“That He is infinite and omnipresent good, then?” the priest amplified.
“He is good––and everywhere,” the child repeated firmly.
“And the necessary corollary of that is, that there is no evil,” Josè added.
“I don’t know what you mean by corollary, Padre dear. It’s a big word, isn’t it?”
“I mean––I think I know how you would put it, little one––if God is everywhere, then there is nothing bad. Is that right?”
“Yes, Padre. Don’t you see?”
Assuredly he saw. He saw that a fact can have no real opposite; that any predicated opposite must be supposition. And evil is the supposition; whereas good is the fact. The latter is “plus,” and the former “minus.” No wonder the origin of evil has never been found, although humanity has struggled with the problem for untold ages! Jesus diagnosed evil as a lie. He gave it the minus sign, the sign of nothingness. The world has tried to make it positive, something. From the false sense of evil as a reality has come the equally false sense of man’s estrangement from God, through some fictitious “fall”––a curse, truly, upon the human intellect, but not of God’s infliction. For false belief always curses with a reign of discord, which endures until the belief becomes corrected by truth. From the beginning, the human race has 141 vainly sought to postulate an equal and opposite to everything in the realm of both the spiritual and material. It has been hypnotized, obsessed, blinded, by this false zeal. The resultant belief in “dualism” has rendered hate the equal and opposite of Love, evil the equal and opposite of Good, and discord the eternal opponent of Harmony. To cope with evil as a reality is to render it immortal in our consciousness. To know its unreality is to master it.
“Throughout life,” Josè mused, “every positive has its negative, every affirmation its denial. But the opposites never mingle. And, moreover, the positive always dispels the negative, thus proving the specious nature of the latter. Darkness flees before the light, and ignorance dissolves in the morning rays of knowledge. Both cannot be real. The positive alone bears the stamp of immortality. Carmen has but one fundamental rule: God is everywhere. This gives her a sense of immanent power, with which all things are possible.”
Thus with study and meditation the days flowed past, with scarcely a ripple to break their quiet monotony. Rosendo came, and went again. He brought back at the end of his first month’s labors on the newly discovered deposit some ninety pesos in gold. He had reached the bedrock, and the deposit was yielding its maximum; but the yield would continue for many months, he said. His exultation overleaped all bounds, and it was with difficulty that Josè could bring him to a consideration of the problems still confronting them.
“I think, Rosendo,” said the priest, “that we will send, say, thirty pesos this month to Cartagena; the same next month; and then increase the amount slightly. This method is sure to have a beneficial effect upon the ecclesiastical authorities there.”