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. Josè 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 God!" "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 God 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 God. 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 quantity, 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. God 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 God! 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!