"Utterly untenable, my friend," put in Hitt. "For, granted an infinite
mind, we must grant the concomitant fact that such a mind is of very
necessity omnipotent, as well as perfect. What, then, could ever cause
disintegration in it?"

"You are right," resumed Father Waite. "And such a mind, of very
necessity perfect, omnipotent, and, of course, ever-present, must
likewise be eternal. For there would be nothing to contest its
existence. Age, decay, and death would be unknown to it. And so would
evil."

"And that," said Carmen, rising, "is my God."

Father Waite nodded significantly to the others, and sat down, leaving
the girl facing them, her luminous eyes looking off into unfathomed
distances, and her face aglow with spiritual light.

"My God is infinite Good, to whom evil is unknown," she said. "And
good includes all that is real. It includes wisdom, intelligence,
truth, life, and love--none of them material. How do I know? Oh, not
by human reasoning, whereby you seek to establish the fact of His
existence, but by proof, daily proof, and in the hours when the floods
of suppositional evil have swept over me. You would rest your faith on
your deductions. But, as Saint Gregory said, no merit lies in faith
where human reason supplies the proof; and that you will all some day
know. Yes, my God is Mind. And He ceaselessly expresses Himself in and
through His ideas, which He is constantly revealing. And He is
infinite in good. And these ideas express that goodness and
infinitude, from the tiniest up to the idea of God himself. And that
grandest idea is--man. Oh, no, not the men and women you think you see
about you in your daily walk. No! no! They but counterfeit the divine.
But the man that Jesus always saw back of every human concept. That
man is God's own idea of Himself. He is God's image and likeness. He
is God's reflection. That is the man we shall all put on when we have
obeyed Paul and put off the old man, its counterfeit."

"Then, Carmen," said Father Waite, "you believe all things to be
mental?"

"Yes, everything--man himself--and matter."

"But, if God is mind, and infinite, He must include all things. Hence
He must include this imperfect representation, called the physical
man. Is it not so?"

"No," returned the girl emphatically. "Did not Jesus speak often of
the one lie about his Father, God? The material man and the material
universe are but parts of that lie. And a lie is always a supposition;