consciousness constitutes what we call space, does it not?"

"It must, Padre," she answered.

He studied a moment. Then:

"_Chiquita_, how do you know me? What do you see that you call 'me'?"

"Why, Padre, I see you as God does--at least, I try always to see you
that way?" she answered earnestly. "And that is the way Jesus always
saw people."

"God sees me, of course. But, does He see me as I see myself?" he
mused aloud.

"You do not see yourself, Padre," was her reply. "You see only the
thoughts that you call yourself. Thoughts of mind and body and all
those things that go to form a human being."

"Well--yes, I must agree with you there; for, though God certainly
knows me, He cannot know me as I think I know myself, sinful and
discordant."

"He knows the real 'you,' Padre dear. And that is just as He is. He
knows that the unreal 'you,' the 'you' that you think you know, is
illusion. If He knew the human, mortal 'you' as real, He would have to
know evil. And that can not be."

"No, for the Bible says He is of eyes too pure to behold evil."

"Well, Padre, why don't you try to be like Him?"

But the girl needed not that he should answer her question. She knew
why he had failed, for "without faith it is impossible to please him:
for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him." She knew that Jose's
struggle to overcome evil had been futile, because he had first
made evil real. She knew that the difficulty he had experienced in
keeping his thought straight was because he persisted in looking at
both the good and the evil. Lot's wife, in the Bible allegory, had
turned back to look at things material and had been transformed into
a pillar of salt. Jose had turned again and again to his materialistic
thoughts; and had been turned each time to salt tears. She knew that
he gave up readily, that he yielded easily to evil's strongest
tool, discouragement, and fell back into self-condemnation, whereby he
only rendered still more real to himself the evil which he was
striving to overcome. She knew that the only obstacle that he was
wrestling with in his upward progress was the universal belief in a
power other than God, good, which is so firmly fixed in the human
consciousness. But she likewise knew that this hindrance was but a
false conviction, and that it could and would be overcome.

"Padre," she reflected, looking up at him in great seriousness, "if