"Oh, further opportunities to increase his pile, I suppose," returned Haynerd, shrugging his shoulders.

"But, will he get real happiness? Peace? Joy? And does he need further opportunities to accumulate money? Does he not rather need some one to show him the meaning of life, how to really live?"

"He does, indeed! And it may be your mission, Carmen, to do just that. But if you don't, then I sincerely hope the man may die before he discovers that all that he has achieved, his wealth, his prestige, his power, have not been worth striving for!"

"He hasn't the slightest idea of the meaning of life," she murmured, looking down upon the glittering throng. "Nor have any of them."

"No," he replied. "They put me in mind of Carlyle's famous remark, as he stood looking out across the London Strand: 'There are in this city some four million people, mostly fools.' How mean, narrow and hard their lives are! These are the high priests of vested privilege, of mediaevalism, of old institutions whose perpetual maintenance, even in a generation that has progressed far beyond them, is a fungus blight upon us. Ah, there's little Willie Van Wot, all dolled out! He's glorifying his Creator now by devoting his foolish little existence to coaching trips along the New England shore. He reminds me of the Fleet street poet who wrote a century ago of the similar occupation of a young dandy of that day—

What can little T. O. do? Why, drive a Phaeton and Two!!! Can little T. O. do no more? Yes, drive a Phaeton and Four!!!!

"He's an interesting outgrowth of our unique social system, eh?"

"We must follow Emerson and treat them all as we do pictures, look at them in the best light," murmured Carmen.

"Aye, hang them in the best light!" returned Haynerd. "But make sure they're well hung! There goes the pseudo-princess, member of the royal house of England. She carries the royal taint, too. I tell you, under the splash and glitter you can see the feet of clay, eh?"

"Yes," smiled Carmen, "resting upon the high heel."

"Huh!" muttered Haynerd, with a gesture of disgust. "The women of fashion seem to feel that the Creator didn't do a good job when He designed the feminine sex—that He should have put a hump where the heel is, so's to slant the foot and make comfortable walking impossible, as well as to insure a plentiful crop of foot-troubles and deformities. The Chinese women used to manifest a similarly insane thought. Good heavens! High heel, low brain! The human mind is a cave of black ignorance!"

Carmen did not reply, but bent her attention again to the throng below.

"Look there," said Haynerd, indicating a stout, full-toiletted woman, resplendent with diamonds. "That's our eminent French guest, Madam Carot. She severed herself from her tiresome consort last year by means of a bichloride tablet deftly immersed in his coffee, and then, leaving a sigh of regret hovering over his unhandsome remains, hastened to our friendly shores, to grace the beau monde with her gowns and jewels."

Carmen turned to him with a remonstrance of incredulity.

"Fact," he stubbornly insisted. "The Social Era got the whole spicy story. And there beside her is our indispensable Mrs. T. Oliver Pennymon. See, she's drifted up to young Watson! Coquetting for a husband still, the old buzzard!"

"Mr. Haynerd!"

"Well, it's fact, anyway," persisted the society monitor. "And there beyond her is fat little Mrs. Stuffenheimer, with her two unlovely, red-faced daughters. Ah, the despairing mamma is still vainly angling for mates for her two chubby Venuses! If they're not married off properly and into good social positions soon, it's mamma for the scrap heap! By George! it's positively tragic to see these anxious mothers at Newport and Atlantic City and other fashionable places, rushing madly hither and yon with their marriageable daughters, dragging them from one function to another in the wild hope that they may ultimately land a man. Worry and pain dig deep furrows into poor mamma's face if she sees her daughters fading into the has-been class. It requires heroism, I say, to travel in society! But I guess you know, eh? Well," taking up his notebook, "we must get busy now. By the way, how's your shorthand progressing?"

"Oh, splendidly," replied the girl, her eyes still upon the massive figure of Ames. Then, recovering from her abstraction, "I can write as fast in it now as in longhand."

"Good!" said Haynerd. "You'll need it later."

For more than an hour the two sat in the seclusion of the splendid balcony, looking down upon the scene of magnificence below. Through the mind of the young girl ran a ceaseless paean of thanksgiving for her timely deliverance from the trammels which she so well knew enshackled these glittering birds of paradise. With it mingled a great, consuming desire, a soul-longing to pour into the vacuity of high society the leaven of her own pure thought. In particular did her boundless love now go out to that gigantic figure whose ideals of life this sumptuous display of material wealth and power expressed. Why was he doing this? What ulterior motive had he? Was it only a vainglorious exhibition of his own human prowess? Was it an announcement, magnificent beyond compare, that he, J. Wilton Ames, had attained the supreme heights of gratified world ambition? That the world at last lay at his feet? And that over it brooded the giant's lament that there remained nothing more to conquer? But, if so, the girl at least knew that the man's herculean efforts to subdue the material world were as nothing. The real conquest lay still before him, the conquest of self. And when that were faced and achieved, well she knew that no such garish display as this would announce the victory to a breathless world.

The bustling little social secretary again appeared, and briefly announced the production of an opera in the auditorium, to which she had come to conduct them. Passing through the little waiting room and to the elevator, they quickly mounted to the unoccupied gallery of the theater above. The parquet, which would seat nearly a thousand spectators, was rapidly filling with an eager, curious throng. The Ames trio and some of the more distinguished guests were already occupying the gorgeously decorated boxes at the sides. An orchestra of fifty pieces was visible in the hollow below the stage. Caroni, the famous grand opera leader, stood ready to conduct. The opera itself was the much discussed music drama, Salome.

"Now," commented Haynerd to his fair, wondering companion, who was lost in contemplation of the magnificent mural decorations of the little theater, "we will see something rare, for this opera has been called the most artistic piece of indecency known to the stage. Good heavens! Ames has got Marie Deschamps for the title role. She'll cost him not less than five thousand dollars for this one night. And—see here," drawing Carmen's attention to the bill, "Marcou and Corvalle besides! The man must be made of money! These stars get three thousand dollars a night during the regular season."

Every phase of sophistication was manifested in that glittering audience when the curtain rose and the sensational theme was introduced. But to none came thoughts like those which clamored for admittance at the portals of Carmen's mentality. In the bold challenge of the insanely sensual portrayal of a carnal mind the girl saw the age-old defiance of the spirit by the flesh. In the rolls of the wondrous music, in its shrieks, its pleadings, and its dying echoes, she heard voiced again the soul-lament of a weary world searching vainly in the mazes of human thought for truth. As the wonderful Deschamps danced weirdly before her in the ghastly light and fell gloating over her gory trophy, Carmen saw but the frantic struggles of a diseased soul, portrayed as the skilled surgeon lays bare the malignant growth that is eating the quivering tissues of a human frame. The immodesty of dress, the sensual suggestiveness of the dance, the brutal flouting of every element of refinement and delicacy, blazoned in frenzied tone and movement the bloody orgy and dance of death which goes on incessantly upon the stage of human life, and ends in the mad whirl and confusion and insane gibbering over the lifeless trophies for which mankind sell their very souls.

"About the limit of tolerance, eh?" commented Haynerd, when the final curtain dropped. "Yes, even to a vitiated taste. The passionate thirst for the sensational has led to this sickening display of salacity—"

"Splendid, wasn't it?" came in tones of admiration from the social secretary, who had returned to conduct her charges back to the balcony before the guests emerged from the theater. "You will run the program in full, and comment at some length on the expense attached," she went on. "You have just witnessed the private production of a full opera, unabridged, and with the regular operatic cast. Supper will follow in a half hour. Meantime, you will remain in the balcony where you were before."

Returning to their former position, Carmen sank into a chair at the little table behind the screen, and strove to orient her thought. Haynerd sat down beside her to arrange his voluminous notes. Presently footsteps were heard, and the sound of voices. Haynerd glanced through the hinge of the screen. "Ha!" he whispered, "here comes Ames and—who's with him? Ah, Representative Wales. Showing him about, I suppose."

Carmen gazed at the approaching men with fascinated eyes, although she saw but one, the towering magician who had reared this fairy palace. She saw Ames lead his companion to the door of the little waiting room at their right, and heard the congressman protest against entering.

"But we can talk undisturbed in here," urged Ames, his hand on the door.

"Better remain out here on the balcony," replied the congressman nervously, as he moved toward the railing.

Ames laughed and shrugged his enormous shoulders. He understood the man's repugnance fully. But he humored him.

"You know, Wales," he said easily, going to the railing and peering over at the brilliant assemblage below, "if I could get the heathen Chinee to add an extra half-inch to his shirt length, I'd make a hundred millions. And then, perhaps, I wouldn't need to struggle with your Ways and Means Committee as I do. By the way, the cotton schedule will be reported out unchanged, I presume." He turned and looked quizzically at his companion as he said this.

Wales trembled slightly when he replied to the question he had been awaiting. "I think not, Mr. Ames."

The giant's face clouded. "Parsons will vote for it," he said suggestively. "What will you do?"

The congressman hesitated. "I—the party, Mr. Ames, is committed to the high tariff principle. We can not let in a flood of foreign cotton—"

"Then you want the fight between the farmers and spinners to continue, eh?" interposed Ames cynically. "You don't seem to realize that in the end both will get more money than they are getting now, and that it will come from the consumer, who will pay vastly higher for his finished products, in addition to the tariff. Do you get me?"

"It is a party principle, Mr. Ames," returned the congressman tenaciously.

"Look here, Wales," said Ames, turning savagely upon his companion. "The cotton farmers are organizing. They have got to be stopped. Their cooeperative associations must be smashed. The tariff schedule which you have before your Committee will do it. And you are going to pass it."

