“Ha!” exclaimed Haynerd, rousing up. “There goes the Church, and original sin, and fallen man!”
“There is no such thing as ‘fallen man,’ my friend,” said Hitt quietly. “The spiritual man, the image and likeness, the reflection, of the infinite creative mind, is perfect as long as its principle remains perfect––and that is eternally. The mortal man never was perfect. He is a product of false, suppositional thought. He is not and never was man. He did not fall, because he has had no perfection to lose.”
Reverend Patterson Moore, who had sat a silent, though not wholly sympathetic listener throughout the discussion, could now no longer withhold his protest. “No wonder,” he abruptly exclaimed, “that there are so few deep convictions to-day concerning the great essentials of Christianity! As I sit here and listen to you belittle God and rend the great truths of His Christ, as announced in His Word, the Bible, I am moved by feelings poignantly sorrowful! The Christ has once been crucified; and will you slay him again?”
“No,” said Carmen, her eyes dilating with surprise, “but we would resurrect him! Don’t you think you have kept him in the tomb long enough? The Christ-principle is intended for use, not for endless burial!”
“I? My dear Miss Carmen, it is I who preach the risen Christ!”
“You preach human theology, Mr. Moore,” returned the girl. “And because of centuries of such preaching the world has steadily sunk from the spiritual to the material, and lip service has taken the place of that genuine spiritual worship which knows no evil, and which, because of that practical knowledge, heals the sick and raises the dead.”
“You insinuate that––?”
“No, I state facts,” said Carmen. “Paul made some mistakes, for he was consumed with zeal. But he stated truth when he said that the second coming of Christ would occur when the ‘old man’ was put off. We have been discussing the 84 ‘old man’ to-night, and showing how he may be put off. Now do you from your pulpit teach your people how that may be done?”
“I teach the vicarious atonement of the Christ, and prepare my flock for the world to come,” replied the minister with some heat.
“But I am interested in the eternal present,” said the girl, “not in a suppositional future. And so was Jesus. The world to come is right here. ‘I am that which is, and which was, and which is to come,’ says the infinite, ever-present mind, God!”