Within the month Juan brought from Bodega Central the glad news of the
revolution's utter collapse. The anticlerical element, scenting
treachery in their own ranks, and realizing almost from the outset
that the end was a matter of only a few weeks, offered to capitulate
on terms which they felt would be less distressing to their pride than
those which their victors might dictate after inflicting a crushing
defeat. The conservatives did not take advantage of the _fiasco_, but
offered conciliation in the way of reapportioning certain minor public
offices, and a show of somewhat lessened clerical influence. Peace
followed rapidly. The fires of Jacobinism and popery were again
banked, while priest and politician, statesman and orator set up the
board and rearranged the pawns for the next play.
Nothing further had been heard of Padre Diego during the month,
excepting that he had arrived at the settlement of Juncal in a state
of extreme agitation, and had hurriedly set out that same day along
the trail to the San Lucas district. Rosendo, meanwhile, assured that
Diego would not return in the immediate future, yielded to Josè's
persuasion and departed at once for Guamocó on the news of the
revolution's close. Simití had remained unmolested; and now, with the
assurance of indefinite peace, the old town dropped quickly back into
her wonted state of listless repose, and yielded to the drowsy, dreamy
influences that hover always about this scene of mediaeval romance.
Josè had recovered his equipoise; and even when Juan, returning from
his next trip down to the river, brought the priest another sharp
letter from Wenceslas, written in the Bishop's name, he read it
without a tremor. The letter complained of Josè's silence, and
especially of his failure to assist the Catholic cause in this crisal
hour by contributions of Peter's Pence. Nor had any report been
received in Cartagena relative to the state of the parish of Simití,
its resources and communicants; and not a _peso_ had been offered to
the support of their so dear citadel at a time when its enemies
threatened its gates. Josè smiled happily as he penned his reply, for
he knew that with Rosendo's next return their contributions to
Cartagena would begin. That meant the quieting of Wenceslas,
regardless of whatever report Diego might make. And it was evident
from this letter that neither Diego nor the Alcalde had as yet
communicated anything of a startling nature to Wenceslas regarding
those things to which the priest had consecrated himself in Simití.
Josè's life was never before so full. And never so sweet. To his
little flock he was now preaching the Word of God only as he could
interpret it to meet their simple needs. Gradually, as he got closer
to them, he sought to enlighten them and to draw them at least a
little way out of the dense materialism of their present religious
beliefs. He also strove to give them the best of his own worldly
knowledge, and to this end was talking to them three nights a week in
the church building, where the simple people hung upon his words like
children enwrapped in fairy lore. He was holding regular Sunday
services, and offering Masses during the week for those of his
parishioners who requested them, and who would have been shocked,
puzzled, and unhappy had he refused to do so, or attempted to prove
their uselessness. He was likewise saying diurnal Masses for the
little Maria, to whom, as she lay breathing her last in his arms in
Cartagena, he had given the promise to offer them daily in her behalf
for, a year.
Nor was this the extent of his loving sacrifice for the girl. He had
already sent a small sum of money to Catalina by Captain Julio, who
promised to arrange at Calamar for its transmission, and for the safe
convoy of a similar small packet monthly to Cartagena and into the
hands of the two women who were caring for the infant son of Wenceslas
and the ill-fated Maria. He had promised her that night that he would
care for her babe. And his life had long since shown what a promise
meant to him. He knew he would be unable to learn of the child's
progress directly from these women, for they were both illiterate. But
Captain Julio brought an encouraging message from them, and assured
Josè that he would always make inquiry for the babe on his trips down
the river. Josè's long-distance dealings with the genial captain had
been conducted through Juan, who had constituted himself the priest's
faithful servant and the distant worshiper of the child Carmen.
"Padre Josè," Juan had said one day, striving vainly to hide his
embarrassment, "the little Carmen grows very beautiful. She is like
the Pascua-flower, that shines through the ferns in the _caño_. She is
like the great blue butterfly, that floats on the sunbeams that sift
through the forest trees."
"Yes, Juan, she is very beautiful."
"Padre, you love her much, is it not so?"
"Very much, indeed, Juan."
"And I, Padre, I, too, love her." He paused and dug the hard ground
with his bare toes.
"Padre," he resumed, "the little Carmen will marry--some day, will she
not?"
Josè started. The thought had never occurred to him! Carmen marry?