"Mr. Ames," replied the congressman, "I—I am opposed to the constant manipulation of cotton by you rich men. I—"

"There," interrupted Ames, "never mind explaining your conscientious scruples. What I want to know is, do you intend to cast your vote for the unaltered schedule?"

"N—no, Mr. Ames, I can't—"

"H'm," murmured Ames. Then, with easy nonchalance, turning to an apparently irrelevant topic as he gazed over the railing, "I heard just before coming from my office this evening that the doors of the Mercantile Trust would not open to-morrow. Too bad! A lot of my personal friends are heavily involved. Bank's been shaky for some time. Ames and Company will take over their tangible assets; I believe you were interested, were you not?" He glanced at the trembling man out of the corners of his eyes.

Wales turned ashen. His hands shook as he grasped the railing before him and tried to steady himself.

"Hits you pretty hard, eh?" coolly queried Ames.

"It—it—yes—very hard," murmured the dazed man. "Are you—positive?"

"Quite. But step into the waiting room and 'phone the newspapers. They will corroborate my statements."

Representative Wales was serving his first term in Congress. His election had been a matter of surprise to everybody, himself included, excepting Ames. Wales knew not that his detailed personal history had been for many months carefully filed in the vaults of the Ames tower. Nor did he ever suspect that his candidacy and election had been matters of most careful thought on the part of the great financier and his political associates. But when he, a stranger to congressional halls, was made a member of the Ways and Means Committee, his astonishment overleaped all bounds. Then Ames had smiled his own gratification, and arranged that the new member should attend the formal opening of the great Ames palace later in the year. Meantime, the financier and the new congressman had met on several occasions, and the latter had felt no little pride in the attention which the great man had shown him.

And so the path to fame had unrolled steadily before the guileless Wales until this night, when the first suspicions of his thraldom had penetrated and darkened his thought. Then, like a crash from a clear sky, had come the announcement of the Mercantile Trust failure. And as he stood there now, clutching the marble railing, his thought busy with the woman and the two fair children who would be rendered penniless by this blow, the fell presence of the monster Ames seemed to bend over him as the epitome of ruthless, brutal, inhuman cunning.

"How much are you likely to lose by this failure?" the giant asked.

Wales collected his scattered senses. "Not less than fifty thousand dollars," he replied in a husky voice.

"H'm!" commented Ames. "Too bad! too bad! Well, let's go below. Ha! what's this?" stooping and apparently taking up an object that had been lying on the floor back of the congressman. "Well! well! your bank book, Wales. Must have slipped from your pocket."

Wales took the book in a dazed, mechanical way. "Why—I have no—this is not mine," he murmured, gazing alternately at the pass book and at Ames.

"Your name's on it, at least," commented Ames laconically. "And the book's been issued by our bank, Ames and Company. Guess you've forgotten opening an account there, let me see, yes, a week ago." He took the book and opened it. "Ah, yes, I recall the incident now. There's your deposit, made last Friday."

Wales choked. What did it mean? The book, made out in his name on Ames and Company, showed a deposit to his credit of fifty thousand dollars!

Ames slipped his arm through the confused congressman's, and started with him down the balcony. "You see," he said, as they moved away, "the Mercantile failure will not hit you as hard as you thought. Now, about that cotton schedule, when you cast your vote for it, be sure that—" The voice died away as the men disappeared in the distance, leaving Carmen and Haynerd staring blankly at each other.

"Well!" ejaculated Haynerd at length. "What now?"

"We must save them both," said Carmen quietly.

"I could make my everlasting fortune out of this!" exclaimed Haynerd excitedly.

"And lose your soul," replied the girl. "But I will see Mr. Ames, and tell him that we overheard his conversation. He will save us all."

Haynerd then smiled, but it was a hard smile, coming from one who knew the world. "Listen, my dear girl," he said, "we will keep quiet, you and I. To mention this would be only to court disaster at the hands of one who would strangle us at the slightest intimation of our knowledge. Can you not see the consequences to us?"

"I can see but the right," returned Carmen determinedly. "And the right shall prevail!"

"But, my dear girl," cried Haynerd, now thoroughly alarmed both for himself and her, "he would ruin us! This is no affair of ours. We had no intention of hearing; and so let it be as if we had not heard."

"And let the lie of evil prevail? No, Mr. Haynerd, I could not, if I would. Mr. Ames is being used by evil; and it is making him a channel to ruin Mr. Wales. Shall I stand idly by and permit it? No!"

She rose, with a look of fixed resolution on her face. Haynerd sprang to his feet and laid a detaining hand upon her arm. As he did so, the screen was quickly drawn aside, and Kathleen Ames and two of her young companions bent their curious gaze in upon them. Absorbed in their earnest conversation, Carmen and Haynerd had not heard the approach of the young ladies, who were on a tour of inspection of the house before supper.

"Reporters for the Social Era, Miss Ames," explained Haynerd, hastily answering the unspoken question, while he made a courteous bow.

But Kathleen had not heard him. "What—you!" she cried, instantly recognizing Carmen, and drawing back. "How dared you! Oh!"

"What is it, dear?" asked one of the young ladies, as her eyes roved over Carmen's tense, motionless figure.

"You—creature!" cried Kathleen, spurting her venom at Carmen, while her eyes snapped angrily and her hands twitched. "When the front door is closed against you, you sneak in through the back door! Leave this house, instantly, or I shall have you thrown into the street!"

"Why, Kathleen dear!" exclaimed one of her companions. "She is only a reporter!"

"She is a low, negro wench!" cried Kathleen maliciously. "She comes from a brothel! She foisted herself upon society, and was discovered and kicked out! Her father is a dirty negro priest, and her mother a low—"

Haynerd rushed to the maddened girl and clapped his hand over her mouth. "Hush, for God's sake, Miss Ames!" Then, to her companions, "Take her away!" he pleaded. "And we will leave at once!"

But a house detective, attracted by the loud conversation, had come up and interposed. At his signal another one approached. "Bring Mr. Ames," he quietly commanded. "I can not put them out if they have his permission to remain," he explained to the angry Kathleen.

In a few moments, during which the little group stood tense and quiet, Ames himself appeared.

"Well?" he demanded. "Ah!" as his eyes lighted upon Carmen. "My little girl! And—so this is your assistant?" turning inquiringly to Haynerd. "By George! Her article in last week's Social Era was a corker. But," staring from Kathleen to the others, "what's the row?"

"I want that creature put out of the house!" demanded Kathleen, trembling with rage and pointing to Carmen.

"Tut, tut," returned Ames easily. "She's on business, and has my permission to remain. But, by George! that's a good joke," winking at Haynerd and breaking into a loud laugh. "You put one over on us there, old man!" he said.

"Father!" Scalding tears of anger and humiliation were streaming down Kathleen's face. "If she remains, I shall go—I shall leave the house—I will not stay under the same roof with the lewd creature!"

"Very well, then, run along," said Ames, taking the humiliated Kathleen by the shoulders and turning her about. "I will settle this without your assistance." Then he motioned to the house detectives to depart, and turned to Haynerd and Carmen. "Come in here," he said, leading the way to the little waiting room, and opening the door.

"Lord! but you belong down stairs with the rest," he ejaculated as he faced Carmen, standing before him pale but unafraid. "There isn't one down there who is in your class!" he exclaimed, placing his hands upon her shoulders and looking down into her beautiful face. "And," he continued with sudden determination, "I am going to take you down, and you will sit at the table with me, as my special guest!"

A sudden fear gripped Haynerd, and he started to interpose. But Carmen spoke first.

"Very well, Mr. Ames," she said quietly. "Take me down. I have a question to ask Mr. Wales when we are at the table."

An expression of surprise and inquiry came into Ames's face. "Mr. Wales?" he said wonderingly. "You mean Congressman—"

Then he stopped abruptly, and looked searchingly at Carmen and her companion. Haynerd paled. Carmen stood unflinching. Ames's expression of surprise gave place to one dark and menacing.

"You were behind that screen when Congressman Wales and I—"

"Yes," returned Carmen calmly. "I overheard all you said. I saw you bribe him."

Ames stood like a huge, black cloud, glowering down upon the slender girl. She looked up at him and smiled.

"You are going to tell him that the fifty thousand dollars are just a loan, and that he may vote as he chooses, aren't you?" she said. "You will not ruin his life, and the lives of his wife and babies, will you? You would never be happy, you know, if you did." Her voice was as quiet as the morning breeze.

"So!" the giant sneered. "You come into my house to play spy, eh? And if I had not caught you when I did you would have written another interesting article for the Social Era, wouldn't you? By God! I'll break you, Haynerd, and your infernal sheet into a million pieces if you dare print any such rot as this! And as for you, young lady—"

"You can do nothing to me, Mr. Ames; and you don't really want to," said Carmen quickly. "My reputation, you know—that is, the one which you people have given me—is just as black as it could be, isn't it? So that is safe." She laughed lightly.

Then she became very serious again. "It doesn't really make any difference to you, Mr. Ames," she said, "whether the cotton schedule is passed or not. You still have your millions—oh, so much more than you will ever know what to do with! But Mr. Wales, he has his wife and his babies and his good reputation—would you rob him of those priceless treasures, just to make a few dollars more for yourself?—dollars that you can't spend, and that you won't let others have?"

During the girl's quiet talk Ames was regaining his self-control. When she concluded he turned to Haynerd. "Miss Carmen can step out into the balcony. You and I will arrange this matter together," he said.

Carmen moved toward the door.

"Now," said Ames significantly, and in a low voice, "what's your price?"

Instantly the girl turned back and threw herself between the two men. "He is not for sale!" she cried, her eyes flashing as she confronted Ames.

