"Worthy aims, both," assented Hitt. "But, my friend, what will you accomplish here, unless you can educate these people to think? I have learned much about conditions in this country. I find that the priest in Colombia is even more intolerant than in Ireland, for here he has a monopoly, no competition. He is absolute. The Colombian is the logical product of the doctrines of Holy Church. It is so in Mexico. It is so wherever the curse of a fixed mentality is imposed upon a people. For that engenders determined opposition to mobility. It quenches responsiveness to new concepts and new ideas. It throttles a nation. The bane of mental progress is the _Semper Idem_ of your Church." "Christianity will remove the curse." "I have no doubt whatever of that. It probably is the future cure for all social ills and evils of every sort. But if so, it must be the Christianity which Jesus taught and demonstrated--not the theological chaff now disseminated in his name. Do not forget that we no longer know what Christianity is. It is a lost science." "It can and will be recovered!" cried Josè warmly. "I have said that is foreshadowed. But we must have the whole garment of the Christ, without human _addenda_. He is reported as having said, 'The works that I do bear witness of me.' Now the works of the Christian Church bear ample witness that she has not the true understanding of the Christ. Nor has that eminent Protestant divine, now teaching in a theological seminary in the States, who recently said that, although Jesus ministered miraculously to the physical man, yet it was not his intention that his disciples should continue that sort of ministry; that the healing which Jesus did was wholly incidental, and was not an example to be permanently imitated. Good heavens! how these poor theologians hide their inability to do the works of the Master by taking refuge in such ridiculously unwarranted assertions. To them the rule seems to be that, if you can't do a thing you must deny the possibility of its being done. Great logic, isn't it?