After all, she was human, and-- But, no, he could not, he would not,
think of it!
"Why, Juan--I--cannot say--"
"But, Padre, she will." Juan was growing bolder. "And--and, Padre,
I--I should like it if she would marry me. Ah, _Señor Padre_, already
I adore her!"
Josè could not be angry. The faithful lad was deeply sincere. And the
girl would reach the marriageable age of that country in all too short
a time.
"But, Juan," he remonstrated, "you are too young! And Carmen--why, she
is but a child!"
"True, Padre. But I am seventeen--and I will wait for her. Only say
now that she shall be mine when the time comes. Padre, say it now!"
Josè was deeply touched by the boy's earnest pleading. He put his arm
affectionately about the strong young shoulders.
"Wait, Juan, and see what develops. She is very, very young. We must
all wait. And, meanwhile, do you serve her, faithfully, as you see
Rosendo and me doing."
The boy's face brightened with hope. "Padre," he exclaimed, "I am her
slave!"
Josè went back to his work with Carmen with his thought full of
mingled conjecture and resolve. He had thus far outlined nothing for
the girl's future. Nor had he the faintest idea what the years might
bring forth. But he knew that, in a way, he was aiding in the
preparation of the child for something different from the dull, animal
existence with which she was at present surrounded, and that her path
in life must eventually lead far, far away from the shabby, crumbling
town which now constituted her material world. His task he felt to be
tremendous in the responsibility which it laid upon him. What had he
ever known of the manner of rearing children! He had previously given
the question of child-education but scant consideration, although he
had always held certain radical ideas regarding it; and some of these
he was putting to the test. But had his present work been forecast
while he lay sunken in despair on the river steamer, he would have
repudiated the prediction as a figment of the imagination. Yet the
gleam which flashed through his paralyzed brain that memorable day in
the old church, when Rosendo opened his full heart to him, had roused
him suddenly from his long and despondent lethargy, and worked a quick
and marvelous renovation in his wasted life. Following the lead of
this unusual child, he was now, though with many vicissitudes, slowly
passing out of his prison of egoism, and into the full, clear sunlight
of a world which he knew to be far less material than spiritual.
With the awakening had come the almost frenzied desire to realize in
Carmen what he had failed to develop within himself; a vague hope that
she might fill the void which a lifetime of longing had expressed. A
tremendous opportunity now presented. Already the foundation had been
well laid--but not by earthly hands. His task was to build upon it;
and, as he did so, to learn himself. He had never before realized more
than faintly the awful power for good or evil which a parent wields
over a child. He had no more than the slightest conception of the
mighty problem of child-education. And now Carmen herself had shown
him that real education must be reared upon a foundation _wholly
spiritual_. Yet this, he knew, was just what the world's educators did
not do. He could see now how in the world the religious instinct of
the child is early quenched, smothered into complete or partial
extinction beneath the false tutelage of parents and teachers, to whom
years and adult stature are synonymous with wisdom, and who themselves
have learned to see the universe only through the opaque lenses of
matter and chance.
"If children were not falsely educated to know all manner of evil," he
mused, "what spiritual powers might they not develop in adult life,
powers that are as yet not even imagined! But their primitive
religious instinct is regarded by the worldly-wise parent as but a
part of the infant existence, which must soon give place to the more
solid and real beliefs and opinions which the world in general regards
as established and conventional, even though their end is death. And
so they teach their children to make evil real, even while admonishing
them to protect themselves against it and eventually so to rise as to
overcome it, little realizing that the carnal belief of the reality of
evil which a child is taught to accept permeates its pure thought like
an insidious poison, and becomes externalized in the conventional
routine existence of mind in matter, soul in body, a few brief years
of mingled good and evil, and then darkness--the end here certain; the
future life a vague, impossible conjecture."
