CHAPTER 10
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 73 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.