“Why, no, Padre,” returned the innocent child. “He is always here; and we are always with Him, you know. He can not call people away from where He is, can He?”
Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world. The Christ-principle, the saving truth about God and man, is ever present in an uncomprehending world.
Josè knew that there was no material dependence now. Something told him that Rosendo lay dying. There was no physician, no drug, in the isolated little town. There was none but God to save. And He––
But only sinners are taught by priests and preachers to look to God for help. The sick are not so taught. How much more deplorable, then, is their condition than that of the wicked!
“I told God out on the shales this afternoon that I just knew padre Rosendo wouldn’t die!” The soft, sweet voice hovered on the silence like celestial melody.
If ye ask anything in my name––in my character––it shall be given you. Carmen asked in the character of the sinless Christ, for her asking was an assertion of what she instinctively knew to be truth, despite the evidence of the physical senses. Her petitions were affirmations of Immanuel––God with us.
“Carmen,” whispered the priest hoarsely, “go back to your 90 bed, and know, just know that God is here! Know that He did not make padre Rosendo sick, and that He will not let him die! Know it for him––and for me!”
“Why, Padre, I know that now!” The child looked up into the priest’s face with her luminous eyes radiating unshaken trust––a trust that seemed born of understanding. Yea, she knew that all good was there, for God is omnipotent. They had but to stretch forth their hands to touch the robe of His Christ. The healing principle which cleansed the lepers and raised the dead was even with them there in that quiet room. Josè had only to realize it, nothing doubting. Carmen had done her work, and her mind now was stayed on Him. Infinite Intelligence did not know Rosendo as Josè was trying to know him, sick and dying. God is Life––and there is no death!
Carmen was again asleep. Josè sat alone, his open Bible before him and his thought with his God.
Oh, for even a slight conception of Him who is Life! Moses worked “as seeing Him who is invisible.” Carmen lived with her eyes on Him, despite her dreary mundane encompassment. And Josè, as he sat there throughout the watches of the night, facing the black terror, was striving to pierce the mist which had gone up from the face of the ground and was separating him from his God. Through the long, dark hours, with the quiet of death upon the desolate chamber, he sat mute before the veil that was “still untaken away.”