10. The attraction of guilt produces fear of love, for love would never look on guilt at all. ²It is the nature of love to look upon only the truth, for there it sees itself, with which it would unite in holy union and completion. ³As love must look past fear, so must fear see love not. ⁴For love contains the end of guilt, as surely as fear depends on it. ⁵Love is attracted only to love. ⁶Overlooking guilt completely, it sees no fear. ⁷Being wholly without attack, it could not be afraid. ⁸Fear is attracted to what love sees not, and each believes that what the other looks upon does not exist. ⁹Fear looks on guilt with just the same devotion that love looks on itself. ¹⁰And each has messengers which it sends forth, and which return to it with messages written in the language in which their going forth was asked.

11. Love’s messengers are gently sent, and return with messages of love and gentleness. ²The messengers of fear are harshly ordered to seek out guilt, and cherish every scrap of evil and of sin that they can find, losing none of them on pain of death, and laying them respectfully before their lord and master. ³Perception cannot obey two masters, each asking for messages of different things in different languages. ⁴What fear would feed upon, love overlooks. ⁵What fear demands, love cannot even see. ⁶The fierce attraction that guilt holds for fear is wholly absent from love’s gentle perception. ⁷What love would look upon is meaningless to fear, and quite invisible.

12. Relationships in this world are the result of how the world is seen. ²And this depends on which emotion was called on to send its messengers to look upon it, and return with word of what they saw. ³Fear’s messengers are trained through terror, and they tremble when their master calls on them to serve him. ⁴For fear is merciless even to its friends. ⁵Its messengers steal guiltily away in hungry search of guilt, for they are kept cold and starving and made very vicious by their master, who allows them to feast only upon what they return to him. ⁶No little shred of guilt escapes their hungry eyes. ⁷And in their savage search for sin they pounce on any living thing they see, and carry it screaming to their master, to be devoured.

13. Send not these savage messengers into the world, to feast upon it and to prey upon reality. ²For they will bring you word of bones and skin and flesh. ³They have been taught to seek for the corruptible, and to return with gorges filled with things decayed and rotted. ⁴To them such things are beautiful, because they seem to allay their savage pangs of hunger. ⁵For they are frantic with the pain of fear, and would avert the punishment of him who sends them forth by offering him what they hold dear.

14. The Holy Spirit has given you love’s messengers to send instead of those you trained through fear. ²They are as eager to return to you what they hold dear as are the others. ³If you send them forth, they will see only the blameless and the beautiful, the gentle and the kind. ⁴They will be as careful to let no little act of charity, no tiny expression of forgiveness, no little breath of love escape their notice. ⁵And they will return with all the happy things they found, to share them lovingly with you. ⁶Be not afraid of them. ⁷They offer you salvation. ⁸Theirs are the messages of safety, for they see the world as kind.

15. If you send forth only the messengers the Holy Spirit gives you, wanting no messages but theirs, you will see fear no more. ²The world will be transformed before your sight, cleansed of all guilt and softly brushed with beauty. ³The world contains no fear that you laid not upon it. ⁴And none you cannot ask love’s messengers to remove from it, and see it still. ⁵The Holy Spirit has given you His messengers to send to your brother and return to you with what love sees. ⁶They have been given to replace the hungry dogs of fear you sent instead. ⁷And they go forth to signify the end of fear.

16. Love, too, would set a feast before you, on a table covered with a spotless cloth, set in a quiet garden where no sound but singing and a softly joyous whispering is ever heard. ²This is a feast that honors your holy relationship, and at which everyone is welcomed as an honored guest. ³And in a holy instant grace is said by everyone together, as they join in gentleness before the table of communion. ⁴And I will join you there, as long ago I promised and promise still. ⁵For in your new relationship am I made welcome. ⁶And where I am made welcome, there I am.

17. I am made welcome in the state of grace, which means you have at last forgiven me. ²For I became the symbol of your sin, and so I had to die instead of you. ³To the ego sin means death, and so atonement is achieved through murder. ⁴Salvation is looked upon as a way by which the Son of God was killed instead of you. ⁵Yet would I offer you my body, you whom I love, knowing its littleness? ⁶Or would I teach that bodies cannot keep us apart? ⁷Mine was of no greater value than yours; no better means for communication of salvation, but not its Source. ⁸No one can die for anyone, and death does not atone for sin. ⁹But you can live to show it is not real. ¹⁰The body does appear to be the symbol of sin while you believe that it can get you what you want. ¹¹While you believe that it can give you pleasure, you will also believe that it can bring you pain. ¹²To think you could be satisfied and happy with so little is to hurt yourself, and to limit the happiness that you would have calls upon pain to fill your meager store and make your life complete. ¹³This is completion as the ego sees it. ¹⁴For guilt creeps in where happiness has been removed, and substitutes for it. ¹⁵Communion is another kind of completion, which goes beyond guilt, because it goes beyond the body.