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The American shook his head dubiously. “There is but one remedy––education. Not sectarian, partisan, worldly education––not instruction in relative truths and the chaff of materialistic speculation––but that sort of education whereby the selfish human mind is lifted in a measure out of itself, out of its petty jealousies and envyings, out of sneaking graft and touting for worldly emolument, and into a sense of the eternal truth that real prosperity and soundness of states and institutions are to be realized only when the Christ-principle, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ is made the measure of conduct. There is a tremendous truth which has long since been demonstrated, and yet which the world is most woefully slow to grasp, namely, that the surest, quickest means of realizing one’s own prosperity and happiness is in that of others––not in a world to come, but right here and now.”

“But that means the inauguration of the millennium,” protested Josè.

“Well, and why not so?” returned the explorer calmly. “Has not that been the ultimate aim of Christianity, and of all serious effort for reform for the past two thousand years? And, do you know, the millennium could be ushered in to-morrow, if men only thought so? Within an incredibly short time evil, even to death itself, could be completely wiped off the earth. But this wiping-off process must take place in the minds and thoughts of men. Of that I am thoroughly convinced. But, tell me, have you ever expressed to the Bishop your views regarding the condition of this country?”

Josè flushed. “Yes,” he replied in embarrassment. “Only a week ago I tried again to convince him of the inevitable trend of events here unless drastic measures were interposed by the Church. I had even lectured on it in my classes.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“The Bishop is a man of very narrow vision,” replied Josè. “He rebuked me severely and truculantly bade me confine my attention to the particular work assigned me and let affairs of politics alone. Of course, that meant leaving them to his assistant, Wenceslas. Mr. Hitt, Colombia needs a Luther!”

“Just so,” returned the explorer gravely. “Priestcraft from the very earliest times has been one of the greatest curses of mankind. Its abuses date far back to Egyptian times, when even prostitution was countenanced by the priests, and when they practiced all sorts of impostures upon the ignorant masses. In the Middle Ages they turned Christianity, the richest of blessings, into a snare, a delusion, a rank farce. They arrogated to themselves all learning, all science. In Peru it was even illicit for any one not belonging to the nobility to attempt 115 to acquire learning. That was the sole privilege of priests and kings. In all nations, from the remotest antiquity, and whether civilized or not, learning has been claimed by the priests as the unique privilege of their caste––a privilege bestowed upon them by the special favor of the ruling deity. That’s why they always sought to surround their intellectual treasures with a veil of mystery. Roger Bacon, the English monk, once said that it was necessary to keep the discoveries of the philosophers from those unworthy of knowing them. How did he expect a realization of ‘Thy kingdom come,’ I wonder?”

“They didn’t expect it to come––on earth,” said Josè.

“No. They relegated that to the imagined realm which was to be entered through the gateway of death. It’s mighty convenient to be able to relegate your proofs to that mysterious realm beyond the grave. That has always been a tremendous power in the hands of priests of all times and lands. By the way, did you know that the story of Abel’s assassination was one of many handed down, in one form or another, by the priests of India and Egypt?”

“Do you mean it?” inquired Josè eagerly.

