“She goes to Avon to-morrow,” he abruptly announced, “alone.” His thought had been dwelling on that ‘something not ourselves’ which he knew was shielding and sustaining the girl.
CHAPTER 10
“We have now arrived at a subject whose interest and significance for us are incalculable,” said Father Waite, standing before the little group which had assembled in their usual meeting place in the first hours of the morning, for only at that time could Hitt and Haynerd leave the Express. “We have met to discuss briefly the meaning of that marvelous record of a whole nation’s search for God, the Bible. As have been men’s changing concepts of that ‘something not ourselves that makes for righteousness,’ so have been individuals, tribes, and nations. The Bible records the development of these concepts in Israel’s thought; it records the unquenchable longings of that people for truth; it records their prophetic vision, their sacred songs, their philosophy, their dreams, and their aspirations. To most of us the Bible has long been a work of profound mystery, cryptical, undecipherable. And largely, I now believe, because we were wont to approach it with the bias of preconceived theories of literal, even verbal, inspiration, and because we could not read into it the record of Israel’s changing idea of God, from a wrathful, consuming Lord of human caprice and passions, to the infinite Father of love, whom Jesus revealed as the Christ-principle, which worked through him and through all who are gaining the true spiritual concept, as is this girl who sits here on my right with the lad whom you have seen rescued by the Christ from the pit of hell.”
His voice choked when he referred to Carmen and Sidney. But he quickly stifled his emotion, and went on:
“In our last meeting Mr. Hitt clearly showed us how the so-called human mind has seemed to develop as the suppositional opposite of the mind that is God; and how through countless ages of human reckoning that pseudo-mind has been revealing its various types, until at length, rising ever higher in the scale of being, it revealed its human man as a mentality whose consciousness is the suppositional activity of false thought, and which builds, incessantly, mental concepts out of this kind of thought and posits them within itself as material objects, as its own body, its universe, its all. And he showed us how, little by little, that human mind’s interpretations of the infinite mind’s true ideas became better, under the divine infiltration of truth, until at last there developed a type, now known to us as the Jewish nation, which caught a clearer glimpse of truth, and became conscious of that ‘something 130 not ourselves’ which makes for right-thinking, and consequent correct mental concepts and externalizations. This, then, was the starting point of our religion. These first glimpses of truth, and their interpretations, as set forth in the writings of the early Jewish nation, constitute the nucleus of our Bible.
“But were these records exact statements of truth? Not always. The primitive human mind could only lisp its wonderful glimpses of truth in legend and myth. And so in fable and allegory the early Israelites sought to show the power of good over evil, and thereby stimulate a desire for right conduct, based, of course, on right-thinking. And thus it is that the most significant thing in their sacred records is their many, many stories of the triumph of the spiritual over the material.
“Time passed. The Hebrew nation waxed prosperous. Their right-thinking became externalized outwardly in material abundance and physical comfort. But the people’s understanding was not sufficiently great to shield them from the temptation which material wealth and power always constitute. Their vision gradually became obscured. The mist of materialism spread over it. Those wonderful flashes of truth ceased to dart across their mental horizon. Their god became a magnified concept of the human man, who dickered with them over the construction of his temples, and who, by covenants, bribes, and promises, induced them to behave themselves. Prophecy died. And at length the beautiful vision faded quite away.
“Then followed four hundred human years, during which the vicissitudes of the Hebrew nation were many and dark. But during those long centuries there developed that world wonder, a whole nation’s united longing for a deliverer! The prophets promised a great change in their fallen fortunes. Expectation grew keen. Desire expanded into yearning. Their God would not forsake them. Was not His grace sufficient? Though their concept of Him had grossly degenerated, yet the deliverer would come, he must!