“My God is infinite Good, to whom evil is unknown,” she said. “And good includes all that is real. It includes wisdom, intelligence, truth, life, and love––none of them material. How do I know? Oh, not by human reasoning, whereby you seek to establish the fact of His existence, but by proof, daily proof, and in the hours when the floods of suppositional evil have swept over me. You would rest your faith on your deductions. But, as Saint Gregory said, no merit lies in faith where human reason supplies the proof; and that you will all some day know. Yes, my God is Mind. And He ceaselessly expresses Himself in and through His ideas, which He is constantly revealing. And He is infinite in good. And these ideas express that goodness and infinitude, from the tiniest up to the idea of God himself. And that grandest idea is––man. Oh, no, not the men and women you think you see about you in your daily walk. No! no! They but counterfeit the divine. But the man that Jesus always saw back of every human concept. 24 That man is God’s own idea of Himself. He is God’s image and likeness. He is God’s reflection. That is the man we shall all put on when we have obeyed Paul and put off the old man, its counterfeit.”
“Then, Carmen,” said Father Waite, “you believe all things to be mental?”
“Yes, everything––man himself––and matter.”
“But, if God is mind, and infinite, He must include all things. Hence He must include this imperfect representation, called the physical man. Is it not so?”
“No,” returned the girl emphatically. “Did not Jesus speak often of the one lie about his Father, God? The material man and the material universe are but parts of that lie. And a lie is always a supposition; not real. All evil is contained in that supposition––a supposition that there is power and life and substance apart from God.”
“But who made the supposition?” queried Haynerd.
“A supposition is not made,” replied Carmen quietly. “Its existence is suppositional.”
“I don’t quite get that,” interposed Miss Wall, her brows knitting.
Carmen smiled down at the inquiring woman. “Listen,” she said. “The creator of all things is mind. You admit that. But you would have that mind the creator of evil, also. Yet, your own reasoning has shown that, on the premise of mind as infinite, such mind must be forever whole, harmonious, perfect. The thoughts and ideas by which that mind expresses itself must be likewise pure and perfect. Then that creative mind can not create evil. For, a mind that creates evil must itself be evil. And, being infinite, such a mind must include the evil it creates. We would have, then, either a mind wholly evil, or one of mixed evil and good. In either case, that mind must then destroy itself. Am I not right?”
“Your reasoning is, certainly,” admitted Miss Wall. “But, how to account for evil, when God is infinite good––”