he came, and how he went, we may not know with any
high degree of accuracy. But, beneath all the myth and legend, the
lore and childish human speculation of the intervening centuries,
there _must_ be a foundation of eternal truth. And it must be
broad--very broad. I am digging for it--as I dug on the sites of
ancient Troy and Babylon--as I have dug over the buried civilizations
of Mexico and Yucatan--as I shall dig for the hidden Inca towns on the
wooded heights of the Andes. And while I dig materially I am also
digging spiritually."

"And what have you found?" asked Jose hoarsely.

"I am still in the overburden of _debris_ which the sedulous, tireless
Fathers heaped mountain high upon the few recorded teachings of Jesus.
But already I see indications of things to come that would make the
members of the Council of Trent and the cocksure framers of the
Westminster Confession burst from their graves by sheer force of
astonishment! There are even now foreshadowings of such revolutionary
changes in our concept of God, of the universe, of matter, and the
human mind, of evil, and all the controverted points of theological
discussion of this day, as to make me tremble when I contemplate them.
In my first hasty judgment, after dipping into the 'Higher Criticism,'
I concluded that Jesus was but a charlatan, who had learned
thaumaturgy in Egypt and practiced it in Judea. Thanks to a better
appreciation of the same 'Higher Criticism' I am reconstructing my
concept of him now, and on a better basis. I once denounced God as the
creator of both good and evil, and of a man who He knew must
inevitably fall, even before the clay of which he was made had become
fairly dry. I changed that concept later to Matthew Arnold's 'that
something not ourselves that makes for righteousness.' But mighty few
to-day recognize such a God! Again, in Jesus' teaching that sin
brought death into the world, I began to see what is so dimly
foreshadowed to-day, the _mental_ nature of all things. 'Sin' is the
English translation of the original '_hamartio_,' which means, 'to
miss the mark,' a term used in archery. Well, then, missing the mark
is the mental result of nonconformity to law, is it not? And, going
further, if death is the result of missing the mark, and that is
itself due to mental cause, and, since death results from sickness,
old age, or catastrophe, then these things must likewise be mental.
Sickness, therefore, becomes wholly mental, does it