 We continue today with Chapter 25. The State of Sinlessness The state of sinlessness is merely this. The whole desire to attack is gone, and so there is no reason to perceive the Son of God as other than He is. The need for guilt is gone because it has no purpose and is meaningless without the goal of sin. Attack and sin are bound as one illusion. Each the cause and aim and justifier of the other. Each is meaningless alone, but seems to draw a meaning from the other. Each depends upon the other for whatever sense it seems to have. And no one could believe in one unless the other were true. For each attests the other must be true. Attack makes Christ your enemy, and God along with him. Must you not be afraid with quote enemies like these? And must you not be fearful of yourself? For you have hurt yourself and made yourself your quote enemy. And now you must believe you are not you, but something alien to yourself and quote something else. A quote something to be feared instead of loved. Who would attack whatever he perceives as wholly innocent? And who, because he wishes to attack, can fail to think he must be guilty to maintain the wish while wanting innocence? For who could see the Son of God as innocent and wish him dead? Christ stands before you each time you look upon your brother. He has not gone because your eyes are closed. But what is there to see by searching for your savior, seeing him through the sightless eyes? It is not Christ you see by looking thus. It is the quote enemy, confused with Christ you look upon, and hate because there is no sin in him for you to see. Nor do you hear his plaintive call unchanged in content in whatever form the call is made that you unite with him and join with him in innocence and peace. And yet beneath the ego senseless streaks such is the call that God has given him that you might hear in him his call to you and answer by returning unto God what is his own. The Son of God asks only this of you that you return to him what is his due, that you may share in it with him. Alone does neither have it. So must it remain useless to both. Together it will give to each an equal strength to save the other and save himself along with him. For given by you, your savior offers you salvation. Condemned by you, he offers death to you. In everyone you see but the reflection of what you choose to have him be to you. If you decide against his proper function, the only one he has in truth, you are depriving him of all the joy he would have found if he fulfilled the role God gave to him. But think not heaven is lost to him alone nor can it be regained unless the way is shown to him through you that you may find it walking by his side. It is no sacrifice that he be saved for by his freedom will you gain your own to let his function be fulfilled as but the means to let yours be and so you walk toward heaven or toward hell but not alone. How beautiful his sinlessness will be when you perceive it and how great will be your joy when he is free to offer you the gift of sight God gave to him for you. He has no need but this that you allow him freedom to complete the task God gave to him. Remembering but this that what he does you do along with him and as you see him do you define the function he will have for you until you see him differently and let him be what God appointed that he be to you. Against the hatred that the son of God made cherished toward himself is God believed to be without the power to save what he created from the pain of hell but in the love he shows himself is God made free to let his will be done. In your brother you see the picture of your own belief in what the will of God must be for you. In your forgiveness will you understand his love for you. Through your attack believe he hates you thinking heaven must be hell. Look once again upon your brother not without the understanding that he is the way to heaven or hell as you perceive him but forget not this the role you give to him is given you and you will walk the way you pointed out to him because it is your judgment on yourself. And from the workbook Lesson 195 Love is the way I walk in gratitude. Gratitude is a lesson hard to learn for those who look upon the world amiss. The most that they can do is see themselves as better off than others and they try to be content because another seems to suffer more than they. How pitiful and depreciating are such thoughts for who has cause for thanks while others have less cause and who could suffer less because he sees another suffer more. Your gratitude is due to him alone who made all cause of sorrow disappear throughout the world. It is insane to offer thanks because of suffering but it is equally insane to fail in gratitude to one who offers you the certain means whereby all pain is healed and suffering replaced with laughter and with happiness. Nor could the even partly sane refuse to take the steps which he directs and follow in the way he sets before them to escape a prison that they thought contained no door to the deliverance they now perceive. Your brother is your, quote, enemy because you see in him the rival for your peace, a plunderer who takes his joy from you and leaves you nothing but a black despair so bitter and red-lendless that there is no hope remaining. Now is vengeance all there is to wish for. Now can you but try to bring him down to lie in death with you as useless as yourself as little left within his grasping fingers as in yours. You do not offer God your gratitude because your brother is more slave than you nor could you sanely be enraged if he seems freer. Love makes no comparisons and gratitude can only be sincere if it be joined to love. We offer thanks to God, our Father, that in us all things will find their freedom. It will never be that some are loosed while others are still bound. For who can bargain in the name of love? Therefore, give thanks but in sincerity and let your gratitude make room for all who will escape with you. The sick, the weak, the needy, and afraid and those who mourn a seeming loss or feel apparent pain who suffer cold or hunger or who walk the way of hatred in the path of death. All these go with you. Let us not compare ourselves with them for thus we split them off from our awareness of the unity we share with them as they must share with us. We thank our Father for one thing alone that we are separate from no living thing and therefore one with him and we rejoice that no exceptions can ever be made which would reduce our wholeness nor impair or change our function to complete the one who is himself completion. We give thanks for every living thing for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing and we fail to recognize the gifts of God to us. Then let our brothers lean their tired heads against our shoulders as they rest awhile. We offer thanks for them for if we can direct them to the peace that we would find the way is opening at last to us. An ancient door is swinging free again a long forgotten word re-echoes in our memory and gathers clarity as we are willing once again to hear. Walk then in gratitude the way of love for hatred is forgotten when we lay comparisons aside. What more remains as obstacles to peace. The fear of God is now undone at last and we forgive without comparing. Thus we cannot choose to overlook some things and yet retain some other things still locked away as quote sins. When your forgiveness is complete you have total gratitude for you will see that everything has earned the right to love by being loving even as yourself. Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice and revenge. We have been given everything. If we refuse to recognize it we are not entitled therefore to our bitterness and to a self-perception which regards us in a place of merciless pursuit where we are badgered ceaselessly and pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future. Gratitude becomes the single thought we substitute for these insane perceptions. God has cared for us and calls us son. Can there be more than this? Our gratitude will pave the way to Him and shorten our learning time by more than you could ever dream of. Gratitude goes hand in hand with love and where one is the other must be found for gratitude is but an aspect of the love which is the source of all creation. God gives thanks to you, His Son, for being what you are, His own completion and the source of love along with Him. Your gratitude to Him is one with His to you for love can walk no road except the way of gratitude and thus we go who walk the way to God. Amen.