"Then, by God!" shouted Ames, who had lost himself completely, "I will crush him like a dirty spider! And you, I'll drag you through the gutters and make your name a synonym of all that is vile in womanhood!"

Carmen stepped quietly to the elevator and pressed the signal button.

"You shall not leave this house!" cried the enraged Ames, starting toward her. "Or you'll go under arrest!"

The girl drew herself up with splendid dignity, and faced him fearlessly. "We shall leave your house, and now, Mr. Ames!" she said. "You and that for which you stand can not touch us! The carnal mind is back of you! Omnipotent God is with us!"

She moved away from him, then turned and stood for a moment, flashing, sparkling, radiant with a power which he could not comprehend. "You know not what you do. You are blinded and deceived by human lust and greed. But the god you so ignorantly worship now will some day totter and fall upon you. Then you will awake, and you will see your present life as a horrid dream."

The elevator appeared. Carmen and the dazed Haynerd stepped quickly into it and descended without opposition to the lower floor. A few moments later they were again in the street and hurrying to the nearest car line.

"Girlie," said Haynerd, mopping the perspiration from his brow, "we're in for it now—and I shall be crushed! But you—I think your God will save you."

Carmen took his hand. "His arm is not shortened," she murmured, "that He can not save us both."

CHAPTER 5

ON the Monday morning following the Ames reception the society columns of the daily papers still teemed with extravagant depictions of the magnificent affair. On that same morning, while Haynerd sat gloomily in the office of the Social Era, meditating on his giant adversary's probable first move, Carmen, leaving her studies and classes, sought out an unpretentious home in one of the suburbs of the city, and for an hour or more talked earnestly with the timid, frightened little wife of Congressman Wales. Then, her work done, she dismissed the whole affair from her mind, and hastened joyously back to the University. She would have gone to see Ames himself. "But," she reflected, as she dwelt on his conduct and words of the previous Saturday evening, "he is not ready for it yet. And when he is, I will go to him. And Kathleen—well, I will help her by seeing only the real child of God, which was hidden that night by the veil of hatred and jealousy. And that veil, after all, is but a shadow."

That evening the little group of searchers after God assembled again in the peaceful precincts of the Beaubien cottage. It was their third meeting, and they had come together reverently to pursue the most momentous inquiry that has ever stimulated human thought.

Haynerd and Carmen had said little relative to the Ames reception; but the former, still brooding over the certain consequences of his brush with Ames, was dejected and distraught. Carmen, leaning upon her sustaining thought, and conceding no mite of power or intelligence to evil, glowed like a radiant star.

"What are you listening to?" she asked of Haynerd, drawing him to one side. "Are you giving ear to the voices of evil, or good? Which are you making real to yourself? For those thoughts which are real to you will become outwardly manifested, you know."

"Bah! He's got us—tight!" muttered Haynerd, with a gesture signifying defeat. "And the insults of that arrogant daughter of his—"

"She did not insult me," said Carmen quickly. "She could not, for she doesn't know me. She merely denounced her concept of me, and not my real self. She vilified what she thought was Carmen Ariza; but it was only her own thought of me that she insulted. Can't you see? And such a concept of me as she holds deserves denouncing, doesn't it?"

"Well, what are we going to do?" he pursued testily.

"We are going to know," she whispered, "that we two with God constitute an overwhelming majority." She said nothing about her visit to the Wales home that morning, but pressed his hand, and then went to take her place at the table, where Father Waite was already rapping for order.

"My friends," began that earnest young man, looking lovingly about at the little group, "as we are gathered here we symbolize that analytical, critical endeavor of the unbiased human mind to discover the essence of religion. Religion is that which binds us to absolute truth, and so is truth itself. If there is a God, we believe from our former investigations that He must be universal mind. This belief carries with it as necessary corollaries the beliefs that He must be perfect, eternal, and self-existent. The question, Who made God? must then receive its sufficient answer in the staggering statement that He has always existed, unchanged and unchangeable."

A sigh from Haynerd announced that quizzical soul's struggle to grasp a statement at once so radical and stupendous.

"True," continued Father Waite, addressing himself to his doubting friend, "the acceptance as fact of what we have deduced in our previous meetings must render the God of orthodox theology quite obsolete. But, as a compensation, it gives to us the most enlarged and beautiful concept of Him that we have ever had. It ennobles, broadens, purifies, and elevates our idea of Him. It destroys forever our belittling view of Him as but a magnified human character, full of wrath and caprice and angry threats, and delighting in human ceremonial and religious thaumaturgy. And, most practical of all for us, it renders the age-long problem of evil amenable to solution."

Just then came a ring at the front door; and a moment later the Beaubien ushered Doctor Morton into the room. All rose and hastened to welcome him.

"I—I am sure," began the visitor, looking at Carmen, "that I am not intruding, for I really come on invitation, you know. Miss Carmen, first; and then, our good friend Hitt, who told me this afternoon that you would probably meet this evening. I—I pondered the matter some little time—ah, but—well, to make it short, I couldn't keep away from a gathering so absolutely unique as this—I really couldn't."

Carmen seized both his hands. "My!" she exclaimed, her eyes dancing, "I am glad you came."

"And I, too," interposed Haynerd dryly, "for now we have two theological Philistines. I was feeling a bit lonely."

"Ah, my friend," replied the doctor, "I am simply an advocate of religious freedom, not a—"

"And religious freedom, as our wise Bill Nye once said, is but the art of giving intolerance a little more room, eh?" returned Haynerd with a laugh.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "You are a Philistine," he said. "I am a human interrogation."

Carmen took the doctor by the arm and led him to a place beside her at the table. "You—you didn't bring poor Yorick?" she whispered, with a glint of mischief in her bright eyes.

"No," laughed the genial visitor, "he's a dead one, you told me."

"Yes," replied the girl, "awfully dead! He is an outward manifestation of dead human beliefs, isn't he? But now listen, Father Waite is going to speak."

After a brief explanation to the doctor of the purpose of the meeting, and a short resume of their previous deductions, Father Waite continued the exposition of his subject.

"The physical universe," he said, "is to human beings a reality. And yet, according to Spencer's definition of reality, we must admit that the universe as we see it is quite unreal. For the real is that which endures."

"And you mean to say that the universe will not endure?" queried Haynerd abruptly.

"I do," replied Father Waite. "The phenomena of the universe, even as we see it, are in a state of ceaseless change. Birth, growth, maturity, decay, and death seems to be the law for all things material. There is perpetual genesis, and perpetual exodus."

"But," again urged Haynerd, "matter itself remains, is indestructible."

"Not so," said Father Waite. "Our friend, Doctor Morton, will corroborate my statement, I am sure."

The doctor nodded. "It is quite true," he said in reply. "And as revolutionary as true. The discovery, in the past few years, of the tremendously important fact that matter disintegrates and actually disappears, has revolutionized all physical science and rendered the world's text books obsolete."

"And matter actually disappears?" echoed Miss Wall incredulously.

"Absolutely!" interposed Hitt. "The radium atom, we find, lasts some seventeen hundred years, or a trifle longer. What becomes of it when it is destroyed? We can only say that it disappears from human consciousness."

"And so you reason that the whole material universe will ultimately disappear from the human consciousness?"

"Yes," returned Hitt, "I feel certain of it. Let us consider of what the universe consists. For many months I have been pondering this topic incessantly. I find that I can agree, in a measure, with those scientists who regard the physical universe as composed of only a few elementary constituents, namely, matter, energy, space, and time—"

"Each one of these elements is mental," interrupted Carmen.

"Exactly!" replied Hitt. "And the physical universe, even from the human standpoint, is, therefore, wholly mental."

"Well, but we see it!" ejaculated Haynerd. "And we feel and hear it! And I'm sure we smell it!"

Hitt laughed. "Do we?" he asked.

"No," interposed Father Waite; "we see only our mental concept of a universe, for seeing is wholly a mental process. Our comprehension of anything is entirely mental."

"But now," resumed Hitt, "to get back to the supposed reality of the physical universe, let us examine its constituents. First, let us consider its unity established by the harmonious interplay of the forces permeating it. This great fact is what led Herbert Spencer to conclude that the universe could have but one creator, one ruler, and that polytheism was untenable."

"We are quite agreed regarding that," said Father Waite. "If the Creator is mind, He is of very necessity infinite and omnipotent; hence there can be but one Creator."

"Very well," continued Hitt. "Now as to time. Is it material or tangible? Would it exist, but as a convenience for the human mind? Is it not really a creation of that mind? And, lastly, is it not merely a mental concept?"

"Our consciousness of time," replied Carmen, "is only our awareness of a continuous series of mental states."

"That classifies it exactly," said Hitt, "and renders it wholly mental. And now as to space," he resumed. "We are accustomed to say, loosely, that space is that in which we see things about us. But in what does the process of seeing consist? I say, I see a chair. What I really mean is that I am conscious of a chair. The process of seeing, we are told, is this: light, coming from the chair, enters the eye and casts an image of the chair upon the retina, much as a picture is thrown upon the ground glass of a camera. Then, in some way, the little rods and cones—the branching tips of the optic nerve which project from the retina—are set in motion by the light-waves. This vibration is in some mysterious manner carried along the optic nerve to a center in the brain, and—well, then the mind becomes cognizant of the chair out there, that's all."

They sat silent for some moments. Then Miss Wall spoke. "Do you mean to say," she queried, "that, after thousands of years of thought and investigation, mankind now know nothing more than that about the process of seeing?"

"I do," returned Hitt. "I confess it in all humility."

