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.