“Certainly. The story doubtless comes from the ancient Egyptian tale which the priests of that time used to relate regarding the murder of Osiris by his brother, Set. It was a deed of jealousy. The story later became incorporated into the sacred books of India and Egypt, and was afterward taken over by the Hebrews, when they were captives in Egypt. The Hebrews learned much of Egyptian theology, and their own religion was greatly tinctured by it subsequently. The legend of the deluge, for example, is another tradition of those primitive days, and credited by the nations of antiquity. But here there is the likelihood of a connection with the great cataclysm of antiquity, the disappearance of the island of Atlantis in consequence of a violent earthquake and volcanic action. This alleged island, supposed to be a portion of the strip at one time connecting South America with Africa, is thought to have sunk beneath the waters of the present Atlantic ocean some nine thousand years before Solon visited Egypt, and hence, some eleven thousand years ago. Anyway, the story of this awful catastrophe got into the Egyptian records in the earliest times, and was handed down to the Hebrews, who probably based their story of the flood upon it. You see, there is a foundation of some sort for all those legends in the book of Genesis. The difficulty has been that humanity has for centuries childishly accepted them as historical fact. For example, the serpent story. Now in very primitive times the serpent was the special emblem of Kneph, the creator of the world, and 116 was regarded as a sort of good genius. It is still so regarded by the Chinese, who make of it one of their most beautiful symbols, the dragon. Later it became the emblem of Set, the slayer of Osiris; and after that it was looked upon with horror as the enemy of mankind, the destroyer, the evil principle. Hence, in Egypt, the Hebrew captives adopted the serpent as emblematical of evil, and later used it in their scriptural records as the evil genius that tempted Eve and brought about the fall of man. And so all people whose religious beliefs are founded upon the Hebrew Bible now look upon the serpent as the symbol of evil. Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans thus regard it.”

Josè gazed at the man with rapt interest. “Don’t stop!” he urged. “Go on! go on!”

Hitt laughed. “Well,” he resumed, “the tree and the serpent were worshiped all through eastern countries, from Scandinavia to the Asiatic peninsula and down into Egypt. And, do you know, we even find vestiges of such worship in America? Down in Adams county, Ohio, on the banks of Brush creek, there is a great mound, called the serpent mound. It is seven hundred feet long, and greatly resembles the one in Glen Feechan, Argyleshire, Scotland. It also resembles the one I found in the ancient city of Tiahuanuco, whose ruins lie at an elevation of some thirteen thousand feet above the Pacific ocean, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, near the Bolivian frontier. This ancient city ages ago sent out colonists all over North and South America. These primitive people believed that a serpent emitted an egg from its mouth, and that the earth was born of that egg. Now the serpent mound in Ohio has an egg in its mouth. What is the logical inference?”

“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Josè, his eyes wide with astonishment.

Hitt laughed again in evident enjoyment of the priest’s wonder. Then he resumed: “It has been established to my entire satisfaction that the ancient Egyptians and the Mayas of Central and South America used almost identical symbols. And from all antiquity, and by all nations, the symbols of the tree and serpent and their worship have been so closely identified as to render it certain that their origin is the same. What, then, are the serpent and tree of knowledge in the Hebrew Bible but an outgrowth of this? The tree of life, of civilization, of knowledge, was placed in the middle of the land, of the ‘garden,’ of the primitive country of the race, Mayax. And the empire of the Mayas was situated between the two great continents of North and South America. These people spread out in all directions. They populated the then existing island of Atlantis. And when the terrible earthquake 117 occurred, whereby this island was sunk beneath the waves of the Atlantic ocean, why, to these people the world had been drowned! The story got to Egypt, to Chaldea, and to India. Hence the deluge record of Genesis.”

“But, these primitive people, how ancient are they?” queried Josè.

“No one can form any adequate estimate,” said Hitt in reply. “The wonderful city of Tiahuanuco was in ruins when Manco Capac laid the foundations of the Inca empire, which was later devastated by the Spaniards. And the Indians told the Spaniards that it had been constructed by giants before the sun shone in heaven.”

“Astonishing!” exclaimed Josè. “Such facts as these––if facts they be––relegate much of the Scriptural authority to the realm of legend and myth!”