"Then all I've got to say," put in Haynerd, "is that the most remarkable thing about you learned men is your ignorance!"

The doctor smiled. "I find it is only the fool who is cocksure," he replied.

"Now," said Hitt, resuming the conversation, "let us go a step further and inquire, first, What is light? since the process of seeing is absolutely dependent upon it."

"Light," offered the doctor, "is vibrations, or wave-motion, so physicists tell us."

"Just so," resumed Hitt. "Light, we say, consists of vibrations. Not vibrations of anything tangible or definitely material, but—well, just vibrations in the abstract. It is vibratory or wave motion. Now let us concede that these vibrations in some way get to the brain center; and then let us ask, Is the mind there, in the brain, awaiting the arrival of these vibrations to inform it that there is a chair outside?"

Haynerd indulged in a cynical laugh.

"It is too serious for laughter, my friend," said Hitt. "For to such crude beliefs as this we may attribute all the miseries of mankind."

"How is that?" queried Miss Wall in surprise.

"Simply because these beliefs constitute the general belief in a universe of matter without and about us. As a plain statement of fact, there is no such thing. But, I ask again, Is the mind within the brain, waiting for vibrations that will give it information concerning the external world? Or does the mind, from some focal point without the brain, look first at these vibrations, and then translate them into terms of things without? Do these vibrations in some way suggest form and color and substance to the waiting mind? Does the mind first look at vibrating nerve-points, and then form its own opinions regarding material objects? Does anything material enter the eye?"

"No," admitted the doctor; "unless we believe that vibrations per se are material."

"Now I ask, Is the mind reduced to such slavery that it must depend upon vibrations for its knowledge of an outside world?" continued Hitt. "And vibrations of minute pieces of flesh, at that! Flesh that will some day decay and leave the mind helpless!"

"Absurd!" exclaimed Haynerd. "Why doesn't the mind look directly at the chair, instead of getting its knowledge of the chair through vibrations of bits of meat? Or isn't there any chair out there to look at?"

"There!" exclaimed Hitt. "Now you've put your mental finger upon it. And now we are ready to nail to the cross of ignominy one of the crudest, most insensate beliefs of the human race. The human mind gets nothing whatsoever from vibrations, from the human, fleshly eye, nor from any one of the five so-called physical senses! The physical sense-testimony which mankind believe they receive from the eyes, the ears, and the other sense organs, can, even at best, consist only of a lot of disconnected, unintelligible vibrations; and anything that the mind may infer from such vibrations is inferred without any outside authority whatsoever!"

"Well!" ejaculated Miss Wall and Haynerd in a breath.

"And, further," continued Hitt, "we are forced to admit that all that the mind knows is the contents of itself, of its own consciousness, and nothing more. Then, instead of seeing, hearing, and feeling real material objects outside of ourselves, we are in reality seeing, hearing, and feeling our own mental concepts of things—in other words, our own thoughts of things!"

A deep silence lay for some moments over the little group at the conclusion of Hitt's words. Then Doctor Morton nodded his acquiescence in the deduction. "And that," he said, "effectually disposes of the question of space."

"There is no space, Doctor," replied Hitt. "Space is likewise a mental concept. The human mind sees, hears, and feels nothing but its own thoughts. These it posits within itself with reference to one another, and calls the process 'seeing material objects in space.' The mind as little needs a space in which to see things as in which to dream them. I repeat, we do not see external things, or things outside of ourselves. We see always and only the thoughts that are within our own mentalities. Everything is within."

"That's why," murmured Carmen, "Jesus said, 'The kingdom of heaven is within you.'"

"Exactly!" said Hitt. "Did he not call evil, and all that originates in matter, the lie about God? And a lie is wholly mental. I tell you, the existence of a world outside of ourselves, an objective world composed of matter, is wholly inferred—it is mental visualizing—and it is unreal, for it is not based upon fact, upon truth!"

"Then," queried Haynerd, "our supposed 'outer world' is but our collection of thought-concepts which we hold within us, within our own consciousness, eh?"

"Yes."

"But—the question of God?"

"We are ready for that again," replied Hitt. "We have said that in the physical universe all is in a state of incessant change. Since the physical universe is but a mental concept to each one of us, we must admit that, were the concept based upon truth, it would not change. Our concept of the universe must be without the real causative and sustaining principle of all reality, else would it not pass away. And yet, beneath and behind all these changes, something endures. What is it? Matter? No. There is an enduring substance, invisible to human sight, but felt and known through its own influence. Is it law? Yes. Mind? Yes. Ideas? Yes. But none of these things is in any sense material. The material is the fleeting, human concept, composed of thought that is not based upon reality. These other things, wholly mental, or spiritual, if you prefer, are based upon that 'something' which does endure, and which I will call the Causative Principle. It is the Universal Mind. It is what you loosely call God."

"Then did God make matter?" persisted Haynerd.

"I think," interposed Doctor Morton at this juncture, "that I can throw some light upon the immaterial character of matter, if I may so put it; for even our physical reasoning throws it entirely into the realm of the mental."

"Good!" exclaimed Hitt. "Let us hear from you, Doctor."

The doctor sat for some moments in a deep study. Then he began:

"The constitution of matter, speaking now from an admittedly materialistic standpoint, that of the physical sciences, is a subject of vastest interest and importance to mankind, for human existence is material.

"The ultimate constituent of matter has been called the atom. But we have said little when we have said that. The atom was once defined as a particle of matter so minute as to admit of no further division. That definition has gone to the rubbish heap, for the atom can now be torn to pieces. But—and here is the revolutionary fact in modern physical science—it is no longer held necessary that matter should consist of material particles! In fact, the great potential discovery of our day is that matter is electrical in composition, that it is composed of what are called 'electrons,' and that these electrons are themselves composed of electric charges. But what is an electric charge? Is it matter? No, not as we know matter. Is it even material? We can not say that it is. It is without weight, bulk, dimensions, or tangibility. Well, then, it comes dangerously near being a mental thing, known to the human mind solely by its manifestations, does it not? And of course our comprehension of it is entirely mental, as is our comprehension of everything."

He paused for a moment, that his words might be fully grasped. Then he went on:

"Now these atoms, whatever they are, are supposed to join together to form molecules. What brings them together thus? Affinity, we are told. And what is affinity? Why, it is—well, law, if you please. And law? A mental thing, we must admit. Very good. Then, going a step further, molecules are held together by cohesion to form material objects, chairs, trees, coal, and the like. But what is cohesion? Is it glue? Cement? Ah, no! Again, it is law. And law is mental."

"But, Doctor—" interrupted Haynerd.

The doctor held up a detaining hand. "Let me finish," he said. "Now we have the very latest word from our physical scientists regarding the constitution of matter: it is composed of electric charges, held together by law. Again, you may justly ask: Is matter material—or mental?"

He paused again, and took up a book that lay before him.

"Here," he continued, "I hold a solid, material, lumpy thing, composed, you will say, of matter. And yet, in essence, and if we can believe our scientists, this book is composed of billions of electric charges—invisible things, without form, without weight, without color, without extension, held together by law, and making up a material object which has mass, color, weight, and extension. From millions of things which are invisible and have no size, we get an object, visible and extended."

"It's absurd!" exclaimed Miss Wall.

"Granted," interposed Hitt. "Yet, the doctor is giving the very latest deductions of the great scientists."

"But, Doctor," said Father Waite, "the scientists tell us that they have experimental evidence in support of the theories which you have stated regarding the composition of matter. Electricity has been proven granular, or atomic, in structure. And every electrical charge consists of an exact number of electrical atoms spread out over the surface of the charged body. All this admits of definite calculation."

"Admitted," said Hitt, taking up the challenge. "And their very calculations and deductions are rapidly wearing away the 'materialistic theory' of matter. You will admit that mathematics is wholly confined to the realm of mind. It is a strictly mental science, in no way material. It loses definiteness when 'practically' applied to material objects. Kant saw this, and declared that a science might be regarded as further removed from or nearer to perfection in proportion to the amount of mathematics it contained. Now there has been an astonishing confirmation of this great truth just lately. At a banquet given in honor of the discoverer of wireless telegraphy it was stated that the laws governing the traversing of space by the invisible electric waves were more exact than the general laws of physics, where very complex formulas and coefficients are required for correcting the general laws, due to surrounding material conditions. The greater exactness of laws governing the invisible electric waves was said to be due to the absence of matter. And it was further stated that whenever matter had to be taken into consideration there could be no exact law of action!" "Which shows—?"

"That matter admits of no definite laws," replied Hitt. "That there are no real laws of matter. And that definiteness is attained only as we dematerialize matter itself."

"In other words, get into the realm of the mental?"

"Just so. And now for the application. I have said that we do not receive any testimony whatsoever through the so-called material senses, but that we see, hear, feel, taste, and smell our own thoughts—that is, the thoughts which, from some source, come into our mentalities. Very well, our scientists show us that, as they get farther away from dense material thoughts, and deal more and more with those which have less material structure, less material composition, their laws become more definite, more exact. Following this out to its ultimate conclusion, we may say, then, that only those laws which have to do with the non-material are perfect."

"And those," said Carmen, "are the laws of mind."

"Exactly! And now the history of physical science shows that there has been a constant deviation from the old so-called fixed 'laws of matter.' The law of impenetrability has had to go. A great physicist tells us that, when dealing with sufficiently high speeds, matter has no such property as impenetrability. Mass is a function of velocity. The law of indestructibility has had to go. Matter deteriorates and goes to pieces. The material elements are not fixed. The decided tendency of belief is toward a single element, of which all matter is composed, and of which the eighty-odd constituent elements of matter accepted to-day are but modifications. That unit element may be the ether, of course. And the great Russian chemist, Mendeleef, so believed. But to us, the ether is a mental thing, a theory. But, granting its existence, its universal penetrability renders matter, as we know it, non-existent. Everything reduces to the ether, in the final analysis. And all energy becomes vibrations in and of the ether."