Josè determined that Carmen's education should be spiritual, largely
because he knew, constituted as she was, it could not well be
otherwise. And he resolved that from his teachings she should glean
nothing but happiness, naught but good. With his own past as a
continual warning, he vowed first that never should the mental germ of
fear be planted within this child's mind. He himself had cringed like
a coward before it all his desolate life. And so his conduct had been
consistently slavish, specious, and his thought stamped with the brand
of the counterfeit. He knew not how much longer he must struggle with
it. But he knew that, if he would progress, the warfare must go on,
until at length he should put it under his feet. His mind still bore
the almost ineradicable mold of the fear deeply graven into it by the
ignorant opinions, the worldly, material, unspiritual beliefs of his
dear but unwise parents. His life had been hedged with baleful shadows
because of it; and over every bright picture there hung its black
draping. As he looked back over the path along which he had come, he
could see every untoward event, every unhappiness and bitter
disappointment, as the externalization of fear in some form, the germ
of which had been early planted in the fertile soil of his plastic
brain. Without it he might have risen to towering heights. Under its
domination he had sunk until the swirling stream of life had eddied
him upon the desolate shores of Simití. In the hands of the less
fearful he had been a puppet. In his own eyes he was a fear-shaped
manikin, the shadow of God's real man. The fear germ had multiplied
within him a billionfold, and in the abundant crop had yielded a
mental depression and deep-seated melancholy that had utterly stifled
his spirit and dried the marrow of his bones.
They were not pleasant, these thoughts. But now Josè could draw from
them something salutary, something definite to shape and guide his
work with Carmen. She, at least, should not grow up the slave of
fearsome opinions and beliefs born of dense ignorance. Nor should the
baseless figments of puerile religious systems find lodgment within
her clear thought. The fear element, upon which so much of so-called
Christian belief has been reared, and the damnable suggestions of hell
and purgatory, of unpardonable sin and endless suffering, the
stock-in-trade of poet, priest and prelate up to and overlapping our
present brighter day, should remain forever a closed volume to this
child, a book as wildly imaginative and as unacceptable as the fabled
travels of Maundeville.
"I believe," he would murmur to himself, as he strolled alone in the
dusk beside the limpid lake, "that if I could plant myself firmly on
the Scriptural statement that God is love, that He is good; and if I
could regard Him as infinite mind, while at the same time striving to
recognize no reality, no intelligence or life in things material, I
could eventually triumph over the whole false concept, and rise out of
beliefs of sickness, discord, and death, into an unalterable
consciousness of good only."
He had made a beginning when he strove to realize that man is not
separated from God; that God is not a far-off abstraction; and that
infinite mind is, as Carmen insisted, "everywhere."
"It is only the five physical senses that tell us evil is real," he
reflected. "Indeed, without their testimony we would be utterly
unconscious of evil! And I am convinced that their testimony is
specious, and that we see, hear, and feel only in thought, or in
belief. We think the sensations of seeing, hearing, and feeling come
to us through the medium of these senses as outward, fleshly
contrivances, which in some way communicate with the mind and bridge
the gulf between the material and the mental. In reality, we do but
see, hear and feel _our own thoughts_! The philosophers, many of them,
said as much centuries ago. So did Jesus. But--the human mind has been
mesmerized, simply mesmerized!"
These things he pondered day by day, and watched to see them wrought
out in the life of Carmen. "Ah, yes," he would sometimes say, as
spiritual ideas unfolded to him, "you evolve beautiful theories, my
good Josè, and you say many brave things. But, when the day of
judgment comes, as it did when Juan brought you the news of the
revolution, then, alas! your theories fly to pieces, and you find
yourself very human, very material, and your God hidden behind the
distant clouds. When the test comes, you find you cannot prove your
beliefs."
Yet the man did not often indulge in self-condemnation, for somehow he
knew his ideas were right. When he realized the character and specious
nature of evil, and realized, too, that "by thy words thou shalt be
justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned," he knew that the
stirring up of evil by good, and the shaking of the ancient
foundations of carnal belief within his mentality, might mean fiery
trials, still awaiting him. And yet, the crown was for him who should
overcome. Overcome what? The false opinions of mankind, the ignorant
beliefs in matter and evil. For what, after all, is responsible for
all the evil in this world of ours? What but a false concept of God?
"And if I keep my nose buried forever in matter, how can I hope to see
God, who is Spirit? And how can I follow the Christ unless I think as
he thought?" he said.
But it was in the classroom with Carmen that he always received his
greatest stimulus.
"See, Padre dear," she said one day, "if I erase a wrong figure and
then set down the right one instead, I get the right answer. And it is
just like that when we think. If we always put good thoughts in the
place of the bad ones, why, everything comes out right, doesn't it?"
