No," she said with quick emphasis; "for God is mind, you know. And
His thought is the only real thought there is or can be. The thoughts
of mortals are the opposites of His thoughts, and so they are
illusions, and, like all lies, must pass away. If people want to be
immortal, they must think as God thinks, for He is immortal. They must
stop thinking that there is any power but God. They must stop letting
in thoughts of sickness, of sin, of wickedness, and all those things
that in English you call 'discord.' God says in the Bible, 'As the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your
thoughts.' Well, God is immortal and perfect. And if we want to be
like Him we must think His thoughts. For our thoughts become--things.
Don't you see?"

Jose's face clouded. "I see, _chiquita_--sometimes very clearly--and
then again I don't see," he said slowly.

"You _do_ see!" she insisted, getting up on her knees and facing him.
"And you see as God sees! And if you hold this thought always, why, it
will--it will be--"

"Externalized; is that what you are trying to say?" he suggested.

"Yes, just that. Jesus said, 'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is
he.'"

"But, Carmen--I-- What you say is doubtless true in essence--but I
think you have not grasped it all--there are so many gaps that your
simple little system of religion does not fill in--so many great
questions that you do not answer. I see, in part--and then, again, I
don't see at all. And when you were stolen away from Simiti I saw
nothing but the evil--and it nearly killed me!"

The girl studied him for a few moments. The man had always been an
enigma to her. She could not understand a nature that soared into the
spiritual empyrean one moment, and in the next fell floundering into
the bottomless pit of materialism. The undulating curve which
marked the development of the Rincon mind was to her a thing
incomprehensible.

"Padre dear," she said at length, a little sadly. "When you look at
the first chapter in the Bible and read there how God made everything,
and man in His image, in the image of Mind, you see, and are very
happy. But when you go on to the second chapter and read how the Lord
God--not God, but the _Lord_ God--made a man of dirt, and how this
dirt man listened to his false thoughts and fell, why, then you are
unhappy. Don't you see any difference between them? Can't you see that
one is a story of the real creation; and the other is the