“Yes.”
“And yet, we know that the five physical senses do not tell us truth! We know that when the human mind thinks it is receiving reports about things through the five physical senses it is doing nothing more than looking at its own thoughts. Now isn’t that so?”
“It certainly seems so, little one.”
“The thoughts of an infinite and good mind must be like that mind, all good, no? Well, then, thoughts of discord, disease, blindness, and death––do they come from the infinite, good mind? No!”
“Well, chiquita mía, that is just the sticking point. I can see all the rest. But the mighty question is, where do those thoughts come from? I am quite as ready as you to admit that discord, sin, evil, death, and all the whole list of human ills and woes come from these bad thoughts held in the human mind and so externalized. I believe that the human man really sees, feels, hears, smells, and tastes these thoughts––that the functioning of the physical senses is wholly mental––takes place in mind, in thought only. That is, that the human mind thinks it sees, feels, hears; but that the whole process is mental, and that it is but regarding its thoughts, instead of actually regarding and cognizing objects outside of itself. Do you follow me?”
“Of course,” she replied with animation. “Isn’t that just what I am trying to tell you?”
“But––and here is the great obstacle––we differentiate between 289 good and bad thoughts. We agree that a fountain can not send forth sweet and bitter waters at the same time. And so, good and bad thoughts do not come from the infinite mind that we call God. But where do the others originate? Answer that, chiquita, and my problems will all be solved.”
She looked at him in perplexity for some time. It seemed to her that she never would understand him. But, with a little sigh of resignation, she replied:
“Padre, you answered that question yourself, long ago. You worked it all out three or four years ago. But––you haven’t stuck to it. You let the false testimony of the physical senses mesmerize you again. Instead of sticking to the thoughts that you knew to be good, and holding to them, in spite of the pelting you got from the others, you have looked first at the good, and then at the bad, and then believed them all to be real, and all to be powerful. And so you got miserably mixed up. And the result is that you don’t know where you stand. Do you? Or, you think you don’t; for that thought, too, is a bad one, and has no power at all, excepting the power that you seem willing––and glad––to give it.”
He winced under the poignant rebuke. He knew in his heart that she was right. He had not clung to the good, despite the roars of Satan. He had not “resisted unto blood.” Far from it; he had fallen, almost invariably, at the first shower of the adversary’s darts. And now, was he not trying, desperately, to show her that Ana’s babe was blind, hopelessly so? Was he not fighting on evil’s side, and vigorously, though with shame suffusing his face, waving aloft the banner of error?