companions:

"Waite says he wants a meeting to-night. He'd like to report on his
research work. Guess we'd better call it. I'll inform Morton. No
telling when we may get together again, if the girl--" He became
suddenly silent, and sat some time looking vacantly out through the
window.

"She goes to Avon to-morrow," he abruptly announced, "alone." His
thought had been dwelling on that 'something not ourselves' which he
knew was shielding and sustaining the girl.

CHAPTER 10

"We have now arrived at a subject whose interest and significance for
us are incalculable," said Father Waite, standing before the little
group which had assembled in their usual meeting place in the first
hours of the morning, for only at that time could Hitt and Haynerd
leave the Express. "We have met to discuss briefly the meaning of that
marvelous record of a whole nation's search for God, the Bible. As
have been men's changing concepts of that 'something not ourselves
that makes for righteousness,' so have been individuals, tribes, and
nations. The Bible records the development of these concepts in
Israel's thought; it records the unquenchable longings of that people
for truth; it records their prophetic vision, their sacred songs,
their philosophy, their dreams, and their aspirations. To most of us
the Bible has long been a work of profound mystery, cryptical,
undecipherable. And largely, I now believe, because we were wont to
approach it with the bias of preconceived theories of literal, even
verbal, inspiration, and because we could not read into it the record
of Israel's changing idea of God, from a wrathful, consuming Lord of
human caprice and passions, to the infinite Father of love, whom Jesus
revealed as the Christ-principle, which worked through him and through
all who are gaining the true spiritual concept, as is this girl who
sits here on my right with the lad whom you have seen rescued by the
Christ from the pit of hell."

His voice choked when he referred to Carmen and Sidney. But he quickly
stifled his emotion, and went on:

"In our last meeting Mr. Hitt clearly showed us how the so-called
human mind has seemed to develop as the suppositional opposite of the
mind that is God; and how through countless ages of human reckoning
that pseudo-mind has been revealing its various types, until at
length, rising ever higher in the scale of being, it revealed its
human man as a mentality whose consciousness is the supposition