hing
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!"

Jose'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 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 Jose 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,"