"Yes, Padre. But then I shall know more about the rules that you call principles."
She took up each problem with confidence. Jose watched her eagerly.
"You do not know what the answer will be, _chiquita_," he ventured.
"No, Padre dear. But I don"t care. If I use the rule in the right way I shall get the correct answer, shall I not? Look!" she cried joyfully, as she held up her paper with the completed solution of a problem.
"But how do you know that it is correct?" he queried.
"Why--well, we can prove it--can"t we?" She looked up at him questioningly. Then she bent again over her task and worked a.s.siduously for some moments in silence.
"There! I worked it back again to the starting point. And it is right."
"And in proving it, little one, you have proved the principle and established its correctness. Is it not so, _chiquita_?"
"Yes, Padre, it shows that the rule is right."
The child lapsed into silence, while Jose, as was becoming his wont, awaited the result of her meditation. Then:
"Padre dear, there are rules for arithmetic, and algebra, and--and for everything, are there not?"
"Yes, child, for music, for art, for everything. We can do nothing correctly without using principles."
"And, Padre, there are principles that tell us how to live?" she queried.
"What is your opinion on that point, _queridita_?"
"Just _one_ principle, I guess, Padre dear," she finally ventured, after a pause.
"And that, little one?"
"Just G.o.d."
"And G.o.d is--?" Jose began, then hesitated. The Apostle John had dwelt with the Master. What had he urged so often upon the dull ears of his timid followers?
The child looked up at the priest with a smile whose tenderness dissolved the rising clouds of doubt.
"And G.o.d is--love," he finished softly.
"That"s it, Padre!" The child clapped her little hands and laughed aloud.
Love! Jesus had said, "I and my Father are one." Having seen him, the world has seen the Father. But Jesus was the highest manifestation of love that tired humanity has ever known. "Love G.o.d!" he had cried in tones that have echoed through the centuries. "Love thy neighbor!"
Aye, love everything, everybody! Apply the Principle of principles, Love, to every task, every problem, every situation, every condition!
For what is the Christ-principle but Love? All things are possible to him who loves, for Love casteth out fear, the root of every discord.
Men ask why G.o.d remains hidden from them, why their understanding of Him is dim. They forget that G.o.d is Love. They forget that to know Him they must first love their fellow-men. And so the world goes sorrowfully on, hating, cheating, grasping, abusing; still wondering dully why men droop and stumble, why they consume with disease, and, with the despairing conviction that G.o.d is unknowable, sinking at last into oblivion.
Jose, if he knew aught, knew that Carmen greatly loved--loved all things deeply and tenderly as reflections of her immanent G.o.d. She had loved the hideous monster that had crept toward her as she sat unguarded on the lake"s rim. Unguarded? Not so, for the arms of Love were there about her. She had loved G.o.d--good--with unshaken fealty when Rosendo lay stricken. She had known that Love could not manifest in death when he himself had been dragged from the lake that burning afternoon a few weeks before.
"G.o.d is the rule, isn"t He, Padre dear?" The child"s unexampled eyes glowed like burning coals. "And we can prove Him, too," she continued confidently.
_Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it._
Prove Him, O man, that He is Love, and that Love, casting out hate and fear, solves life"s every problem! But first--_Bring ye all the t.i.thes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house._ Bring your whole confidence, your trust, your knowledge of the allness of good, and the nothingness of evil. Bring, too, your every earthly hope, every mad ambition, every corroding fear, and carnal belief; lay them down at the doorway of mine storehouse, and behold their nothingness!
As Carmen approached her simple algebraic problems Jose saw the working of a rule infinite in its adaptation. She knew not what the answers should be, yet she took up each problem with supreme confidence, knowing that she possessed and rightly understood the rule for correctly solving it. She knew that speculation regarding the probable results was an idle waste of time. And she likewise knew instinctively that fear of inability to solve them would paralyze her efforts and insure defeat at the outset.
Nor could she force solutions to correspond to what she might think they ought to be--as mankind attempt to force the solving of their life problems to correspond to human views. She was glad to work out her problems in the only way they could be solved. Love, humility, obedience, enabled her to understand and correctly apply the principle to her tasks. The results were invariable--harmony and exceeding joy.
Jose had learned another lesson. Again that little hand had softly swept his harp of life. And again he breathed in unison with its vibrating chords a deep "Thank G.o.d!"
"Padre dear." Carmen looked up from a brown study. "What does zero really mean?"
"It stands for nothing, child," the priest made reply, wondering what was to follow this introduction.
"And the minus sign in algebra is different from the one in arithmetic. What does it mean?"
"Less than nothing."
"But, Padre, if G.o.d is all, how can you say there is nothing, or less than nothing?"
The priest had his answer ready. "They are only human ways of thinking, _chiquita_. The plus sign always represents something positive; the minus, something negative. The one is the opposite of the other."
"Is there an opposite to everything, Padre?"
The priest hesitated. Then:
"No, _chiquita_--not a _real_ opposite. But," he added hastily, "we may suppose an opposite to everything."
A moment"s pause ensued. "That is what makes people sick and unhappy, isn"t it, Padre?"
"What, child?" in unfeigned surprise.
"Supposing an opposite to G.o.d. Supposing that there can be nothing, when He is everywhere. Doesn"t all trouble come from just supposing things that are not so?"
Whence came such questions to the mind of this child? And why did they invariably lead to astonishing deductions in his own? Why did he often give a great start as it dawned again upon him that he was not talking to one of mature age, but to a babe?
He tore a strip from the paper in his hand. Relatively the paper had lost in size and quant.i.ty, and there was a distinct separation.
Absolutely, such a thing was an impossibility. The plus was always positive and real; the minus was always relative, and stood for unreality. And so it was throughout the entire realm of thought.
_Every real thing has its suppositional opposite._ The difficulty is that the human mind, through long ages of usage, has come to regard the opposite as just as real as the thing itself. The opposite of love is hate; of health, disease; of good, evil; of the real, the counterfeit. G.o.d is positive--Truth. His opposite, the negative, is supposition. Oh, stupid, blundering, dull-eared humanity, not to have realized that this was just what Jesus said when he defined evil as the lie about G.o.d! No wonder the prophet proclaimed salvation to be righteousness, right thinking! But would gross humanity have understood the Master better if he had defined it this way? No, they would have stoned him on the spot!
Jose knew that when both he and Rosendo lay sick unto death Carmen"s thought had been positive, while theirs had been of the opposite sign.
Was her pure thought stronger than their disbelief? Evidently so. Was this the case with Jesus? And with the prophets before him, whom the world laughed to scorn? The inference from Scripture is plain. What, then, is the overcoming of evil but the driving out of entrenched human beliefs?
Again Jose came back to the thought of Principle. Confucius had said that heaven was principle. And heaven is harmony. But had evil any principle? Mankind are accustomed to speak lightly and knowingly of their "principles." But in their search for the Philosopher"s Stone they have overlooked the Principle which the Master used to effect his mighty works--"that Mind which was in Christ Jesus." The Principle of Jesus was G.o.d. And, again, G.o.d is Love.
The word evil is a comprehensive term, including errors of every sort.
And yet, in the world"s huge category of evils is there a single one that stands upon a definite principle? Jose had to admit to himself that there was not. Errors in mathematics result from ignorance of principles, or from their misapplication. But are the errors real and permanent?
"Padre, when I make a mistake, and then go back and do the problem over and get it right, what becomes of the mistake?"