Josè smiled at the apt comparison. "Of course, _chiquita_," he
replied. "Only in your algebra you know which are the right figures to
put down. But how do you know which thoughts are right?"
"I always know, Padre. I can't make even the least mistake about the
thoughts. Why, it is easier to mistake with figures than it is with
thoughts."
"How is that, little one?"
"Because, if you always think God _first_, you can never think wrong.
Now can you? And if you think of other things first you are almost
sure to think of the wrong thing, is it not so, Padre?"
The priest had to admit the force of her statement.
"And, you know, Padre dear," the girl went on, "when I understand the
right rule in algebra, the answer just comes of itself. Well, it is so
with everything when we understand that God is the right rule--you
call Him principle, don't you?--well, when we know that He is the only
rule for everything, then the answers to all our problems just come of
themselves."
Aye, thought Josè, the healing works of the great Master were only the
"signs following," the "answers" to the people's problems, the sure
evidence that Jesus understood the Christ-principle.
"And when you say that God is the right rule for everything, just what
do you mean, _chiquita_?"
"That He is everywhere," the girl replied.
"That He is infinite and omnipresent good, then?" the priest
amplified.
"He is good--and everywhere," the child repeated firmly.
"And the necessary corollary of that is, that there is no evil," Josè
added.
"I don't know what you mean by corollary, Padre dear. It's a big word,
isn't it?"
"I mean--I think I know how you would put it, little one--if God is
everywhere, then there is nothing bad. Is that right?"
"Yes, Padre. Don't you see?"
Assuredly he saw. He saw that a fact can have no real opposite; that
any predicated opposite must be supposition. And evil is the
supposition; whereas good is the fact. The latter is "plus," and the
former "minus." No wonder the origin of evil has never been found,
although humanity has struggled with the problem for untold ages!
Jesus diagnosed evil as a lie. He gave it the minus sign, the sign of
nothingness. The world has tried to make it positive, something. From
the false sense of evil as a reality has come the equally false sense
of man's estrangement from God, through some fictitious "fall"--a
curse, truly, upon the human intellect, but not of God's infliction.
For false belief always curses with a reign of discord, which endures
until the belief becomes corrected by truth. From the beginning, the
human race has vainly sought to postulate an equal and opposite to
everything in the realm of both the spiritual and material. It has
been hypnotized, obsessed, blinded, by this false zeal. The resultant
belief in "dualism" has rendered hate the equal and opposite of Love,
evil the equal and opposite of Good, and discord the eternal opponent
of Harmony. To cope with evil as a reality is to render it immortal in
our consciousness. To know its unreality is to master it.
"Throughout life," Josè mused, "every positive has its negative, every
affirmation its denial. But the opposites never mingle. And, moreover,
the positive always dispels the negative, thus proving the specious
nature of the latter. Darkness flees before the light, and ignorance
dissolves in the morning rays of knowledge. Both cannot be real. The
positive alone bears the stamp of immortality. Carmen has but one
fundamental rule: _God is everywhere_. This gives her a sense of
immanent power, with which all things are possible."
Thus with study and meditation the days flowed past, with scarcely a
ripple to break their quiet monotony. Rosendo came, and went again. He
brought back at the end of his first month's labors on the newly
discovered deposit some ninety _pesos_ in gold. He had reached the
bedrock, and the deposit was yielding its maximum; but the yield would
continue for many months, he said. His exultation overleaped all
bounds, and it was with difficulty that Josè could bring him to a
consideration of the problems still confronting them.
"I think, Rosendo," said the priest, "that we will send, say, thirty
_pesos_ this month to Cartagena; the same next month; and then
increase the amount slightly. This method is sure to have a beneficial
effect upon the ecclesiastical authorities there."
"Fine!" ejaculated Rosendo. "And how will you send it, Padre?"
Josè pondered the situation. "We cannot send the gold direct to the
Bishop, for that would excite suspicion. Masses, you know, are not
paid for in gold dust and nuggets. And we have no money. Nor could we
get the gold exchanged for bills here in Simití, even if we dared run
the risk of our discovery becoming known."
For the Alcalde was already nosing about in an effort to ascertain the
source of the gold with which Rosendo had just cancelled his debt and
purchased further supplies. Josè now saw that, under existing
conditions, it would be utterly impossible for Rosendo to obtain
titles to mineral properties through Don Mario. He spent hours seeking
a solution of the involved problem. Then, just before Rosendo departed
again for the mountains, Josè called him into the parish house.
