Love and Fear Cannot Co-Exist

1. Fear is a stranger to the ways of love. ²Identify with fear, and you will be a stranger to yourself. ³And thus you are unknown to you. ⁴What is your Self remains an alien to the part of you which thinks that it is real, but different from yourself. ⁵Who could be sane in such a circumstance? ⁶Who but a madman could believe he is what he is not, and judge against himself?

2. There is a stranger in our midst, who comes from an idea so foreign to the truth he speaks a different language, looks upon a world truth does not know, and understands what truth regards as senseless. ²Stranger yet, he does not recognize to whom he comes, and yet maintains his home belongs to him, while he is alien now who is at home. ³And yet, how easy it would be to say, “This is my home. ⁴Here I belong, and will not leave because a madman says I must.”

3. What reason is there for not saying this? ²What could the reason be except that you had asked this stranger in to take your place, and let you be a stranger to yourself? ³No one would let himself be dispossessed so needlessly, unless he thought there were another home more suited to his tastes.

4. Who is the stranger? ²Is it fear or you who are unsuited to the home which God provided for His Son? ³Is fear His Own, created in His likeness? ⁴Is it fear that love completes, and is completed by? ⁵There is no home can shelter love and fear. ⁶They cannot coexist. ⁷If you are real, then fear must be illusion. ⁸And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all.

5. How simply, then, the question is resolved. ²Who fears has but denied himself and said, “I am the stranger here. ³And so I leave my home to one more like me than myself, and give him all I thought belonged to me.” ⁴Now is he exiled of necessity, not knowing who he is, uncertain of all things but this; that he is not himself, and that his home has been denied to him.

6. What does he search for now? ²What can he find? ³A stranger to himself can find no home wherever he may look, for he has made return impossible. ⁴His way is lost, except a miracle will search him out and show him that he is no stranger now. ⁵The miracle will come. ⁶For in his home his Self remains. ⁷It asked no stranger in, and took no alien thought to be Itself. ⁸And It will call Its Own unto Itself in recognition of what is Its Own.

7. Who is the stranger? ²Is he not the one your Self calls not? ³You are unable now to recognize this stranger in your midst, for you have given him your rightful place. ⁴Yet is your Self as certain of Its Own as God is of His Son. ⁵He cannot be confused about creation. ⁶He is sure of what belongs to Him. ⁷No stranger can be interposed between His knowledge and His Son’s reality. ⁸He does not know of strangers. ⁹He is certain of His Son.

8. God’s certainty suffices. ²Whom He knows to be His Son belongs where He has set His Son forever. ³He has answered you who ask, “Who is the stranger?” ⁴Hear His Voice assure you, quietly and sure, that you are not a stranger to your Father, nor is your Creator stranger made to you. ⁵Whom God has joined remain forever one, at home in Him, no stranger to Himself.

9. Today we offer thanks that Christ has come to search the world for what belongs to Him. ²His vision sees no strangers, but beholds His Own and joyously unites with them. ³They see Him as a stranger, for they do not recognize themselves. ⁴Yet as they give Him welcome, they remember. ⁵And He leads them gently home again, where they belong.

10. Not one does Christ forget. ²Not one He fails to give you to remember, that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established. ³He has not forgotten you. ⁴But you will not remember Him until you look on all as He does. ⁵Who denies his brother is denying Him, and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come.