“Quite so,” returned the explorer. “When the human mind of this century forces itself to approach a subject without prejudice or bias, and without the desire to erect or maintain a purely human institution at whatever cost to world-progress, then it finds that much of the hampering, fettering dogma of mediaevalism now laid upon it by the Church becomes pure fiction, without justifiable warrant or basis. Remember, the Hebrew people gave us the Old Testament, in which they had recorded for ages their tribal and national history, their poetry, their beliefs and hopes, as well as their legends, gathered from all sources. We have likewise the historical records of other nations. But the Hebrew possessed one characteristic which differentiated him from all other people. He was a monotheist, and he saw his God in every thing, every event, every place. His concept of God was his life-motif. This concept evolved slowly, painfully, throughout the centuries. The ancient Hebrew patriarchs saw it as a variable God, changeful, fickle, now violently angry, now humbly repentant, now making contracts with mankind, now petulantly destroying His own handiwork. He was a God who could order the slaughter of innocent babes, as in the book of Samuel; or He was a tender, merciful Father, as in the Psalms. He could harden hearts, wage bloody wars, walk with men ‘in the cool of the day,’ create a universe with His fist, or spend long days designing and devising the material utensils and furniture of sacrifice to be used in His own worship. In short, men saw in Him just what they saw in themselves. They saw but their mental concept. The Bible records humanity’s changing, evolving concept of God, of that ‘something not ourselves which makes for righteousness.’ And this concept gradually changed from the magnified God-man of the Old Testament, a creature of human 118 whims and passions, down to that held by the man of Nazareth, a new and beautiful concept of God as love. This new concept Jesus joyously gave to a sin-weary world that had utterly missed the mark. But it cost him his earthly life to do it. And the dark record of the so-called Christian Church, both Protestant and Catholic, contains the name of many a one who has paid the same penalty for a similar service of love.

“The Chaldeans and Egyptians,” he went on, after a moment’s reflective pause, “gave the Hebrews their account of the creation of the universe, the fall of man, the flood, and many other bits of mythical lore. And into these stories the Hebrews read the activity of their God, and drew from them deep moral lessons. Egypt gave the Hebrews at least a part of the story of Joseph, as embodied in the hieroglyphics which may be read on the banks of the Nile to-day. They probably also gave the Hebrews the account of the creation found in the second chapter of Genesis, for to this day you can see in some of the oldest Egyptian temples pictures of the gods making men out of lumps of clay. The discovery of the remains of the ‘Neanderthal man’ and the ‘Ape-man of Java’ now places the dawn of human reason at a period some three to five hundred thousand years prior to our present century, and, combined with the development of the science of geology, which shows that the total age of the earth’s stratified rocks alone cannot be much less than fifty-five millions of years, serves to cast additional ridicule upon the Church’s present attitude of stubborn adherence to these prehistoric scriptural legends as literal, God-given fact. But, to make the right use of these legends––well, that is another thing.”

“And that?”

The explorer hesitated. “I find it difficult to explain,” he said at length. “But, remember what I have already said, there is, there must be, a foundation beneath all these legends which admonish mankind to turn from evil to good. And, as I also said, that foundation must be very broad. I have said that I was in search of a religion. Why not, you may ask, accept the religious standard which Jesus set? That was the new concept of God as love. Very good. I am quite convinced that love is the religion, the tie which binds all things together and to a common source and cause. And I am equally convinced that Jesus is the only person recorded in history who ever lived a life of pure reflection of the love which he called God. And so you see why I am chipping and hewing away at the theological conception of the Christ, and trying to get at the reality buried deep beneath in the theological misconceptions of the centuries. I am quite convinced that if men loved one another, 119 as Jesus bade them do, all war, strife, disease, poverty, and discord of every sort would vanish from human experience. But––and here is a serious question––did Jesus ask the impossible? Did he command us to love the sinful, erring mortal whom we see in our daily walk––or did he––did he have a new thought, namely, that by loving the real man, for which, perhaps, this human concept stands in the human mind, that this very act would change that distorted concept and cause it to yield its place to the real one? I believe Jesus to have been the wisest man who ever trod this earth. But I likewise believe that no man has ever been more deplorably misunderstood, misquoted, and misinterpreted than he. And so I am delving down, down beneath the mass of human conjecture and ridiculous hypothesis which the Church Fathers and our own theologians have heaped up over this unique character, if perchance I may some day discover just what he was, just what he really said, and just what the message which he sought to convey to mankind.”