"Rosendo, I think I see a way. Bring me one of the paper boxes of
candles which you have just purchased from Don Mario."
"Carumba! Padre," queried the surprised Rosendo, as he returned with
the box, "and what is this for?"
"I merely want to get the name of the firm which sold the candles. The
Empresa Alemania, Barranquilla. Good! Now listen. I have a method that
is roundabout, but certainly promises much. I will write to the firm,
appointing them my agents while I pose as Josè Rincón, miner. The
agency established, I will send them our gold each month, asking them
to return to me its equivalent in bills, deducting, of course, their
commission. Then I will send these bills, or such part as we deem
wise, to Wenceslas. Each month Juan, who will be sworn to secrecy,
will convey the gold to Bodega Central in time to meet Captain Julio's
boat. The captain will both deliver the gold to the Empresa Alemania,
and bring back the bills in exchange. Then, from Simití, and in the
regular manner, I will send the small packet of bills to Wenceslas as
contributions from the parish. We thus throw Don Mario off the scent,
and arouse no suspicion in any quarter. As I receive mail matter at
various times, the Alcalde will not know but what I also receive
consignments of money from my own sources. I think the plan will work
out. Juan already belongs to us. What, then, is there to fear?"
And so, as it was arranged, it worked out. Juan reveled in the honor
of such intimate relations with the priest and Rosendo, and especially
in the thought that he was working in secret for the girl he adored.
By the time Rosendo returned again from Guamocó, Josè had sent his
first consignment of money to the Bishop, carefully directing it to
Wenceslas, personally, and had received an acknowledgment in a letter
which caused him deep thought.
"To further stimulate the piety of your communicants," it read,
"and arouse them to more generous contributions to our glorious
cause, you will inform them that, if their monetary contributions
do not diminish in amount for the coming year, they will be made
participants in the four solemn Novenas which will be offered
by His Grace, the Bishop of Cartagena. Moreover, if their
contributions increase, the names of the various contributors will
be included in the one hundred Masses which are to be offered
in December at the Shrine of Our Lady of Chiquinquía for their
spiritual and temporal welfare. Contributors will also have a High
Mass after death, offered by one of His Grace's assistants, as
soon as the notification of death is received here. In addition
to these, His Grace, always mindful of the former importance of
the parish of Simití, and acknowledging as its special patron
the ever blessed Virgin, has arranged to bestow the episcopal
blessing upon an image of the Sacred Heart, which will be shipped
to his faithful children in Simití when the amount of their
contributions shall have met the expense thereof. Let us keep ever
in mind the pious words of the Bl. Margaret Mary, who has
conveyed to us the assurance which she received directly from Our
Blessed Lord that He finds great joy in beholding His Sacred
Heart visibly represented, that it may touch the hard hearts
of mankind. Our blessed Saviour promised the gracious Margaret
Mary that He would pour out abundantly of His rich treasure upon
all who honor this image, and that it shall draw down from heaven
every blessing upon those who adore and reverence it. Inform your
parishioners that the recital of the offering, 'O, Sacred Heart
of Jesus, may it be everywhere adored!' carries a hundred days'
indulgence each time.
"You will bear in mind that the General Intention for this month
is The Conversion of America. Though our Church is founded on the
Rock, and is to last forever, so that the gates of hell shall
never prevail against her, nevertheless she has been called upon
to withstand many assaults from her enemies, the advocates of
_modernism_, in the land of liberal thought to our north. These
assaults, though painful to her, can never be fatal to her
spiritual life, although they unfortunately are so to many of her
dear children, who yield to the insidious persuasions of the
heretics who do the work of Satan among the Lord's sheep. New and
fantastic religions are springing up like noxious weeds in America
of the north, and increasing infidelity is apparent on every hand.
The Christ prayed that there might be one fold and one shepherd.
It is for us this month to pray for the great day when they will
be accomplished. But we must be united over the interests of the
Sacred Heart. Therefore, liberal plenary indulgences will be
granted to those of the faithful who contribute to this glorious
cause, so dear to the heart of the blessed Saviour. We enclose
leaflets indicating the three degrees, consisting of the Morning
Offering, Our Father and ten Hail Marys daily, for the Pope and
his interests, and the degree of reparation, by which a plenary
indulgence may be gained.
