ssumes to create its man, its own idea of itself, and hence the
direct opposite of the real man, the divine idea of God, made in His
own image and likeness.

Jose rose and went to the doorway. "Surely," he murmured low, "the
material personality, called man, which sins, suffers and dies, is not
real man, but his counterfeit, a creation of God's opposite, the
so-called mortal mind. It must be a part of the lie about God, the
'mist' that went up from the ground and watered the whole face of the
earth, leaving the veil of supposition which obscures God from human
sight. It is this sort of man and this sort of universe that I have
always seen about me, and that the world refers to as human beings, or
mortals, and the physical universe. And yet I have been looking only
at my false thoughts of man."

At that moment he caught sight of Juan running toward him from the
lake. The lad had just returned from Bodega Central.

"Padre," he exclaimed breathlessly, "there is war in the country
again! The revolution has broken out, and they are fighting all along
the river!"

Jose turned into the house and clasped Carmen in his arms.

CHAPTER 15

Juan's startling announcement linked Jose again with a fading past.
Standing with his arm about Carmen, while the child looked up
wonderingly at her grimly silent protector, the priest seemed to have
fallen with dizzy precipitation from some spiritual height into a
familiar material world of men and events. Into his chastened
mentality there now rushed a rabble rout of suggestions, throwing into
wild confusion the orderly forces of mind which he was striving to
marshal to meet the situation. He recalled, for the first time in his
new environment, the significant conversation of Don Jorge and the
priest Diego, in Banco. He saw again the dark clouds that were
lowering above the unhappy country when he left Cartagena. Had they at
last broken? And would carnal lust and rapine again drench fair
Colombia with the blood of her misguided sons? Were the disturbance
only a local uprising, headed by a coterie of selfish politicians, it
would produce but a passing ripple. Colombia had witnessed many such,
and had, by a judicious redistribution of public offices, generally
met the crises with little difficulty. On the other hand, if the
disorder drew its stimulus from the deep-seated, swelling sentiment of
protest against the continued affiliation of Church and State, then
what might not ensu