ot knowing that God
is infinite good--and its fears become externalized as disaster, loss,
calamity, disease, and death at last. Perhaps its chief characteristic
is mutability. It has no basis of principle to rest upon, and so it
constantly shifts and changes to accord with its own shifting thought.
There is nothing certain about it. It is here to-day, and gone
to-morrow."

"Pretty dismal state of affairs!" Haynerd was heard to mutter.

"Well, Ned," said Hitt, "there is this hope: human consciousness
always refers its states to something. And that 'something' is real.
It is infinite mind, God, and its infinite manifestation. The human
mind still translates or interprets God's greatest idea, Man, as 'a
suffering, sinning, troubled creature,' forgetting that this creature
is only a mental concept, and that the human mind is looking only at
its own thoughts, and that these thoughts are counterfeits of God's
real thoughts.

"Moreover, though the human mind is finite, and can not even begin to
grasp the infinite, the divine mind has penetrated the mist of error.
There is a spark of real reflection in every mortal. That spark can be
made to grow into a flame that will consume all error and leave the
real man revealed, a consciousness that knows no evil. There is now
enough of a spark of intelligence in the human, so-called mind to
enable it to lay hold on truth and grow out of itself. And there is no
excuse for not doing so, as Jesus said. If he had not come we wouldn't
have known that we were missing the mark so terribly."

"Well," observed Haynerd, "after that classification I don't see that
we mortals have much to be puffed up about!"

"All human beings, or mortals, Ned," said Hitt, "are interpretations
by the mortal mind of infinite mind's idea of itself, Man. These
interpretations are made in the human mind, and they remain posited
there. They differ from one another only in degree. All are false,
and doomed to decay. How, then, can one mortal look down with
superciliousness upon another, when all are in the same identical
class?"

Carmen's thoughts rested for a moment upon the meaningless existence
of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, who had anchored her life in the shifting
sands of the flesh and its ephemeral joys.

"Now," resumed Hitt, "we will come back to the question of progress.
What is progress but the growing of the human mind out of itself under
the influence of the divine stimulus of demonstrable truth? And that