“Spirit?”
“Mind,” offered Carmen.
“The terms are synonymous,” said Hitt. “And now let me conclude with a final observation. Mankind’s beliefs are in a whirl. Ecclesiasticism is dying. Orthodoxy and conservatism are hanging desperately to the world’s flying skirts, but they will eventually drop off. No change in thought has been greater 22 than that concerning God. The absentee Lord who started the universe and then withdrew has gone to the scrap heap, with the ridiculous views of predestination and infant damnation. The idea of a God who at divers times interfered with His creation and temporarily set aside His own laws to convince puny man of His greatness, is likewise obsolescent. The world is slowly growing into a conception of a creator, of some kind, but at least mental, and universally present. Nay, more, available for all our problems and needs. And the end will be the adoption of that conception, enlarged and purified still further, and taken into the minutest affairs of our daily life––as this girl has done. The day of patient suffering in this world, under the spell of a promise of compensating reward in the heavenly future, has all but passed. We are gradually becoming conscious of the stupendous fact that the kingdom of all harmony, immortality, and good, is right here within us––and therefore can be naught but a consciousness of absolute good, perfectly attainable by humanity as the ‘old man’ of Paul is laid off, but not gained, necessarily, through what we call death.”
The silence which followed was broken at length by Miss Wall. “And what constitutes the ‘old man’?” she asked.
“Largely, I think,” said Hitt, “the belief that matter is real.”
“What?” exclaimed Haynerd, almost rising from his chair. “Matter, real?”
Hitt laughed. “I stand on my statement,” he replied.
Father Waite rose slowly, as if lost in thought. “History shows,” he said, meditatively, “that man’s progress has been proportionate to his freedom from the limitation of ignorance and undemonstrable belief. And that freedom has come as man’s concept of God has grown less and less material, and more and more spiritual. From the animal nature of the savage, to whom all is matter, down––or up––to the man of to-day, to whom mind is assuming ever greater ascendency, man’s progress has been marked by a throwing off of limiting beliefs, theological or other, in material power and substance. The development of the least material forces, steam, electricity, the X-ray, has come only as the human mind has thrown off a portion of its hampering material beliefs. I am astounded when I think of it, and of its marvelous message to future generations! For, from the premise that the creator of all things is spirit, or mind, as you will, comes the corollary that the creation itself must of necessity be mental. And from this come such deductions as fairly make me tremble. Carmen has told me of the deductions which her tutor, the priest Josè, drew from the single premise that the universe is infinite in extent––a premise which I think we all will accept.”
“There can be no question about it,” said Hitt, nodding his head.