"_Chiquita_--" His voice was thick. "You--you believe all that, don't you?" "No, Padre dear"--she smiled up at him through the darkness--"I don't believe it, I _know_ it." "But--how--how do you know it?" "God tells me, Padre. I hear Him, always. And I prove it every day. The trouble is, you believe it, but I don't think you ever try to _prove_ it. If you believed my problems in algebra could be solved, but never tried to prove it--well, you wouldn't do very much in algebra, would you?" She laughed at the apt comparison. Josè's straining eyes were peering straight ahead. Through the thick gloom he saw the mutilated figure of the Christ hanging on its cross beside the crumbling altar. It reflected the broken image of the Christ-principle in the hearts of men. And was he not again crucifying the gentle Christ? Did not the world daily crucify him and nail him with their false beliefs to the cross of carnal error which they set up in the Golgotha of their own souls? And were they not daily paying the awful penalty therefor? Aye, paying it in agony, in torturing agony of soul and body, in blasted hopes, crumbling ambitions, and inevitable death! "Padre dear, what did the good man say sickness came from?" Carmen's soft voice brought him back from his reflections. "Sickness? Why, he always coupled disease with sin." "And sin?" "Sin is--is unrighteousness." "And that is--?" she pursued relentlessly. "Wrong conduct, based on wrong thinking. And wrong thinking is based on wrong beliefs, false thought." "But to believe that there is anything but God, and the things He made, is sin, isn't it, Padre dear?" "Sin is--yes, to believe in other powers than God is to break the very first Commandment--and that is the chief of sins!" "Well, Padre dear, can't you make yourself think right? Do you know what you really think about God, anyway?" Josè rose and paced up and down through the dark aisle. "I try to think," he answered, "that He is mind; that He is infinite, everywhere; that He is all-powerful; that He knows all things; and that He is perfect and good. I try not to think that He made evil, or anything that is or could be bad, or that could become sick, or decay, or die. Whatever He made must be real, and real things last forever, are immortal, eternal. I strive to think He did make man in His image and likeness--and that man has never been anything else--that man never 'fell.'" "What is that, Padre?"