What was it that kept telling him that Rosendo lay dying before him? Does matter talk? Did the serpent talk to Eve? Do fleshly nerves and frail bodily organs converse with men? Can the externalization of thought report back to the thought itself? Nay, the report came to him from the physical senses––naught else. And they reported––nothing! He was seeing but his own thoughts of mixed good and evil. And they were false, because they testified against God.
Surely God knew Rosendo. But not as the physical senses were trying to make Josè know him, sick and dying. Surely the subjective determines the objective; for as we think, so are we––the Christ said that. From his human standpoint Josè was seeing his thoughts of a dying mortal. And now he was trying to know that those thoughts did not come from God––that they had no authority back of them––that they were children of the “one lie” about God––that they were false, false as hell, and therefore impotent and unreal.
What, then, had he to fear? Nothing, for truth is beyond the reach of personal sense. So God and His ideas, reflected by the real Rosendo, were beyond the reach of evil.
If this were true, then he must clear his own mentality––even 91 as he now knew Carmen had done out on the shales that afternoon. He was no longer dealing with a material Rosendo, but with false beliefs about a son of God. He was handling mental concepts. And to the serpent, error, he was trying to say: “What is your authority?”
If man lives, he never dies. If man is, then he always has been. And he was never born––and never passes into oblivion. A fact never changes. If two and two make four to-day, they always have done so, and always will.
Can good produce evil? Then evil can have no creator. Rosendo, when moved by good, had gone into the wilds of Guamocó on a mission of love. Did evil have power to smite him for his noble sacrifice?
What is this human life of ours? Real existence? No, but a sense of existence––and a false sense, for it postulates a god of evil opposed to the one supreme Creator of all that really is. Then the testimony that said Rosendo must die was cruelly false. And, more, it was powerless––unless Josè himself gave it power.
Did Carmen know that? Had she so reasoned? Assuredly no! But she knew God as Josè had never known Him. And, despite the testimony of the fleshly eyes, she had turned from physical sense to Him.
“It is not practicable!” the world cries in startled protest.
But, behold her life!