Reverend Moore opened his mouth as if to protest; but Hitt prevented him by taking the floor and plunging at once into his subject. “The hour is very late,” he said in apology, “and we have much ground to cover. Who knows when we shall meet again?”
Carmen stole a hand beneath the table and grasped the Beaubien’s. Then all waited expectantly.
“As I sat in my office this morning,” began Hitt meditatively, “I looked often and long through the window and out over this great, roaring city. Everywhere I saw tremendous activity, frantic hurry, and nerve-racking strife. In the distance I marked the smoke curling upward from huge factories, packing houses, and elevators. The incessant seething, the rush and bustle, the noise, the heat, and dust, all spelled business, an enormous volume of human business––and yet, not one iota of it contributed even a mite to the spiritual nature and needs of mankind!
“I pondered this long. And then I looked down, far down, into the streets below. There I saw the same diversified activity. And I saw, too, men and women, rich and comfortable, riding along happily in their automobiles, with not a thought beyond their physical well-being. But, I asked myself, should they not ride thus, if they wish? And yet, the hour will soon come when sickness, disaster, and death will knock at their doors and sternly bid them come out. And then?”
“Just what I have sought to impress upon you whenever you advanced your philosophical theories, Doctor,” said Reverend Moore, turning to Morton. The doctor glowered back at him without reply. Hitt smiled and went on.
“Now what should the man in the automobile do? Is there anything he can do, after all? Yes, much, I think. Jesus told such as he to seek first the kingdom of harmony––a demonstrable understanding of truth. The automobile riding would follow after that, and with safety. Why, oh, why, will we go on wasting our precious time acquiring additional physical sensations in motor cars, amusement parks, travel, anywhere and everywhere, instead of laboring first to acquire that real knowledge which alone will set us free from the bitter woes of human existence!”
“Jesus set us free, sir,” interposed Reverend Moore sternly. “And his vicarious atonement opens the door of immortality to all who believe on his name.”
“But that freedom, Mr. Moore, you believe will be acquired only after death. I dispute that belief strenuously. But let us 96 return to that later. At present we see mankind laboring for that which even they themselves admit is not meat. They waste their substance for what is not bread. And why? Because of their false beliefs of God and man, externalized in a viciously cruel social system; because of their dependence upon the false supports of materia medica, orthodox theology, man-devised creeds, and human opinions. Is it not demonstrably so?
“And yet, who hath believed our report? Who wants to? Alas! men in our day think and read little that is serious; and they reflect hardly at all upon the vital things of life. They want to be let alone in their comfortable materialistic beliefs, even though those beliefs rend them, rive them, rack and twist them with vile, loathsome disease, and then sink them into hideous, worm-infested graves! The human mind does not want its undemonstrable beliefs challenged. It does not want the light of unbiased investigation thrown upon the views which it has accepted ready-made from doctor and theologian. Again, why? Because, my friends, the human mind is inert, despite its seemingly tremendous material activity. And its inertia is the result of its own self-mesmerism, its own servile submission to beliefs which, as Balfour has shown, have grown up under every kind of influence except that of genuine evidence. Chief of these are the prevalent religious beliefs, which we are asked to receive as divinely inspired.”
Doctor Morton glanced at Reverend Moore and grinned. But that gentleman sat stolid, with arms folded and a scowl upon his sharp features.