"And the ether," supplemented the doctor, "has to be without mass, invisible, tasteless, intangible, much more rigid than steel, and at the same time some six hundred billion times lighter than air, in order to fulfill all the requirements made of it and to meet all conditions."

"Yes; and yet the ether is a very necessary theory, if we are going to continue to explain the phenomena of force on a material basis."

"But if we abandon that basis—?"

"Then," said Carmen, "matter reduces to what it really is, the human mind's interpretation of substance."

"Yes," said Hitt, turning to her; "I think you are right; matter is the way real substance—let us say, spirit—looks to the human mentality. It is the way the human mind interprets its ideas of spirit. In other words, the human mind looks at the material thoughts and ideas which enter it, and calls them solid substance, occupying space—calls them matter, with definite laws, and, in certain forms, containing life and intelligence."

"Aye, that is it!" said Father Waite. "And that has been the terrible mistake of the ages, the one great error, the one lie, that has caused us all to miss the mark and come short, far short, of the glory of the mind that is God. There is the origin of the problem of evil!"

"Undoubtedly," replied Hitt. "For evil is in essence but evil thought. And evil thought is invariably associated with matter. The origin of all evil is matter itself. And matter, we find, is but a mental concept, a thing of thought. Oh, the irony of it!"

"Well," put in Haynerd, who had been twitching nervously in his chair, "let's get to the conclusion of this very learned discussion. I'm a plain man, and I'd like to know just where we've landed. What have you said that I can take home with me? The earth still revolves around the sun, even if it is a mean mud ball. And I can't see that I can get along with less than three square meals a day."

"We have arrived," replied Hitt gravely, "at a most momentous conclusion, deduced by the physical scientists themselves, namely, that things are not what they seem. In other words, all things material seem to reduce to vibrations in and of the ether; the basis of all materiality is energy, motion, activity—mental things. All the elements of matter seem to be but modifications of one all-pervading element. That element is probably the ether, often called the 'mother of matter.' The elements, such as carbon, silicon, and the others, are not elementary at all, but are forms of one universal element, the ether. Hence, atoms are not atoms. The so-called rare elements are rare only because their lives are short. They disintegrate rapidly and change into other forms of the universal element—or disappear. 'Atoms are but fleeting phases of matter,' we are told. They are by no means eternal, even though they may endure for millions of years."

"Y-e-s?" commented Haynerd with a yawn.

"A great scientist of our own day," Hitt continued, "has said that 'the ether is so modified as to constitute matter, in some way.' What does that mean? Simply that 'visible matter and invisible ether are one and the same thing.' But to the five so-called physical senses the ether is utterly incomprehensible. So, then, matter is wholly incomprehensible to the five physical senses. What is it, then, that we call matter? It can be nothing more than the human mind's interpretation of its idea of an all-pervading, omnipresent something, a something which represents substance to it."

"Let me add a further quotation from the great physical scientist to whom you have referred," said the doctor. "He has said that the ether is not matter, but that it is material. And further, that we can not deny that the ether may have some mental and spiritual functions to subserve in some other order of existence, as matter has in this. It is wholly unrelated to any of our senses. The sense of sight takes cognizance of it, but only in a very indirect and not easily recognized way. And yet—stupendous conclusion!—without the ether there could be no material universe at all!"

"In other words," said Hitt, "the whole fabric of the material universe depends upon something utterly unrecognizable by the five physical senses."

"Exactly!" replied the doctor.

"Then," concluded Hitt, "the physical senses give us no information whatsoever of a real physical universe about us."

"And so," added Father Waite, "we come back to Carmen's statement, namely, that seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling are mental processes, in no way dependent upon the outer fleshly organs of sense—"

"Nonsense!" interjected Haynerd. "Why is it, then, that if the eyes are destroyed we do not see?"

"Simply, my friend, because of human belief," replied Hitt. "The human mind has been trained for untold centuries to dependence upon beliefs in the reality of matter, and beliefs in its dependence upon material modes for sight, hearing, touch, and so on. It is because of its erroneous beliefs that the human mind is to-day enslaved by matter, and dependent upon it for its very sense of existence. The human mind has made its sense of sight dependent upon a frail, pulpy bit of flesh, the eye. As long as that fleshly organ remains intact, the human mind sees its sense of sight externalized in the positing of its mental concepts about it as natural objects. But let that fleshly eye be destroyed, and the human mind sees its belief of dependence upon the material eye externalized as blindness. When the fleshly eye is gone the mind declares that it can no longer see. And what it declares as truth, as fact, becomes externalized to it. I repeat, the human mind sees and hears only its thoughts, its beliefs. And holding to these beliefs, and making them real to itself, it eventually sees them externalized in what it calls its outer world, its environment, its universe. And yet, the materialistic scientists themselves show that the human mind can take no cognizance whatever through the five physical senses of the all-pervading basis of its very existence, the ether. And the ether—alas! it is but a theory which we find necessary for any intelligible explanation of the farce of human existence on a material basis."

"Now see here!" retorted Haynerd, rising and giving expression to his protest by means of emphatic gestures. "I'm getting mixed—badly! You tell me that the existence of things demands a creator, and I admit it, for there can be no effect without a cause. Then you say that the universe is infinite; and I admit that, too, for the science of astronomy finds no limits to space, and no space unoccupied. You say that the unity manifested in the universe proves that there can be but one creator. Moreover, to create an infinite universe there must needs be an omnipotent creator; and there can be but one who is omnipotent. I cordially agree. Further, I can see how that creator must be mind—infinite mind. And I can see why that mind must be absolutely perfect, with no intelligence of evil whatsoever, else would it be a house divided against itself. And such a house must eventually fall. Now I admit that the universe must be the manifestation, the expression, of that infinite creative mind. But—and here's the sticking point—the universe is both good and evil! Hence, the mind which it manifests is likewise both good and evil—and the whole pretty theory blows up!"

He sat down abruptly, with the air of having given finality to a perplexing question.

All eyes then turned to Carmen, who slowly rose and surveyed the little group.

"It is not surprising," she said, smiling at the confused Haynerd, "that difficulties arise when you attempt to reach God through human reasoning—spirit through matter. You have taken the unreal, and, through it, have sought to reach back to the real."

"Well," interrupted Haynerd testily, "kindly explain the difference."

"Then, first," replied Carmen, "let us adopt some common meeting ground, some basis which we can all accept, and from which we can rise. Are you all agreed that, in our every-day life, everything is mental?—every action?—every object?—and that, as the philosopher Mill said, 'Everything is a feeling of which the mind is conscious'? Let me illustrate my meaning," she continued, noting Haynerd's rising protest. "I see this book; I take it up; and drop it upon the table. Have I really seen a book? No; I have been conscious of thoughts which I call a book, nothing more. A real material book did not get into my mind; but thoughts of a book did. And the activity of such thought resulted in a state of consciousness—for consciousness is mental activity, the activity of thought. Remember that, even according to your great physical scientists, this book is composed of millions of charges of electricity, or electrons, moving at a tremendously high rate of speed. And yet, regardless of its composition, I am conscious only of my thoughts of the book. It is but my thoughts that I see, after all."

She paused and waited for the protest which was not voiced.

"Very well," she said, continuing; "so it is with the sense of touch; I had the thought of touching it, and that thought I saw; I was conscious of it when it became active in my mentality. So with sound; when I let the book drop, I was conscious of my thought of sound. If the book had been dropped in a vacuum I should not have been conscious of a thought of sound—why? Because, as Mr. Hitt has told us, the human mind has made its sense-testimony dependent upon vibrations. And yet, there is a clock ticking up there on the wall. Do you hear it?"

"Yes," replied Haynerd; "now that you've called my attention to it."

"Ah, yes," replied the girl. "You hear it when your thought is directed to it. And yet the air was vibrating all the time, and, if hearing is dependent upon the fleshly ear, you should have heard it incessantly when you were not thinking of it, as well as you hear it now when you are thinking of it. Am I not right?"

"Well, perhaps so," assented Haynerd with some reluctance.

"We hear, see, and feel," continued the girl, "when our thought is directed to these processes. And the processes are wholly mental—they take place within our mentalities—and it is there, within our minds, that we see, hear, and feel all things. And it is there, within our minds, that the universe exists for us. It is there that we hold our world, our fleshly bodies, everything that we call material. The universe that we think we see all about us consists of the mental concepts, made up of thought, which we hold within our mentalities."

Haynerd nodded somewhat dubiously. Carmen proceeded with the exposition of her theme.

"Whence come these material thoughts that are within us? And are they real? Can we control them? And how? They are real to us, at any rate, are they not? And if they are thoughts of pain and suffering and death, they are terribly real to us. But let us see, now that we can reason from the basis of the mental nature of all things. We have agreed that the creative principle is mind, and we call it God. This infinite mind constantly expresses and manifests itself in ideas. Why, that is a fundamental law of mind! You express yourself in your ideas and thoughts, which you try to externalize materially. But the infinite mind expresses itself in an infinite number and variety of ideas, all, like itself, pure, perfect, eternal, good, without any elements or seeds of decay or discord. And the incessant expression of the creative mind in and through its numberless ideas constitutes the never-ending process of creation."