He leaned over and laid a hand on Josè’s arm. “My young friend,” he said earnestly, “I believe there are meanings in the life and words of Jesus of which the Church in its astounding self-sufficiency has never even dreamed. Did he walk on the water? Did he feed the multitude with a few loaves? Did he raise Lazarus? Did he himself issue from the tomb? No more momentous questions were ever asked than these. For, if so, then the message of Jesus has a bearing on the material universe, on the human mind, and the whole realm of thought that is utterly revolutionary! What was that message? Did the man’s own apostles and immediate followers understand it? Did Paul? Certain we are, however, that the theology which Rome gave to her barbarian conquerors was wholly different from that taught by Jesus and his disciples. And we know that the history of Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire down to the Franco-Prussian war is largely a recital of the development of the religious beliefs which Rome handed down to her conquerors, and their influence upon the human mind. These beliefs constitute the working hypothesis of that institution known to-day as the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and its separated offshoots, the Greek Catholic and the Protestant Churches, including the numberless ramifications and divisions of the latter. The question as to whether eternal salvation is a function of complete immersion of the human body, or only a gentle sprinkling, appears most lamentably puerile in the face of the tremendous revolutionary truths hinted by the deeds of Jesus, assuming that he has been correctly reported in the Gospels. No; Renan, in his Vie de Jésus, which I gave you last 120 night, missed it. Before him, Voltaire and countless other critics of man-made theology missed it. The writings of these men do serve, however, to mow down the theological stubble in the world’s field of thought. What is it, this gigantic truth which Jesus brought? I do not know. But he himself is reported to have said, ‘If ye keep my commands, ye shall know of the doctrine.’ And his chief command was, that we love God and our fellow-men. I have no doubt whatever that, when we follow this command, we shall know of the doctrine which he came to establish in the hearts of men.”

“But his message was the brotherhood of man,” said Josè.

“Nay,” replied the explorer, “it was the fatherhood of God, rather. For that includes the brotherhood of man. But, while we agree thus far, who can say what the fatherhood of God implies? Who, realizing that this was Jesus’ message, knows how to make it practical, as he did? To him it meant––ah, what did it not mean! It meant a consciousness that held not one trace of evil. It meant a consciousness of God as omnipotent power, the irresistible power of good, which, in the form of spirit, or mind, as some will have it, is ever present. Is it not so? Well, then, who is there to-day, within the Church or without, who understands the divine message of the fatherhood of God sufficiently to acquire such a consciousness, and to make the intensely practical application of the message to every problem of mind, or body, or environment? Who to-day in your Church or mine, for example, realizes that Jesus must have seen something in matter far different from the solid, indestructible thing that we think we see, and that this was due to his understanding of the immanence of his Father as spirit––an understanding which enabled him to walk on the waves, and to treat material things as if they were not? No, my friend, the Christ-message of the fatherhood of God is hardly apprehended in the world to-day in the slightest degree by priest or prelate, church or sect. And yet, the influence of Jesus is tremendous!”

Josè’s brow knit in perplexity. “I––I don’t believe I follow you, quite,” he said.

“I am not surprised,” replied the explorer gently. “I sometimes wonder if I understand myself just what it is that I am trying to express. My belief is still in a state of transition. I am still searching. The field has been cleared. And now––now I am waiting for the new seed. I have abandoned forever the sterile, non-productive religious beliefs of current theology. I have abandoned such belittling views of God as the Presbyterian sublapsarian view of election. I have turned wearily from the puerile dogma of your Church as unworthy of the Father 121 of Jesus. From delving into the mysteries of the Brahminism of India, of ancestor-worship in Japan, of Confucianism in China, of Islamism in the far East, I have come back to the wonderful man of Nazareth. And now I am trying to see what Christianity would be if purged of its adulterations––purged of the Greek philosophy of the early Fathers; of the forgeries of the Middle Ages; of the pagan ceremonialism and priestly rites and assumptions of power to save or damn in this present century. And what do I find, after all this rubbish has been filtered out? Love, friend––love; the unfathomable love of the Father of Jesus, who knows no evil, no sin, no sickness, no death, no hell, no material heaven, but whose kingdom is the harmonious realm of spirit, or mind, wherein the individual consciousness knows no discord of any name or nature.”