"Stimulate your parishioners to compete joyfully for the statue of
the Blessed Virgin, which we mentioned to you in our former
communication. Teach them, especially, their entire dependence on
Mary, on her prayers to God for their deliverance and welfare.
Reveal to them her singularly powerful influence in the shaping of
all great historical events of the world; how never has she
refused our prayers to exert her mighty influence with her
all-potent Son, when she has been appealed to in sincerity, for it
rejoices the Sacred Heart of Jesus to yield to the requests of His
Blessed Mother. Mary is omnipotent, for she can ask no favor of
her Son that He will not grant. Competition for possession of this
sacred image, which carries the potent blessing of His Holiness,
should be regarded a privilege, and you will so impress it upon
the minds of your parishioners.
"Finally, His Grace requests that you will immediately procure
whatever information you may regarding the mineral resources of
the district of Guamocó, and indicate upon a sketch the location
of its various mines, old or new, as known to its inhabitants.
Diligent and careful inquiry made by yourself among the people of
the district will reveal many hidden facts regarding its
resources, which should be made known to His Grace at the earliest
possible moment, in view of the active preparations now in
progress to forestall the precipitation of another political
uprising with its consequent strain upon our Holy Church."
"Money! money! money!" cried Josè. "One would think the Christ had
established his Church solely for gold!"
He folded the letter and looked out through the rear door to where
Carmen sat, teaching Cucumbra a new trick. He realized then that never
before had he been so far from the Holy Catholic faith as at that
moment. And Carmen--
"Good God!" he muttered, as his eyes rested upon the child. "If the
Church should get possession of Carmen, what would it do with her?
Would it not set its forces to work to teach her that evil is a
reality--that it is as powerful as good--that God formed man and the
universe out of dust--that Jesus came down from a starry heaven that
he might die to appease the wrath of a man-like Father--that Mary
pleads with the Lord and Jesus, and by her powerful logic induces them
to spare mankind and grant their foolish desires--all the dribble and
rubbish of outlandish theology that has accumulated around the nucleus
of pure Christianity like a gathering snowball throughout the ages! To
make the great States up north dominantly Catholic, Rome must--simply
_must_--have the children to educate, that she may saturate their
absorbent minds with these puerile, undemonstrable, pagan beliefs
before the child has developed its own independent thought. How wise
is she--God, how worldly wise and cunning! And I still her priest--"
Carmen came bounding in, followed pellmell by Cucumbra. Cantar-las-horas
stalked dignifiedly after her, and stopped at the threshold, where he
stood with cocked head and blinking eyes, wondering what move his
animated young mistress would make next.
"Padre!" she exclaimed, "the sun is down, and it is time for our
walk!"
She seized his hand and drew him out into the road. The play of her
expression as she looked up and laughed into his face was like the
dance of sunbeams on moving water. They turned down the narrow street
which led to the lake. As was her wont, in every object about her, in
every trifling event, the child discovered rich treasures of
happiness. The pebbles which she tossed with her bare toes were mines
of delight. The pigs, which turned up their snouts expectantly as she
stooped to scratch their dusty backs--the matronly hens that followed
clucking after her--the black babies that toddled out to greet the
_Cura_--all yielded a wealth of delight and interest. She seemed to
Josè to uncover joy by a means not unlike the divining rod, which
points to hidden gold where to the eye there is naught but barren
ground.
Near the margin of the lake they stopped at the door of a cottage,
where they were awaited by the matron who displayed a finger wrapped
in a bit of cloth. She greeted the priest courteously.
"_Señor Padre_," she said, "this morning I had the misfortune to cut
my finger while peeling yuccas, and I am not sure whether a piece of
the skin went into the pot or not. _Bueno_, the yuccas are all cooked;
and now my man says he will not eat them, for this is Friday, and
there may be meat with the yuccas. What shall I do? Was it wicked to
cook the yuccas, not knowing if a bit of the skin from my finger had
fallen into the pot?"
Josè stood dumfounded before such ignorant credulity. Then he shook
his head and replied sadly, "No, señora, it was not wicked. Tell your
man he may eat the yuccas."
The woman's face brightened, and she hastened into the house to
apprise her spouse of the _Cura's_ decision.