"Let me add here," interrupted Hitt, "that the Bible states that God created the heavens and earth in seven days. But numbers, we must remember, were mystical things to the ancient Hebrews, and were largely used symbolically. The number seven, for example, was used to express wholeness, completeness. So we must remember that its use in Genesis has a much wider meaning than its absurd theological interpretation into seven solar days. As Carmen says, the infinite creative mind can never cease to express itself; creation can never cease; and creation is but the whole, complete revelation or unfoldment of infinite mind's ideas."

"And infinite mind," continued Carmen, "requires infinite time in which to completely express itself. So time ceases to be, and we find that all real things exist now, in an endless present. Now, the ideas of infinite mind range throughout the realm of infinity, but the greatest idea that the creative mind can have is the idea of itself. That idea is the image and likeness of the infinite creative mind. It is the perfect reflection of that mind—its perfect expression. That idea is what the man Jesus always saw back of the human concept of man. That idea is the real man!"

"Well!" exclaimed Haynerd. "That's quite a different proposition from the mud-men that I do business with daily. What are they? Children of God?"

"If they were real," said Carmen, "they would have to be children of God. But then they would not be 'mud-men.' Now I have just spoken of the real, the spiritual creation. That is the creation mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis, where all was created—revealed, unfolded—by God, and He saw that it was perfect, good. 'In the beginning,' says the commentator. That is, 'To begin with—God.' Everything begins with God in the realm of the real. The creative mind is first. And the creation, or unfoldment, is like its creative principle, eternal and good."

"But," persisted Haynerd, "how about the material man?"

"Having created all things spiritually," continued the girl, "was it necessary that the creative mind should repeat its work, do it over again, and produce the man of dust described in the second chapter of Genesis? Is that second account of the creation an inspiration of truth—or a human comment?"

"Call it what you will," said the cynical Haynerd; "the fact remains that the mud-man exists and has to be reckoned with."

"Both of your premises are wholly incorrect," returned the girl gently. "He does not exist, excepting in human, mortal thought. He is a product of only such thought. He and his material universe are seen and dealt with only in such thought. And such thought is the direct antithesis of God's thought. And it is therefore unreal. It is the supposition, the lie, the mist that went up and darkened the earth."

"But—the human man—?"

"Is just what you have said, a hue of a man, a dark hue, the shadowy opposite which seems to counterfeit the real, spiritual man and claim all his attributes. He is not a compound of mind and matter, for we have seen that all things are mental, even matter itself. He is a sort of mentality, a counterfeit of real mind. His body and his universe are in himself. And, like all that is unreal, he is transient, passing, ephemeral, mortal."

"Yet, God made him!"

"No, for he does not exist, excepting in supposition. Does a supposition really exist? If so, then not even truth can destroy it. But supposition passes out before truth. No, the human mind is the 'old man' of Paul. He is to be put off by knowing his nothingness, and by knowing the unreality of his supposed material environment and universe. As he goes out of consciousness, the real man, the idea of God, perfect, harmonious, and eternal, comes in."

"And there," said Father Waite impressively, "you have the whole scheme of salvation, as enunciated by the man Jesus."

"There is no doubt of it," added Hitt. "And, oh, my friends! how futile, how base, how worse than childish now appear the whole theological fabric of the churches, their foolish man-made dogmas, their insensate beliefs in a fiery hell and a golden heaven. Oh, how belittling now appear their concepts of God—a God who can damn unbaptised infants, who can predestine his children to eternal sorrow, who creates and then curses his handiwork! Do you wonder that sin, sorrow, and death remain among us while such awful beliefs hold sway over the human mind? God help us, and the world!"

Haynerd, who had been sitting quietly for some moments, deep in thought, rose and held out his hands, as if in entreaty. "Don't—don't!" he exclaimed. "I can't hear any more. I want to think it all over. It seems—it seems as if a curtain had been raised suddenly. And what I see beyond is—"

Carmen went swiftly to the man and slipped an arm about him. "That infinite creative Mind, so misunderstood and misinterpreted by human beings, is back of you," she whispered. "And it is Love."

Haynerd turned and grasped her hands. "I believe it," he murmured. "But had I not seen the proof in you, no amount of reasoning would have convinced me." And, bowing to the little group, he went out.

"Well?" said Hitt, turning inquiringly to the doctor.

The latter raised his head. "If these things are true," he made answer slowly, "then I shall have to recast my entire mentality, my whole basis of thinking."

"It is just what you must do, Doctor, if you would work out your salvation," said Carmen. "Jesus said we must repent if we would be saved. Repentance—the Greek metanoia—means a complete and radical change of thought."

"But—do you mean to say that the whole world has been mistaken? That the entire human race has been deceived for ages?"

"Why," said Hitt, "it was only in our own day, comparatively speaking, that the human race was undeceived in regard to the world being round. And there are thousands of human beings to-day who still believe in witchcraft, and who worship the sun and moon, and whose lives are wholly under the spell of superstition. Human character, a great scientist tells us, has not changed since history began."

"But we can't revamp our thought-processes!"

"Then we must go on missing the mark, sinning, suffering, sorrowing, and dying, over and over and over again, until we decide that we can do so," said Hitt.

The doctor looked at Carmen and met that same smile of unbounded love which she gave without stint to a sin-weary world.

"I—I'll come again," he said. "When? To-morrow night?"

"Yes," said Carmen, rising and coming around to him. "And," in a whisper, "bring Pat."



CHAPTER 6

The Social Era had for many years made its weekly appearance every Saturday morning, that its fashionable clientele might appease their jaded appetites on the Sabbath day by nibbling at its spicy pabulum. But, though the Ames reception had fallen on a Saturday night, the following Friday morning found the columns of the Era still awaiting a report of the notable affair. For Haynerd's hand seemed paralyzed. Whenever he set his pen to the task, there loomed before him only the scene in the little waiting room, and he could write of nothing else. He found himself still dwelling upon the awful contrast between the slender wisp of a girl and her mountainous opponent, as they had stood before him; and the terrifying thoughts of what was sure to follow in consequence drenched his skin with cold perspiration.

On the desk before him lay the essay which he had asked Carmen to write during the week, as her report of the brilliant event. He had read it through three times, and each time had read into it a new meaning. He dared not run it. Not that it ridiculed or condemned—at least, not openly—but because every one of its crisp comments admitted of an interpretation which revealed the hidden depths of the social system, and its gigantic incarnation, as if under the glare of a powerful searchlight. It was in no sense a muck-raking exposition. Rather, it was an interpretation, and a suggestion. It was, too, a prediction; but not a curse. The girl loved those about whom she wrote. And yet, he who read the essay aright would learn that her love stopped not at the flimsy veil of the flesh, but penetrated until it rested upon the fair spiritual image beyond. And then Haynerd saw that the essay was, in substance, a social clinic, to which all searchers after truth were bidden, that they might learn a great lesson from her skillful dissection of the human mind, and her keen analysis of its constituent thought.

As he sat wrapped in reflection, the early morning mail was brought in. He glanced up, and then started to his feet. The letters spread over his desk like an avalanche of snow; and the puffing mail carrier declared that he had made a special trip with them alone. Haynerd began to tear them open, one after another. Then he called the office boy, and set him at the task. There were more than five hundred of them, and each contained a canceled subscription to the Social Era.

A dark foreboding settled down over Haynerd's mind. He rose and went to the card-index to consult his subscription list. It was gone! He stood confusedly for a moment, then hastened to the window that looked out upon a fire-escape. Its lock lay broken upon the floor. He turned and rushed to the vault, which, reflecting his own habitual carelessness, was never locked. His ledgers and account books were not there. Then he crept back to his desk and sank into a chair.

The noon mail brought more letters of like nature, until the office boy tallied nearly eight hundred. Then Haynerd, as if rousing from a dream, reached for the telephone and summoned Hitt to his rescue. The Social Era was foundering. Its mailing list had contained some fifteen hundred names. The subscription price was twelve dollars a year—and never, to his knowledge, had it been paid in advance by his ultra-rich patrons, most of whom were greatly in arrears. Haynerd saw it all vanishing now as quietly as the mist fades before the summer sun.

Within an hour the wondering Hitt was in conference with him, and Haynerd had told the story of the theft, of the Ames bribe, and the encounter following. "But," he cried, "can Ames kill my entire subscription list, and in a single week?"

"Easily," replied Hitt, "and in any one of several ways. Apparently he had caused your subscription list and books to be stolen. Your sun has set, Ned. Or, rather, Ames has lifted it bodily from the sky."

"Then I'll shoot him! I'll—! But we've got the goods on him! Carmen and I saw him bribe Wales! We'll expose him!"

Hitt laughed. "Forget all that," he said, laying a hand on the excited man's arm. "Remember, that Wales would never dare breathe a word of it; Carmen has no reputation or standing whatsoever now in this city; and Ames would make out a case of blackmail against you so quickly that it would sweep you right into the Tombs. Go easy. And first, let us get the girl herself down here."

He took the telephone and called up several of the University departments, after first ascertaining that she was not at her home. Then, having located her, he plunged into a study of the situation with the distracted publisher.

"That's the way of it!" cried Haynerd at length. "Here I waste my evenings in learned philosophical discussions with you people, and meantime, while we're figuring out that there is no evil, that monster, Ames, stretches out a tentacle and strangles me! Fine practical discussions we've been having, ain't they? I tell you, I'm through with 'em!" He brought his fist down upon the desk with a crash.

"Ned," said Hitt, "you're a fool."

"Sure I am!" shouted Haynerd. "Do I deny it? Here I had a nice, clean business, no work, good pay—and, just because I associated with you and that girl, the whole damn thing goes up the flue! Pays to be good, doesn't it? Nix!"