The afternoon haze had been long gathering when Josè roused the sleeping cochero and prepared to return to the stifling ecclesiastical atmosphere from which for a brief day he had been so happily free. A cold chill swept over him when he took his seat in the carriage, and he shuddered as if with an evil presentiment.

“And you still adhere to your determination to remain in the Church?” his friend asked, as they turned from the green hills and nodding palms of Turbaco, and set their course, toward the distant mediaeval city.

“Yes,” came the scarcely audible reply. But as Josè spoke, he knew that his mind had that day been stripped of its last remaining vestige of the old theology, leaving it bare, exposed––and receptive.

A week passed. The explorer had gone, as silently and unannounced as he had come. The evening before his departure he and Josè had sat again in the thick shadows of the old wall. The next morning he was on the mighty river; and the priest was left with a great void in his heart.

One noon, as Josè was returning from his classes, he pondered deeply the last words of the explorer, “Remember, nothing that has been invented by mankind or evolved by the human mind can stand, or remain. We might just as well accept that great fact now as later, and adjust ourselves to it. But the things of the spirit remain. And Paul has told us what they are.”

As he passed slowly along the winding little street toward the dormitory, a messenger approached him with a summons from the Bishop. He turned and started wonderingly toward the Cathedral. He had been reprimanded once, twice, for the liberal views which he had expressed to his classes. Was he 122 to receive another rebuke now? He had tried to be more careful of late. Had he been seen with the explorer?

An hour later, his eyes set and unseeing, and his thin lips trembling, Josè dragged himself up the stone steps to his little room and threw himself upon the bed. The bonds which had been slowly, imperceptibly tightening during these few months of precious liberty had been drawn suddenly taut. The Bishop, in the rôle of Inquisitor Natus, had just revealed a full knowledge of his dismal past, and had summarily dismissed him from the University faculty. Josè, bewildered and stunned, had tried vainly to defend himself. Then, realizing his impotence before the uncompromising bigotry of this choleric ecclesiastic, he had burst suddenly into a torrent of frenzied declarations of his undeserved wrongs, of his resolve now to renounce his oath, to leave the Church, to abandon honor, family, everything that held or claimed him, and to flee into unknown and unknowing parts, where his harassed soul might find a few years of rest before its final flight! The Bishop became bitterly and implacably infuriated, and remanded the excited priest to his room to reflect upon his wild words, and to await the final disposition of his case––unless he should have determined already to try the devious route of apostasy.

Rising the next morning at dawn from the chill floor where he had spent the torturing hours of an interminable night, and still clinging forlornly to his battered sense of honor and family pride, Josè again received the Bishop’s summons; and, after the events of the morning already related, faced the angry churchman’s furious tirade, and with it, what he could not have imagined before, a charge of hideous immorality. Then had been set before him a choice between apostasy and acceptance of the assignment to the parish of far-off Simití.

“And now, unpitying Fate,” he murmured, as the door of the Bishop’s sanctum closed behind him, and he wandered down through the gloom of the quiet Cathedral, “receive your victim. You have chosen well your carnal instruments––pride––ecclesiasticism––lust! My crimes? Aye, the very lowest; for I have loved liberty of thought and conscience; I have loved virtue and honor; the pursuits of intellect; the fair; the noble; yea, the better things of life. I have loved my fellow-men; and I have sought their emancipation from the thraldom of ignorance. I have loved truth, and the Christ who revealed it to the dull minds of mortals. Enough! I stand convicted! And––I accept the sentence––I have no desire to resist it. For the end is now not distant!”

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