“Still here,” sighed the sorrowing priest, “still here––lo, 182 always here––but we know it not. Sunken in materiality, and enslaved to the false testimony of the physical senses, we lack the spirituality that alone would enable us to grasp and use that Christ-power, which is the resurrection and the life.”
“Padre,” said Rosendo, when they turned back toward the hill, “Hernandez is now with the angels. You gave him the sacrament, did you not?”
“Yes, Rosendo.”
“Bien, then you remitted his sins, and he is doubtless in paradise. But,” he mused, “it may be that he had first to pass through purgatory. Caramba! I like not the thought of those hot fires!”
“Rosendo!” exclaimed Josè in impatience. “Your mental wanderings at times are puerile! You talk like the veriest child! Do not be deceived, Hernandez is still the same man, even though he has left his earthly body behind. Do not think he has been lifted at once into eternal bliss. The Church has taught such rubbish for ages, and has based its pernicious teachings upon the grossly misunderstood words of Jesus. The Church is a failure––a dead, dead failure, in every sense of the word! And that man lying there in his grave is a ghastly proof of it!”
Rosendo looked wonderingly at the excited priest, whose bitter words rang out so harshly on the still night air.
“The Church has failed utterly to preserve the simple gospel of the Christ! It has basely, wantonly betrayed its traditional trust! It has fought and slain and burned for centuries over trivial, vulnerable non-essentials, and thrown its greatest pearls to the swine! It no longer prophesies; it carps and reviles! It no longer heals the sick; but it conducts a purgatorial lottery at so much a head! It has become a jumble of idle words, a mumbling of silly formulæ, a category of stupid, insensate ceremonies! Its children are taught to derive their faith from such legends as that of the holy Saint Francis, who, to convince a heretic, showed the hostia to an ass, which on beholding the sacred dough immediately kneeled! Good God!”
“Ca-ram-ba! But you speak hard words, Padre!” muttered Rosendo, vague speculations flitting through his brain as to the priest’s mental state.
“God!” continued Josè heatedly, “the Church has fought truth desperately ever since the Master’s day! It has fawned at the feet of emperor and plutocrat, and licked the bloody hand of the usurer who tossed her a pittance of his foul gains! In the great world-battles for reform, for the rights of man, for freedom from the slavery of man to man or to drink and 183 drugs, she has come up only as the smoke has cleared away, but always in time to demand the spoils! She has filched from the systems of philosophy of every land and age, and after bedaubing them with her own gaudy colors, has foisted them upon unthinking mankind as divine decrees and mandates! She has foully insulted God and man!––”
“Caramba, Padre! You are not well! Hombre, we must get back to the hill! You are falling sick!”