“Are you quite sure that you show them how?” asked Hitt. “What do you ever do toward showing them how permanently to eradicate a single human difficulty?”
“Oh, well, putting it that way, nothing, of course.”
“Quite so, my friend. The relief we afford is but temporary. And so the world continues to wait for surcease from woe in a life beyond the grave. But now, returning to our survey, let me say that amid all the folly of vain pursuits, of wars and strife, of doleful living and pitiable dying, there are more encouraging and hopeful signs hung out to the inquiring thought to-day than ever before in history. If I misread not, we are already entered upon changes so tremendous that their end must be the revolutionizing of thought and conduct, and hence of life. Our present age is one of great extremes: though we touch the depths, we are aiming likewise at the heights. I doubt if there ever was a time when so many sensed the nothingness of the pleasures of the flesh. I doubt if ever there was such a quickening of the business conscience, and such a determined desire to introduce honesty and purity into our dealings with one another. Never was the need of religion more keenly felt by the world than it is to-day; and that is why mankind are willing to accept any religious belief, however eccentric, that comes in the guise of truth and bearing the promise of surcease from sin, sickness, and sorrow here this side of the grave. The world was never so hungry for religious truth; and this fact is a perpetual challenge to the Church. There is a tremendous world-yearning to know and to do better. And what is its cause? I answer, a growing appreciation of the idea that ‘the kingdom of harmony is within you.’”
“Jesus said that,” murmured Carmen, looking up.
“He but amplified and gave form to the great fact that there was an influence for better things always existent in the ancient Jews, that ‘something not ourselves,’ if you will, ‘that makes for righteousness.’ And he showed that that influence could be outwardly externalized in freedom from the ills which beset humanity.”
“Very good,” put in Haynerd. “And then, what?”
“That ‘something not ourselves’ is the germ of the true idea of God,” answered Hitt.
“Which makes God––?”
“Wholly mental.”