“To account for it at all,” replied Carmen, “would be to make it something real. Jesus would account for it only by classing it as a lie about God. Now God, as the creative mind, must likewise be truth, since He is perfection and harmony. Very well, a lie is always the opposite of truth. Evil is the direct opposite of good.”
“Yes,” said Father Waite, nodding his head as certain bright memories returned to him. “That is what you told me that day when I first talked with you. And it started a new line of thought.”
“Is it strange that God should have a suppositional 25 opposite?” asked Carmen. “Has not everything with which you are concerned a suppositional opposite? God is truth. His suppositional opposite is the great lie of evil. God is good. Hence the same opposite. God is spirit. The suppositional opposite is matter. And matter is just as mental as the thoughts which you are now holding. God is real. Good is real. And so, evil and the lie are unreal.”
“The distinction seems to me theoretical,” protested Miss Wall.
Hitt then took the floor. “That word ‘real,’” he said, “is perhaps what is causing your confusion. The real is that which, according to Spencer, does not pass away. We used to believe matter indestructible, forever permanent. We learn that our views regarding it were very incorrect. Matter is quite destructible.”
“And yet,” said Father Waite, “in this universe of constant change, something endures. What is it but the mind that is God, expressing itself in such immaterial and permanent things as law, love, life, power?”
“Exactly,” replied Hitt. “But now we have been brought back again to the question of matter. If we can prove that matter is mental, and not real substance, we will have established Carmen’s premise that everything is mental. Then there remains but the distinction between the mind that is God, and its suppositional opposite, as expressed in human existence. Let us conclude, therefore, that to-night we have established, at least as a working hypothesis, that, since a thing existing implies a creator; and since the existent universe, being infinite, demands an infinite creator; and since a creator can not be infinite without being at once mind, perfect, eternal, omnipotent, omniactive, and good, we are fully justified in assuming that the creator of all things still exists, and is infinite, ever-present mind. Further than that we are not prepared to go, until we have discussed the questions of matter and the physical universe and man. Let us leave those topics for a subsequent meeting. And now I suggest that we unite in asking Carmen to sing for us, to crown the unity that has marked this discussion with the harmony of her own beautiful voice.”
A few moments later, about the small upright piano which the Beaubien had rented for Carmen, the little group sat in reverent silence, while the young girl sent out through the little room the harmonious expression of her own inner life, the life that had never left heaven for earth.