1. There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. 2There is nothing to be feared. 3There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of in the Wholeness that is His. 4The compromise the least and littlest gap would represent in His eternal Love is quite impossible. 5For it would mean His Love could harbor just a hint of hate, His gentleness turn sometimes to attack, and His eternal patience sometimes fail. 6All this do you believe, when you perceive a gap between your brother and yourself. 7How could you trust Him, then? 8For He must be deceptive in His Love. 9Be wary, then; let Him not come too close, and leave a gap between you and His Love, through which you can escape if there be need for you to flee.
2. Here is the fear of God most plainly seen. 2For love is treacherous to those who fear, since fear and hate can never be apart. 3No one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore must he be afraid of God. 4Certain it is he knows not what love means. 5He fears to love and loves to hate, and so he thinks that love is fearful; hate is love. 6This is the consequence the little gap must bring to those who cherish it, and think that it is their salvation and their hope.
3. The fear of God! 2The greatest obstacle that peace must flow across has not yet gone. 3The rest are past, but this one still remains to block your path, and make the way to light seem dark and fearful, perilous and bleak. 4You had decided that your brother is your enemy. 5Sometimes a friend, perhaps, provided that your separate interests made your friendship possible a little while. 6But not without a gap perceived between you and him, lest he turn again into an enemy. 7Let him come close to you, and you jumped back; as you approached, did he but instantly withdraw. 8A cautious friendship, and limited in scope and carefully restricted in amount, became the treaty that you had made with him. 9Thus you and your brother but shared a qualified entente, in which a clause of separation was a point you both agreed to keep intact. 10And violating this was thought to be a breach of treaty not to be allowed.
4. The gap between you and your brother is not one of space between two separate bodies. 2And this but seems to be dividing off your separate minds. 3It is the symbol of a promise made to meet when you prefer, and separate till you and he elect to meet again. 4And then your bodies seem to get in touch, and thereby signify a meeting place to join. 5But always is it possible for you and him to go your separate ways. 6Conditional upon the “right” to separate will you and he agree to meet from time to time, and keep apart in intervals of separation, which do protect you from the “sacrifice” of love. 7The body saves you, for it gets away from total sacrifice and gives to you the time in which to build again your separate self, which you truly believe diminishes as you and your brother meet.
5. The body could not separate your mind from your brother’s unless you wanted it to be a cause of separation and of distance seen between you and him. 2Thus do you endow it with a power that lies not within itself. 3And herein lies its power over you. 4For now you think that it determines when your brother and you meet, and limits your ability to make communion with your brother’s mind. 5And now it tells you where to go and how to go there, what is feasible for you to undertake, and what you cannot do. 6It dictates what its health can tolerate, and what will tire it and make it sick. 7And its “inherent” weaknesses set up the limitations on what you would do, and keep your purpose limited and weak.
6. The body will accommodate to this, if you would have it so. 2It will allow but limited indulgences in “love,” with intervals of hatred in between. 3And it will take command of when to “love,” and when to shrink more safely into fear. 4It will be sick because you do not know what loving means. 5And so you must misuse each circumstance and everyone you meet, and see in them a purpose not your own.
7. It is not love that asks a sacrifice. 2But fear demands the sacrifice of love, for in love’s presence fear cannot abide. 3For hate to be maintained, love must be feared; and only sometimes present, sometimes gone. 4Thus is love seen as treacherous, because it seems to come and go uncertainly, and offer no stability to you. 5You do not see how limited and weak is your allegiance, and how frequently you have demanded that love go away, and leave you quietly alone in “peace.”
8. The body, innocent of goals, is your excuse for variable goals you hold, and force the body to maintain. 2You do not fear its weakness, but its lack of strength or weakness. 3Would you know that nothing stands between you and your brother? 4Would you know there is no gap behind which you can hide? 5There is a shock that comes to those who learn their savior is their enemy no more. 6There is a wariness that is aroused by learning that the body is not real. 7And there are overtones of seeming fear around the happy message, “God is Love.”
9. Yet all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal. 2Nothing more than that, and nothing less. 3Without the fear of God, what could induce you to abandon Him? 4What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you back an instant from His Love? 5Would you allow the body to say “no” to Heaven’s calling, were you not afraid to find a loss of self in finding God? 6Yet can your self be lost by being found?