She made as if to reply, but he checked her.
“I learned enough, I repeat, those first few months here to have enabled me to work out my salvation, even though with fear and trembling. But I procrastinated; I vacillated; I 353 still clung to effete beliefs and forms of thought which I knew were bound to manifest in unhappiness later. I was afraid to boldly throw myself upon my thought. I was mesmerized. Yes, the great Paul was at times under the same mesmeric spell of human belief, even after he had seen the vision of the Christ. But he worked his way steadily out. And now I see that I must do likewise, for salvation is an individual experience. No vicarious effort, even of the Christ himself, can save a man. The principle is already given us. We must apply it to our problems ourselves. My unfinished task––scarcely even begun!––lies still before me. My environment is what I have made it by my own thought. I believe you, that I can enter another only as I externalize it through righteousness, right-thinking, and ‘proving’ God.”
He paused and bent over the silent little figure nestling so quietly at his side. His throat filled. But he caught his breath and went on.
“You, Carmen, though but a child in years, have risen beyond me, and beyond this lowly encompassment. Why, when you were a mere babe, you should have grasped your padre Rosendo’s casual statement that ‘God is everywhere,’ and shaped your life to accord with it, I do not know. Nor do you. That must remain one of the hidden mysteries of God. But the fact stands that you did grasp it, and that with it as a light unto your feet you groped your way out of this environment, avoiding all pitfalls and evil snares, until to-day you stand at the threshold of another and higher one. So progress must ever be, I now realize. Up we must rise from one plane of human mentality to another, sifting and sorting the thoughts that come to us, clinging to these, discarding those, until, even as you have said, we learn at last instantly to accept those that mirror forth God, infinite, divine mind, and to reject those that bear the stamp of supposition.”
“Padre,” the girl said, lifting her beautiful face to his, “I have told you so often––when a thought comes to me that I think is not from God, or does not reflect Him, I turn right on it and kill it. You could do the same, if you would.”
“Assuredly, child––if I would!” he replied in bitterness of heart. “So could all mankind. And then the millennium would be with us, and the kingdom of heaven revealed. The mesmeric belief in evil as an entity and a power opposed to good alone prevents that. Destroy this belief, and the curtain will instantly rise on eternity.”
His eyes struggled with hers, as he gazed long and wistfully into them. Lost in his impassioned speech, he had for the moment seemed to be translated. Then a surge of fear-thoughts 354 swept him, and left him dwelling on the hazardous journey that awaited her. He wildly clutched her again to his side.
“Carmen––child––how can I let you go! So young, so tender! And that awful journey––two hundred miles of unknown jungle, to the far-off Nechí! And then the burning river, to Cartagena, where––where he is! And the States––God, what awaits you there!”
“Padre,” she answered softly, “I shall not go unless it is right. If it is right, then God will take care of me––and of you.”
Again she saw only the “right-best” thought, while he sat trembling before its opposite. And the opposite was as yet a supposition!