“The real ‘we’––yes.”
“Well, the unreal ‘we’ is already zero. Didn’t you yourself say that the human, mortal man was a product of false thought, thought that was the opposite of God’s thought, and so no thought at all? Didn’t you say that such thought was illusion––the lie about God and what He has made? Then isn’t the human ‘we’ zero?”
“Well––but––chiquita, it is often hard for me to see anything but this sort of ‘we,’” returned the man dejectedly.
“Oh, Padre!” she entreated, “why will you not try to look at something else than the human man? Look at God’s man, the image of infinite mind. You have got to do it, you know, some time. Jesus said so. He said that every man would have to overcome. That means turning away from the thoughts that are externalized as sin and sickness and evil, and looking only at God’s thoughts––and, what is more, sticking to them!”
“Yes,” dubiously, “I suppose we must some time overcome every belief in anything opposed to God.”
“Well, but need that make you unhappy? It is just because you still cling to the belief that there is other power than God that you get so discouraged and mixed up. Can’t you let go? Try it! Why, I would try it even if a whole mountain fell on me!”
And Josè could but clasp the earnest girl in his arms and vow that he would try again as never before.
Meantime, while Josè and his little student-teacher were delving into the inexhaustible treasury of the Word; while the peaceful days came into their lives and went out again almost unperceived, the priest Diego left the bed upon which he had been stretched for many weeks, and hobbled painfully about upon his scarcely mended ankle. While a prisoner upon his couch his days had been filled with torture. Try as he might, he could not beat down the vision which constantly rose before him, that of the beautiful girl who had been all but his. He cursed; he raved; he vowed the foulest vengeance. And then he cried piteously, as he lay chained to his bed––cried for something that seemed to take human shape in her. He protested that he loved her; that he adored her; that without her he was but a blasted cedar. His nurses fled his bedside. His physician stopped his ears. Only Don Antonio was found low enough in thought to withstand the flow of foul language which issued from the baffled Diego’s thick lips while he moved about in attendance upon the unhappy priest’s needs.