The child looked up at the priest with a smile whose tenderness dissolved the rising clouds of doubt.
“And God is––love,” he finished softly.
“That’s it, Padre!” The child clapped her little hands and laughed aloud.
Love! Jesus had said, “I and my Father are one.” Having seen him, the world has seen the Father. But Jesus was the highest manifestation of love that tired humanity has ever known. “Love God!” he had cried in tones that have echoed through the centuries. “Love thy neighbor!” Aye, love everything, everybody! Apply the Principle of principles, Love, to every task, every problem, every situation, every condition! For what is the Christ-principle but Love? All things are possible to him who loves, for Love casteth out fear, the root of every discord. Men ask why God remains hidden from them, why their understanding of Him is dim. They forget that God is Love. They forget that to know Him they must first love their fellow-men. And so the world goes sorrowfully on, hating, cheating, grasping, abusing; still wondering dully why men droop and stumble, why they consume with disease, and, with the despairing conviction that God is unknowable, sinking at last into oblivion.
Josè, if he knew aught, knew that Carmen greatly loved––loved all things deeply and tenderly as reflections of her immanent God. She had loved the hideous monster that had crept toward her as she sat unguarded on the lake’s rim. Unguarded? Not so, for the arms of Love were there about her. She had loved God––good––with unshaken fealty when Rosendo lay stricken. She had known that Love could not manifest in death when he himself had been dragged from the lake that burning afternoon a few weeks before.
“God is the rule, isn’t He, Padre dear?” The child’s unexampled eyes glowed like burning coals. “And we can prove Him, too,” she continued confidently.
Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
Prove Him, O man, that He is Love, and that Love, casting out hate and fear, solves life’s every problem! But first––Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house. Bring your whole confidence, your trust, your knowledge of the allness of good, and the nothingness of evil. Bring, too, your every earthly hope, every mad ambition, 105 every corroding fear, and carnal belief; lay them down at the doorway of mine storehouse, and behold their nothingness!
As Carmen approached her simple algebraic problems Josè saw the working of a rule infinite in its adaptation. She knew not what the answers should be, yet she took up each problem with supreme confidence, knowing that she possessed and rightly understood the rule for correctly solving it. She knew that speculation regarding the probable results was an idle waste of time. And she likewise knew instinctively that fear of inability to solve them would paralyze her efforts and insure defeat at the outset.
Nor could she force solutions to correspond to what she might think they ought to be––as mankind attempt to force the solving of their life problems to correspond to human views. She was glad to work out her problems in the only way they could be solved. Love, humility, obedience, enabled her to understand and correctly apply the principle to her tasks. The results were invariable––harmony and exceeding joy.