"God help us!" muttered Josè under his breath. "Two thousand years of
Christianity, and still the world knows not what Jesus taught!"
"But you told me he had good thoughts, Padre dear," said the little
voice at his side, as he walked slowly away with bended head. "And
that is enough to know."
"Why do you say that, Carmen?" asked Josè, somewhat petulantly.
"Because, Padre, if he had good thoughts, he thought about God--didn't
he? And if he thought about God, he always thought of something good.
And if we always think about good--well, isn't that enough?"
Josè's eyes struggled with hers. She almost invariably framed her
replies with an interrogation, and, whether he would or not, he must
perforce give answers which he knew in his heart were right, and yet
which the sight of his eyes all too frequently denied.
"Padre, you are not thinking about God now--are you?"
"I am, indeed, child!" he answered abruptly.
"Well--perhaps you are thinking _about_ Him; but you are not thinking
_with_ Him--are you?--the way He thinks. You know, He sends us His
thoughts, and we have to pick them out from all the others that aren't
His, and then think them. If the señora and her man had been thinking
God's thoughts, they wouldn't have been afraid to eat a piece of meat
on Friday--would they?"
Cucumbra, forgetting his many months of instruction, suddenly yielded
to the goad of animal instinct and started along the beach in mad
pursuit of a squealing pig. Carmen dashed after him. As Josè watched
her lithe, active little body bobbing over the shales behind the
flying animals, she seemed to him like an animated sunbeam sporting
among the shadows.
"Why should life," he murmured aloud, "beginning in radiance, proceed
in ever deepening gloom, and end at last in black night? Why, but for
the false education in evil which is inflicted upon us! The joys, the
unbounded bliss of childhood, do indeed gush from its innocence--its
innocence of the blighting belief in mixed good and evil--innocence of
the false beliefs, the undemonstrable opinions, the mad worldly
ambitions, the carnal lust, bloated pride, and black ignorance of men!
It all comes from not knowing God, to know whom is life eternal! The
struggle and mad strife of man--what does it all amount to, when 'in
the end he shall be a fool'? Do we in this latest of the centuries,
with all our boasted progress in knowledge, really know so much, after
all? Alas! we know nothing--nothing!"
"Come, Padre," cried Carmen, returning to him, "we are going to just
try now to have all the nice thoughts we can. Let's just look all
around us and see if we can't think good thoughts about everything.
And, do you know, Padre dear, I've tried it, and when I look at things
and something tries to make me see if there could possibly be anything
bad about them--why, I find there can't! Try it, and see for
yourself."
Josè knew it. He knew that the minds of men are so profaned by
constantly looking at evil that their thoughts are tinged with it. He
was striving to look up. But in doing so he was combating a habit
grown mighty by years of indulgence.
"When you always think good about a thing," the girl went on, "you
never can tell what it will do. But good _always_ comes from it. I
know. I do it all the time. If things look bad, I just say, 'Why look,
here's something trying to tell me that two and two are seven!' And
then it goes away."
"Your purity and goodness resist evil involuntarily, little one," said
Josè, more to himself than to the child.
"Why, Padre, what big words!"
"No, little one, it is just the meaning of the words that is big," he
replied.
The girl was silent for some moments. Then:
"Padre dear, I never thought of it before--but it is true: we don't
see the meaning of words with the same eyes that we see trees and
stones and people, do we?"
Josè studied the question. "I don't quite understand what you mean,
_chiquita_," he was finally forced to answer.
"Well," she resumed, "the meaning of a word isn't something that we
can pick up, like a stone; or see, as we see the lake out there."
"No, Carmen, the meaning is spiritual--mental; it is not physically
tangible. It is not seen with the fleshly eyes."
"The meaning of a word is the inside of it, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is the inside, the soul, of the word."
"And we don't see the word, either, do we?" She shook her brown curls
in vigorous negation.
"No, little one, we see only written or printed symbols; or hear only
sounds that convey to us the words. But the words themselves are
mental. We do not see them."
"No, we think them." She meditated a while. "But, Padre dear," she
continued, "the inside, or soul, of everything is mental. We never see
it. We have to think it."
"Yes, you are right. The things we think we see are only symbols. They
stand for the real things."
"Padre, they don't stand for anything!" she replied abruptly.
Josè looked down at her in surprise. He waited.
