"What is coming is this," continued the explorer earnestly, "a tremendous broadening of our concept of God, a more exalted, a more worthy concept of Him as spirit--or, if you will, as mind. An abandonment of the puerile concept of Him as a sort of magnified man, susceptible to the influence of preachers, or of Virgin and Saints, and yielding to their petitions, to their higher sense of justice, and to money-bought earthly ceremonies to lift an imaginary curse from His own creatures. And with it will come that wonderful consciousness of Him which I now begin to realize that Jesus must have had, a consciousness of Him as omnipotent, omnipresent good. As I to-day read the teachings of Jesus I am constrained to believe that he was conscious _only_ of God and God's spiritual manifestation. And in that remarkable consciousness the man Jesus realized his own life--indeed, that consciousness _was_ his life--and it included no sense of evil. The great lesson which I draw from it is that evil must, therefore, be utterly unreal and non-existent. And heaven is but the acquisition of that mind or consciousness which was in Christ Jesus." "But, Mr. Hitt, such ideas are revolutionary!" "True, if immediately and generally adopted. And so you see why the Church strives to hold the people to its own archaic and innocuous religious tenets; why your Church strives so zealously to hold its adherents fast to the rules laid down by pagan emperors and ignorant, often illiterate churchmen, in their councils and synods; and why the Protestant church is so quick to denounce as unevangelical everything that does not measure to its devitalized concept of Christianity. They do not practice what they preach; yet they would not have you practice anything else. The human mind that calls itself a Christian is a funny thing, isn't it?" He laughed lightly; then lapsed into silence. The sea breeze rose and sighed among the great, incrusted arches. The restless waves moaned in their eternal assault upon the defiant walls. The moon clouded, and a warm rain began to fall. Josè rose. "I must return to the dormitory," he announced briefly. "When you pass me in the _plaza_ to-morrow evening, come at once to this place. I will meet you here. You have--I must--" But he did not finish. Pressing the explorer's hand, he turned abruptly and hurried up the dim, narrow street. CHAPTER 14