I Step Back, The Light Steps Forward

1. Today’s idea but states the simple truth that makes the thought of sin impossible. ²It promises there is no cause for guilt, and being causeless it does not exist. ³It follows surely from the basic thought so often mentioned in the text; ideas leave not their source. ⁴If this be true, how can you be apart from God? ⁵How could you walk the world alone and separate from your Source?

2. We are not inconsistent in the thoughts that we present in our curriculum. ²Truth must be true throughout, if it be true. ³It cannot contradict itself, nor be in parts uncertain and in others sure. ⁴You cannot walk the world apart from God, because you could not be without Him. ⁵He is what your life is. ⁶Where you are He is. ⁷There is one life. ⁸That life you share with Him. ⁹Nothing can be apart from Him and live.

3. Yet where He is, there must be holiness as well as life. ²No attribute of His remains unshared by everything that lives. ³What lives is holy as Himself, because what shares His life is part of Holiness, and could no more be sinful than the sun could choose to be of ice; the sea elect to be apart from water, or the grass to grow with roots suspended in the air.

4. There is a light in you which cannot die; whose presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you. ²All things that live bring gifts to you, and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet. ³The scent of flowers is their gift to you. ⁴The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat, and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head.

5. The light in you is what the universe longs to behold. ²All living things are still before you, for they recognize Who walks with you. ³The light you carry is their own. ⁴And thus they see in you their holiness, saluting you as savior and as God. ⁵Accept their reverence, for it is due to Holiness Itself, which walks with you, transforming in Its gentle light all things unto Its likeness and Its purity.

6. This is the way salvation works. ²As you step back, the light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. ³It heralds not the end of sin in punishment and death. ⁴In lightness and in laughter is sin gone, because its quaint absurdity is seen. ⁵It is a foolish thought, a silly dream, not frightening, ridiculous perhaps, but who would waste an instant in approach to God Himself for such a senseless whim?

7. Yet you have wasted many, many years on just this foolish thought. ²The past is gone, with all its fantasies. ³They keep you bound no longer. ⁴The approach to God is near. ⁵And in the little interval of doubt that still remains, you may perhaps lose sight of your Companion, and mistake Him for the senseless, ancient dream that now is past.

8. “Who walks with me?” ²This question should be asked a thousand times a day, till certainty has ended doubting and established peace. ³Today let doubting cease. ⁴God speaks for you in answering your question with these words:

⁵I walk with God in perfect holiness. ⁶I light the world, I light my mind and all the minds which God created one with me.