"H'm; well, Ned, you're not only a fool, but a blooming idiot," replied Hitt calmly.

"Lay it on! Lay it on thick!" roared Haynerd. "And if you run out of epithets, I'll supply a few! I'm a—"

The door swung open, and Carmen entered, fresh as the sea breeze, and panting with her haste. "Do you know," she began eagerly, "two men followed me all the way down from the University! They watched me come in here, and—but, what is wrong with you two?" She stopped and looked inquiringly from one to the other.

"Well," began Hitt hesitatingly, "we were reflecting—"

"Reflecting? What? Good, or evil?" she demanded.

"We were just holding a wake, that's all," muttered Haynerd.

"Then wake up!" she cried, seizing his hand.

Hitt pushed out a chair for the girl, and bade her sit down. Then he briefly related the events which had led to her being summoned. "And now," he concluded, "the question is, does Wales know that you and Ned saw Ames try to bribe him?"

"Why, of course he knows!" cried Carmen. "His wife told him."

"And who informed her?"

"I did—last Monday morning, early," answered the wondering girl.

"Didn't I tell you?" ejaculated Haynerd, turning upon Hitt and waving his arms about. "What do you—"

"Hold your tongue, Ned!" interrupted Hitt. Then, to Carmen, "Why did you tell her?"

"Why—to save her, and her husband, and babies! I told her because it was right! You know it was right!"

"But, to save them, you have ruined Ned," pursued Hitt.

The girl turned to Haynerd, who sat doubled up in his chair, the picture of despair. "I haven't ruined you, Ned." It was the first time she had used this name in addressing him. "Things never happen, you know. And if you have been pushed out of this business, it is because it isn't fit for you, and because you've been awakened. You are for higher, better things than the publishing of such a magazine as the Social Era. I knew you just couldn't stay at this work. You have got to go up—"

"Eh!" Haynerd had roused out of his torpor. "Go up? Yes, I've gone up, nicely! And I was making ten thousand dollars a year out of it! It was a bully proposition!" he blurted.

The girl smiled. "I wasn't speaking of money," she said.

"But I was!" retorted Haynerd. "When I talk, it's in dollars and cents!"

"And that's why your talk is mostly nonsense," put in Hitt. "The girl's right, I guess. You've stagnated here long enough, Ned. There's no such thing as standing still. Progress is a divine demand. It's now your move."

"But—good Lord! what am I to do?" wailed the man.

"You now have a grand opportunity," said Carmen, taking his hand.

"Opportunity!"

"Yes; every trial in this life is an opportunity to prove that there is no evil," she said. "Listen; you have been trained as a publisher. Very well, the world is waiting for the right kind of publications. Oh, I've seen it for a long, long time. The demand is simply tremendous. Now meet it!"

Haynerd looked confusedly from Carmen to Hitt. The latter turned to the girl. "What, exactly, do you mean, Carmen?" he asked.

"Let him publish now a clean magazine, or paper; let him print real news; let him work, not for rich people's money, but for all people. Why, the press is the greatest educator in the world! But, oh, how it has been abused! Now let him come out boldly and stand for clean journalism. Let him find his own life, his own good, in service for others."

"But, Carmen," protested Hitt, "do the people want clean journalism? Could such a paper stand?"

"It could, if it had the right thought back of it," returned the confident girl.

Haynerd had again lapsed into sulky silence. But Hitt pondered the girl's words for some moments. She was not the first nor the only one who had voiced such sentiments. He himself had even dared to hold the same thoughts, and to read in them a leading that came not from material ambitions. Then, of a sudden, an idea flamed up in his mind.

"The Express!" he exclaimed.

Carmen waited expectantly. Hitt's eyes widened with his expanding thought. "Carlson, editor of the Express, wants to sell," he continued, speaking rapidly.

"It's a semi-weekly newspaper, printed only for country circulation; has no subscription list," commented Haynerd, with a cynical shrug of his shoulders.

"Buy it!" exclaimed Carmen. "Buy it! And change it into a daily! Make it a real newspaper!"

Hitt looked into Carmen's glowing eyes. "How old are you?" he suddenly asked. The abruptness of the strange, apparently irrelevant question startled the girl.

"Why," she replied slowly, "as old as—as God. And as young."

"And, as human beings reckon time, eighteen, eh?" continued Hitt.

She nodded, wondering what the question meant. Hitt then turned to Haynerd. "How much money can you scrape together, if you sell this lot of junk?" he asked, sweeping the place with a glance.

"Five or six thousand, all told, including bank account, bonds, and everything, I suppose," replied Haynerd mechanically.

"Carlson wants forty thousand for the Express. I'm not a rich man, as wealth is estimated to-day, but—well, oil is still flowing down in Ohio. It isn't the money—it's—it's what's back of the cash."

Carmen reached over and laid a hand on his arm. "We can do it," she whispered.

Hitt hesitated a moment longer, then sprang to his feet. "And we will!" he cried. "I've pondered and studied this scheme for a year, but I've only to-day seen the right help. That is your tremendous, driving thought," he said, turning to Carmen. "That thought is a spiritual dynamite, that will blast its way through every material obstacle! Ned," seizing Haynerd by the shoulder and shaking him out of his chair, "rouse up! Your light has come! Now I'll 'phone Carlson right away and make an appointment to talk business with him. You'll stand with me, Carmen?"

"Yes," she said simply.

"And you, Ned?"

Haynerd blinked for a few moments, like an owl in the light. But then, as a comprehension of Hitt's plan dawned upon his waking thought, he straightened up.

"Buy the Express! Make a real paper of it! A—but Ames?"

"He can't touch us! The clientele of the Express will not be made up of his puppets! Our paper will be for the people!"

"But—your University work, Hitt?"

"I give my last lecture next week."

"And you, Carmen?"

"I was only biding my time," she replied gently. "This is a real call. And my answer is: Here am I."

Tears began to trickle slowly down Haynerd's cheeks, as the tension in his nerves slackened. He rose and seized the hands of his two friends. "Hitt," he said, in a choking voice, "I—I said I was a fool. But that fellow's dead now. The real man has waked up, and—well, what are you standing there for, you great idiot? Go and call up Carlson!"

* * * * *

Again that evening the little group sat about the table in the dining room of the Beaubien cottage. But only the three most directly concerned, and the Beaubien, knew that the owner of the Express had received that afternoon an offer for the purchase of his newspaper, and that he had been given twenty-four hours in which to accept it. Doctor Morton was again present; and beside him sat his lifelong friend and jousting-mate, the very Reverend Patterson Moore. Hitt took the floor, and began speaking low and earnestly.

"We must remember," he said, "in conjunction with what we have deduced regarding the infinite creative mind and its manifestations, that we mortals in our daily mundane existence deal only and always with phenomena, with appearances, with effects, and never with ultimate causes. And so all our material knowledge is a knowledge of appearances only. Of the ultimate essence of things, the human mind knows nothing. All of its knowledge is relative. A phenomenon may be so-and-so with regard to another; but that either is absolute truth we can not affirm. And yet—mark this well—as Spencer says, 'Every one of the arguments by which the relativity of our knowledge is demonstrated distinctly postulates the positive existence of something beyond the relative.'"

"And just what does that mean?" asked Miss Wall.

"It is a primitive statement of what is sometimes called the 'Theory of suppositional opposites'", replied Hitt. "It means that to every reality there is the corresponding unreality. For every truth there may be postulated the supposition. We can not, as the great philosopher says, conceive that our knowledge is a knowledge of appearances only, without at the same time conceiving a reality of which they are appearances. He further amplifies this by saying that 'every positive notion—the concept of a thing by what it is—suggests a negative notion—the concept of a thing by what it is not. But, though these mutually suggest each other, the positive alone is real.' Most momentous language, that! For, interpreted, it means: we must deny the seeming, or that which appears to human sense, in order to see that which is real."

"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Miss Wall, glancing about to note the effect of the speaker's words on the others.

But Carmen nodded her thorough agreement, and added: "Did not Jesus say that we must deny ourselves? Deny which self? Why, the self that appears to us, the matter-man, the dust-man, the man of the second chapter of Genesis. We must deny his reality, and know that he is nothing but a mental concept, formed out of suppositional thought, out of dust-thought. And that is material thought."

"Undoubtedly correct," said Hitt, turning to Carmen. "But, before we consider the astonishing teachings of Jesus, let us sum up the conclusions of philosophy. To begin with, then, there is a First Cause, omnipotent and omnipresent, and of very necessity perfect. That Cause lies back of all the phenomena of life; and, because of its real existence, there arises the suppositional existence of its opposite, its negative, so to speak, which is unreal. The phenomena of human existence have to do only with the suppositional existence of the great First Cause's opposite. They are a reflection of that supposition. Hence all human knowledge of an external world is but phenomenal, and consists of appearances which have no more real substance than have shadows. We, as mortals, know but the shadowy, phenomenal existence. We do not know reality. Therefore, our knowledge is not real knowledge, but supposition.

"Now," he went on hastily, for he saw an expression of protest on Reverend Moore's face, "we are more or less familiar with a phenomenal existence, with appearances, with effects; and our knowledge of these is entirely mental. We see all things as thought. These thoughts, such as feeling, seeing, hearing, and so on, we ignorantly attribute to the five physical senses. This is what Ruskin calls the 'pathetic fallacy.' And because we do so, we find ourselves absolutely dependent upon these senses—in belief. Moreover, quoting Spencer again, only the absolutely real is the absolutely persistent, or enduring. Truth, for example. The truth of the multiplication table will endure eternally. It is real. But is it any whit material?"

