“Why––busy making money––busy socially––busy having a good time––busy accumulating things that––that they must go away and leave to somebody else!”
“Yes,” she said sadly. “They are like the people Jesus spoke of, too busy with things that are of no account to see the things that are––that are––”
“That are priceless, chiquita––that are the most vital of all things to sinful, suffering mankind,” he supplied.
Rosendo looked in at the door. Josè motioned him away. These hours with Carmen had become doubly precious to him of late. Perhaps he felt a presentiment that the net about him and his loved ones was drawing rapidly tighter. Perhaps he saw the hour swiftly approaching, even at hand, when these moments of spiritual intercourse would be rudely terminated. And perhaps he saw the clouds lowering ever darker above them, and knew that in the blackness which was soon to fall the girl would leave him and be swept out into the great world of human thoughts and events, to meet, alone with her God, the 294 fiercest elements, the subtlest wiles, of the carnal mind. As for himself––he was in the hands of that same God.
He turned again to the girl. “Chiquita,” he said, “you do not find mistakes in the Bible? For, out in the big world where I came from, there are many, very many, who say that it is a book of inconsistencies, of gross inaccuracies, and that its statements are directly opposed to the so-called natural sciences. They say that it doesn’t even relate historical events accurately. But, after all, the Bible is just the record of the unfoldment in the human consciousness of the concept of God. Why cavil at it when it contains, as we must see, a revelation of the full formula for salvation, which, as you say, is right-thinking.”
“Yes, Padre. And it even tells us what to think about. Paul said, you know, that we should think about whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. Well, he told us that there was no law––not even any human law––against those things. And don’t you know, he wrote about bringing into captivity every thought to Christ? What did he mean by that?”
“Just what you have been telling me, I guess, chiquita: that every thought must be measured by the Christ-principle. And if it doesn’t conform to that standard, it must be rejected.”
“Yes. And then he said that he died daily. He did die daily to evil, to all evil thought––”
“And to the testimony of the physical senses, think you?”
“He must have! For, in proving God to be real, he had to prove the reports of the five physical senses to be only human beliefs.”