in Cartagena. Reason and logic supported the
thought of God as mind; of the creation as the unfolding of this
mind's ideas; and of man as the greatest idea of God. It also seemed
to show that the physical senses afforded no testimony at all, and
that human beings saw, heard and felt only in thought, in belief. On
this basis everything reduced to a mental plane, and man became a
mentality. But what sort of mentality was that which Josè saw all
about him in sinful, sick and dying humanity? The human man is
demonstrably mortal--and he is a sort of mind--ah, yes, that was it!
The explorer had said that up in that great country north there were
those who referred to this sort of mentality as "mortal mind." Josè
thought it an excellent term. For, if the mortal man is a mind at all,
he assuredly is a _mortal_ mind.
And the mortal mind is the opposite of that mind which is the eternal
God. But God can have no real opposite. Any so-called opposite to Him
must be a supposition--or, as Jesus defined it, the lie about Him.
This lie seems to counterfeit the eternal mind that is God. It seems
to pose as a creative principle, and to simulate the powers and
attributes of God himself. It assumes to create its universe of
matter, the direct opposite of the spiritual universe. And, likewise,
it assumes to create its man, its own idea of itself, and hence the
direct opposite of the real man, the divine idea of God, made in His
own image and likeness.
Josè rose and went to the doorway. "Surely," he murmured low, "the
material personality, called man, which sins, suffers and dies, is not
real man, but his counterfeit, a creation of God's opposite, the
so-called mortal mind. It must be a part of the lie about God, the
'mist' that went up from the ground and watered the whole face of the
earth, leaving the veil of supposition which obscures God from human
sight. It is this sort of man and this sort of universe that I have
always seen about me, and that the world refers to as human beings, or
mortals, and the physical universe. And yet I have been looking only
at my false thoughts of man."
At that moment he caught sight of Juan running toward him from the
lake. The lad had just returned from Bodega Central.
"Padre," he exclaimed breathlessly, "there is war in the country
again! The revolution has broken out, and they are fighting all along
the river!"
Josè turned into the house and clasped Carmen in his arms.