"No," admitted Miss Wall, speaking for the others.

"And, as regards material objects which we seem to see and touch," went on Hitt, "we appear to see solidity and hardness, and we conceive as real objects what are only the mental signs or indications of objects. Remember, matter does not and can not get into the mind. Only thoughts and ideas enter our mentalities. We see our thoughts of hardness, solidity, and so on; and these thoughts point to something that is real. That something is—what? I repeat: the ideas of the infinite creative Mind. The thoughts of size, shape, hardness, and so on, which we group together and call material chairs, trees, mountains, and other objects, are but 'relative realities,' pointing to the absolute reality, infinite mind and its eternal ideas and thoughts."

He paused again for comments. But all seemed absorbed in his statements. Then he resumed:

"Our concept of matter, which is now proven to be but a mental concept, built up out of false thought, points to mind as the real substance. Our concept of measurable space and distance is the direct opposite of the great truth that infinite mind is ever-present. Our concept of time is the opposite of infinity. It is but human limitation. Age is the opposite of eternity—and the old-age thought brings extinction. So, to every reality there is the corresponding unreality. The opposite of good is evil. If the infinite creative mind is good—and we saw that by very necessity it must be so—then evil becomes an awful unreality, and is real only to the false thought which entertains or holds it. If life is real—and infinite mind must itself be life—then death becomes the opposite unreality. And, as Jesus said, it can be overcome. But were it real, no power, divine or human, could ever overcome or destroy it!"

"Seems to me," remarked Haynerd dryly, "that our study so far simply goes to show, as Burke puts it, 'what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue.'"

Hitt smiled. "When the world humiliates itself to the point that it will accept that, my friend," he said, "then it will become receptive to truth.

"But now let us go a little further," he went on. "The great Lamarck voiced a mighty fact when he said, 'Function precedes structure.' For by that we mean that the egg did not produce the bird, but the bird the egg. The world seems about to pass from the very foolish belief that physical structure is the cause of life, to the great fact that a sense of life produces the physical structure. The former crude belief enslaved man to his body. The latter tends to free him from such slavery."

"You see, Doctor," interrupted Carmen, "the brain which you were cutting up the other day did not make poor Yorick's mind and thought, but his mind made the brain."

The doctor smiled and shook a warning finger at the girl.

"The body," resumed Hitt, "is a manifestation of the human mind's activity. What constitutes the difference between a bird and a steam engine? This, in part: the engine is made by human hands from without; the bird makes itself, that is, its body, from within. So it is with the human body. But the ignorant human mind—ignorant per se—falls a slave to its own creation, the mental concept which it calls its physical body, and which it pampers and pets and loves, until it can cling to it no longer, because the mental concept, not being based on any real principle, is forced to pass away, having nothing but false thought to sustain it."

"But now," interposed Haynerd, who was again waxing impatient, "just what is the practical application of all this abstruse reasoning?"

"The very greatest imaginable, my friend," replied Hitt. "A real thing is real forever. And so matter can not become non-existent unless it is already nothing! The world is beginning to recognize the tremendous fact that from nothing nothing can be made. Very well, since the law of the conservation of energy seems to be established as regards energy in toto, why, we must conclude that there is no such thing as annihilation. And that means that there is no such thing as absolute creation! Whatever is real has always existed. The shadow never was real, and does not exist. And so creation becomes unfolding, or revelation, or development, of what already exists, and has always existed, and always will exist. Therefore, if matter, and all it includes as concomitants, evil, sin, sickness, accident, chance, lack, and death, is based upon unreal, false thought, then it can all be removed, put out of consciousness, by a knowledge of truth and a reversal of our accustomed human thought-processes."

"And that," said Carmen, "is salvation. It is based on righteousness, which is right-thinking, thinking true thoughts, and thinking truly."

"And knowing," added Hitt, "that evil, including matter, is the suppositional opposite of truth. The doctrine of materialism has been utterly disproved even by the physicists themselves. For physicists have at last agreed that inertia is the great essential property of matter. That is, matter is not a cause, but an effect. It does not operate, but is operated upon. It is not a law-giver, but is subject to the human mind's so-called laws concerning it. It of itself is utterly without life or intelligence.

"Very good," he continued. "Now Spencer said that matter was a manifestation of an underlying power or force. Physicists tell us that matter is made of electricity, that it is an electrical phenomenon, and that the ultimate constituent of matter is the electron. The electron is said by some to be made up of superimposed layers of positive and negative electricity, and by others to be made up of only negative charges. I rather prefer the latter view, for if composed of only negative electricity it is more truly a negation. Matter is the negative of real substance. It is a sort of negative truth.

"Now electricity is a form of energy. Hence matter is a form of energy also. But our comprehension of it is wholly mental. Energy is mental. The only real energy there is or can be is the energy of the infinite mind we call God. This the human mind copies, or imitates, by reason of what has been called 'the law of suppositional opposites,' already dwelt upon at some length. Everything manifests this so-called law. Electricity is both positive and negative. Gravitation is regarded by some physicists as the negative aspect of radiation-pressure, the latter being the pressure supposed to be exerted by all material bodies upon one another. The third law of motion illustrates this so-called law, for it states that action and reaction are equal and opposite. There can be no positive action without a resultant negative one. The truth has its lie. The divine mind, God, has His opposite in the communal human, or mortal, mind. The latter is manifested by the so-called minds which we call mankind. And from these so-called minds issue matter and material forms and bodies, with their so-called material laws.

"Yes, the material universe is running down. Stupendous fact! The entire human concept is running down. Matter, the human mental concept, is not eternally permanent. Neither, therefore, are its concomitants, sin and discord. Matter disintegrates and passes away—out of human consciousness. The whole material universe—the so-called mortal-mind concept—is hastening to its death!"

"But as yet I think you have not given Mr. Haynerd the practical application which he asks," suggested Father Waite, as Hitt paused after his long exposition.

"I am now ready for that," replied Hitt. "We have said that the material is the relative. So all human knowledge is relative. But, that being so, we can go a step further and add that human error is likewise relative. And now—startling fact!—it is absolutely impossible to really know error!"

"Why—!" burst from the incredulous Miss Wall.

"Well?" said Hitt, turning to her. "Can you know that two plus two equals seven?"

"N—no."

"Let me make this statement of truth: nothing can be known definitely except as it is explained by the principle which governs it. Now what principle governs an error, whether that error be in music, mathematics, or life conduct?"

There was no reply to the question.

"Very well," continued Hitt. "Evil can not be really known. And that is why God—infinite Mind—can not behold evil. And now, friends, I have come to the conclusion of a long series of deductions. If infinite mind is the cause and creator, that is, the revealer, of all that really exists, its suppositional opposite, its negative, must likewise simulate a creation, or revelation, or unfolding, for this opposite must of very necessity pose as a creative principle. It must simulate all the powers and attributes of the infinite creative mind. If the creative mind gave rise to a spiritual universe and spiritual man, by which it expresses itself, then this suppositional opposite must present its universe and its man, opposite in every particular to the reality. It is this sort of man and this sort of universe that we, as mortals, seem to see all about us, and that we refer to as human beings and the physical universe. And yet, all that we see, feel, hear, smell, or taste is the false, suppositional thought that comes into our so-called mentalities, and by its suppositional activity there causes what we call consciousness or awareness of things."

"Then," said Father Waite, more to enunciate his own thought than to question the deduction, "what the human consciousness holds as knowledge is little more than belief and speculation, with no basis of truth, no underlying principle."

"Just so. And it brings out the fruits of such beliefs in discord, decay, and final dissolution, called death. For this human consciousness forms its own concept of a fleshly body, and a mind-and-matter man. It makes the laws which govern its body, and it causes its body to obey these false laws. Upon the quality of thought entering this human consciousness depend all the phenomena of earthly life and environment which the mortal experiences. The human consciousness, in other words, is a self-centered mass of erroneous thought, utterly without any basis of real principle, but actively engaged in building up mental images, and forming and maintaining an environment in which it supposes itself to live. This false thought in the human consciousness forms into a false concept of man, and this is the soul-and-body man, the mind-and-matter man, which is called a human being, or a mortal."

"And there," commented Carmen, with a dreamy, far-away look, "we have what Padre Jose so long ago spoke of as the 'externalization of thought.' It is the same law which Jesus had in mind when he said, 'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.'"

"Yes," said Hitt. "For we know only what enters our mentalities and becomes active there. And every thought that does so enter, tends at once to become externalized. That is, there is at once the tendency for us to see it visualized in some way, either as material object, or environment, or on our bodies. And it is the very activity of such thought that constitutes the human mentality, as I have already said."

"And that thought is continually changing," suggested Father Waite.

"Just so. Its very lack of true principle requires that it should change constantly, in order to simulate as closely as possible the real. That accounts for the fleeting character of the whole human concept of man and the physical universe. The human personality is never fixed, although the elements of human character remain; that is, those elements which are essentially unreal and mortal, such as lust, greed, hatred, and materiality, seem to remain throughout the ages. They will give way only before truth, even as Paul said. But not until truth has been admitted to the human mentality and begins its solvent work there, the work of denying and tearing down the false thought-concepts and replacing them with true ones."

"And will truth come through the physical senses?" asked Miss Wall.

"No, decidedly no!" said Hitt. "The physical senses testify of nothing. Their supposed testimony is the material thought which enters the human mentality and becomes active there, resulting in human consciousness of both good and evil. And that thought will have to give way to true thought, before we can begin to put off the 'old man' and put on the 'new.' Human thoughts, or, as we say, the physical senses, do not and can not testify of absolute truth. They do not know God."

"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?"