"Padre, the real things are the things we don't see. And the things we
think we see are not real at all!"
Josè had ere this learned not to deny her rugged statements, but to
study them for their inner meaning, which the child often found too
deep for her limited vocabulary to express.
"The things we think we see," he said, though he was addressing his
own thought, "are called the physical. The things we do not see or
cognize with the physical senses are called mental, or spiritual.
Well?" he queried, looking down again into the serious little face.
"Padre, the very greatest things are those that we don't see at all!"
"True, _chiquita_. Love, life, joy, knowledge, wisdom, health,
harmony--all these are spiritual ideas. The physical sometimes
manifests them--and sometimes does not. And in the end, called death,
it ceases altogether to manifest them."
"But--these things--the very greatest things there are--are the souls
of everything--is it not so, Padre dear?"
"It must be, _chiquita_."
"And all these things came from God, and He is everywhere, and so He
is the soul of everything, no?"
He made the same affirmative reply.
"Padre--don't you see it?--we are not seeing things all around us! We
don't see real things that we call trees and stones and people! We see
only what we _think_ we see. We see things that are not there at all!
We see--"
"Yes, we see only our thoughts. And we think we see them as objects
all about us, as trees, and houses, and people. But in the final
analysis we see only thoughts," he finished.
"But these thoughts do not come from God," she insisted.
"No," he replied slowly, "because they often manifest discord and
error. I think I grasp what is struggling in your mind _chiquita_. God
is--"
"Everywhere," she interrupted.
"He is everywhere, and therefore He is the soul--the inside--the heart
and core--of everything. He is mind, and His thoughts are real, and
are the only real thoughts there are. He is truth. The opposite of
truth is a lie. But, in reality, truth cannot have an opposite.
Therefore, a lie is a supposition. And so the thought that we seem to
see externalized all about us, and that we call physical objects, is
supposition only. And, a supposition being unreal, the whole physical
universe, including material man, is unreal--is a supposition, a
supposition of mixed good and evil, for it manifests both. It is the
lie about God. And, since a lie has no real existence, this human
concept of a universe and mankind composed of matter is utterly
unreal, an image of thought, an illusion, existing in false thought
only--a belief--a supposition pure and simple!"
As he talked he grew more and more animated. He seemed to forget the
presence of the child, and appeared to be addressing only his own
insistent questionings.
They walked along together in silence for some moments. Then the girl
again took up the conversation.
"Padre," she said, "you know, you taught me to prove my problems in
arithmetic and algebra. Well, I have proved something about thinking,
too. If I think a thing, and just keep thinking it, pretty soon I see
it--in some way--outside of me."
A light seemed to flash through Josè's mental chambers, and he
recalled the words of the explorer in Cartagena. Yes, that was exactly
what he had said--"every thought that comes into the mind tends to
become _externalized_, either upon the body as a physical condition,
or in the environment, or as an event, good or bad." It was a law,
dimly perceived, but nevertheless sufficiently understood in its
workings to indicate a tremendous field as yet all but unknown. The
explorer had called it the law of the externalization of thought. "As
a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," said the Master, twenty
centuries before. Did he recognize the law?
Josè's thought swept over his past. Had his own wrong thinking, or the
wrong thought of others, been the cause of his unhappiness and acute
mental suffering? But why personalize it? What difference whether it
be called his, or the Archbishop's, or whose? Let it suffice that it
was false thought, undirected by the Christ-principle, God, that had
been externalized in the wreckage which he now called his past life.
He again stood face to face with the most momentous question ever
propounded by a waiting world: the question of causation. And he knew
now that causation was wholly spiritual.
"Padre dear, you said just now that God was mind. But, if that is
true, there is only one mind, for God is everywhere."
"It must be so, _chiquita_," dreamily responded the priest.
"Then He is your mind and my mind, is it not so?"
"Yes--"
"Then, if He is my mind, there just isn't anything good that I can't
do."
Twilight does not linger in the tropics, and already the shadows that
stole down through the valley had wrapped the man and child in their
mystic folds. Hand in hand they turned homeward.
"Padre, if God is my mind, He will do my thinking for me. And all I
have to do is to keep the door open and let His thoughts come in."
Her sweet voice lingered on the still night air. There was a pensive
gladness in the man's heart as he tightly held her little hand and led
her to Rosendo's door.