He regarded her attentively, but without replying.
“But Jesus said that Satan was the father of lies. And Satan, since he is the father of lies, must himself be a lie. You see, Padre, we can go right back to the very first chapter in the Bible. First comes the account of the real creation. Then comes the account as the human mind looks at it. But that comes after the ‘mist’ had gone up from the ground, from dirt, from matter. Don’t you see? That mist was error, the opposite of Good. It was evil, the opposite of God. It was the human mind and all human thought, the opposite of the infinite Mind, God, and His thought. The mist went up from matter. So every bit of evil that you can possibly think of comes from the material, physical senses. Evil is always a mist, hiding the good. Isn’t it so? The physical universe, the universe of matter, is the way the human mind sees its thoughts of the spiritual universe that was created by God. The human mind is just a bundle of these false thoughts; and you yourself have said that the human consciousness was a ‘thought-activity, concerned with the activity of false thought.’ The human mind is 293 the lie about the infinite mind. It is the mistake, the illusion. It is like a mistake in mathematics. It has no principle, and nothing to stand on. The minute you turn the truth upon it, why, it vanishes.”
“Well, then, chiquita, why don’t people turn the truth upon it everywhere?”
“Because they are mesmerized by the error, Padre. They sit looking at these false thoughts and believing them true. Padre, all disease, all evil, comes from the false thought in the human mind. It is that thought externalized in the human consciousness. And when the human mind turns from them, and puts them out, and lets the true thoughts in, why––why, then we will raise the dead!”
“But, chiquita, the human body––if it has died––”
“Padre,” she interrupted, “the human body and human mind are one and the same. The body is in the mind. The body that you think you see is but your thought of a body, and is in your so-called human mind!”
“Do you really understand that, child?”
“I know it!” she exclaimed. “And so would you if you read your Bible in the right way. Why––I had never seen a Bible until you gave me yours. I didn’t know what a book it was! And to think that it has been in the world for thousands of years, and yet people still kill one another, still get sick, and still die! I don’t see how they can!”
“But, chiquita, people are too busy to devote time to demonstrating the truths of the Bible,” he offered.
“Too busy!” she ejaculated. “Busy with what?”