at the feet of
emperor and plutocrat, and licked the bloody hand of the usurer who
tossed her a pittance of his foul gains! In the great world-battles
for reform, for the rights of man, for freedom from the slavery of man
to man or to drink and drugs, she has come up only as the smoke has
cleared away, but always in time to demand the spoils! She has filched
from the systems of philosophy of every land and age, and after
bedaubing them with her own gaudy colors, has foisted them upon
unthinking mankind as divine decrees and mandates! She has foully
insulted God and man!--"

"_Caramba_, Padre! You are not well! _Hombre_, we must get back to the
hill! You are falling sick!"

"I am not, Rosendo! You voice the Church's stock complaint of every
man who exposes her shams: 'He hath a devil!'"

Rosendo whistled softly. Jose went on more excitedly:

"You ask if Hernandez is in paradise or purgatory. He is in a state no
better nor worse than our own, for both are wholly mental. We are now
in the fires of as great a purgatory as any man can ever experience!
Yes, there is a purgatory--right here on earth--and it follows us
after death, and after every death that we shall die, until we learn
to know God and see Him as infinite good, without taint or trace of
evil! The flames of hell are eternal to us as long as we eat of 'the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil'--as long as we believe in
other powers than God--as long as we believe sin and disease and evil
to be as real and as potent as good! When we know these things as
awful human illusions, and when we recognize God as the infinite mind
that did not create evil, and does not know or behold it, then, and
then only, will the flames of purgatory and hell in this state of
consciousness which we mistakenly call life, and in the states of
consciousness still to come, begin to diminish in intensity, and
finally die out!"

He walked along in silence for some moments. Then he turned to Rosendo
and put his hand affectionately upon the old man's shoulder. "My good
friend," he said more calmly, "I speak with intense feeling, for I
have suffered much through the intolerance, the unspirituality, and
the worldly ambition of the agents of Holy Church. I suffer, because I
see what she is, and how widely she has missed the mark. But, worse, I
see how blindly, how cruelly, she leads and betrays her trusting
children--and it is the thought of that which at times almost drives
me mad! But