“Entirely. And human concepts of Him have been many and varied. But that worst of Old Testament interpreters of the first century, Philo, came terribly close to the truth, I think, when, in a burst of inspiration, he one day wrote: ‘Heaven is mind, and earth is sensation.’ Matthew Arnold, I think, likewise came very close to the truth when he said that the only God we can recognize is ‘that something not ourselves that makes for righteousness.’ And, as for evil, up in the United States there are some who are now lumping it all under the head of ‘mortal mind,’ considering it all but the ‘one lie’ which Jesus so often referred to, and regarding it as the ‘suppositional opposite’ of the mind that is God, and so, powerless. Not a bad idea, I think. But whether the money-loving Yankee will ever leave his mad chase for gold long enough to live this premise and so demonstrate it, is a question. I’m watching its development with intense interest. We in the States have wonderful, exceptional opportunities for study and research. We ought to uncover the truth, if any people should.”
He fell into thoughtfulness again. Josè drew a long sigh. “I wish––I wish,” he murmured, “that I might go there––that I might live and work and search up there.”
The explorer roused up. “And why not?” he asked abruptly. “Look here, come with me and spend a year or so digging around for buried Inca towns. Then we will go back to the States. Why, man! it would make you over. I’ll take you as interpreter. And in the States I’ll find a place for you. Come. Will you?”
For a moment the doors of imagination swung wide, and in the burst of light from within Josè saw the dreams of a lifetime fulfilled. Emancipation lay that way. Freedom, soul-expansion, truth. It was his God-given privilege. Who had the right to lay a detaining hand upon him? Was not his soul his own, and his God’s?
Then a dark hand stole out from the surrounding shadows and closed the doors. From the blackness there seemed to rise a hollow voice, uttering the single word, Honor. He thrust out an arm, as if to ward off the assaults of temptation. “No, no,” he said aloud, “I am bound to the Church!”
“But why remain longer in an institution with which you are quite out of sympathy?” the explorer urged.
“First, to help the Church. Who will uplift her if we desert her? And, second, to help this, my ancestral country,” replied Josè in deep earnestness.
“Worthy aims, both,” assented Hitt. “But, my friend, what will you accomplish here, unless you can educate these people to think? I have learned much about conditions in this country. I find that the priest in Colombia is even more intolerant than in Ireland, for here he has a monopoly, no competition. He is absolute. The Colombian is the logical product of the doctrines of Holy Church. It is so in Mexico. It is so wherever the curse of a fixed mentality is imposed upon a people. For that engenders determined opposition to mobility. It quenches responsiveness to new concepts and new ideas. It throttles a nation. The bane of mental progress is the Semper Idem of your Church.”
“Christianity will remove the curse.”