 We continue today with chapter 23. Salvation without compromise. Is it not true you do not recognize some of the forms attack can take? If it is true attack in any form will hurt you and will do so just as much as in another form that you do recognize, then it must follow that you do not always recognize the source of pain. Attack in any form is equally destructive, its purpose does not change, its sole intent is murder, and what form of murder serves to cover the massive guilt and frantic fear of punishment the murderer must feel. He may deny he is a murderer and justify his savagery with smiles as he attacks, yet he will suffer and he will look on his intent in nightmares where the smiles are gone, where the purpose rises to meet his horrified awareness and pursue him still. For no one thinks of murder and escapes the guilt of thought and tales. If the intent is death, what matter the form it takes? Is death in any form however lovely and charitable it may seem to be a blessing and a sign the voice for God speaks through you to your brother? The wrapping does not make the gift you give, an empty box however beautiful and gently given still contains nothing, and neither the receiver nor the giver is long deceived. Withhold forgiveness from your brother and you attack him. You give him nothing and receive of him but what you gave. Salvation is no compromise of any kind. To compromise is to accept but part of what you want to make a little and give up the rest. Salvation gives up nothing. It is complete for everyone. Let the idea of compromise but enter and the awareness of salvation's purpose is lost because it is not recognized. It is denied where compromise has been accepted. For compromise is to believe salvation is impossible. It would maintain you can attack a little, love a little and know the difference. Thus it would teach a little of the same can still be different and yet the same remain intact as one. Does this make sense? Can it be understood? This course is easy just because it makes no compromise yet it seems difficult to those who still believe that compromise is possible. They do not see that if it is salvation is attack. Yet it is certain the belief that salvation is impossible cannot uphold a quiet calm assurance it has come. Forgiveness cannot be withheld a little nor is it possible to attack for this and love for that and understand forgiveness. Would you not want to recognize assault upon your peace in any form if only thus does it become impossible that you lose sight of it? It can be kept shining before your vision forever clear and never out of sight if you defend it not. Those who believe that peace can be defended and that attack is justified on its behalf cannot perceive it lies within them. How could they know? Could they accept forgiveness side by side with the belief that murder takes some forms by which their peace is saved? Would they be willing to accept the fact that their savage purpose is directed against themselves? No one unites with enemies nor is that one with them in purpose and no one compromises with an enemy but hates him still for what he kept from him. Mistake not truths for peace nor compromise for the escape from conflict. To be released from conflict means that it is over. The door is open. You have left the battleground. You have not lingered there in cowering hope that it will not return because the guns are still an instant and the fear that haunts the place of death is not apparent. There is no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above and not be touched. But from within it you can find no safety. Not one tree left still standing will shelter you. Not one illusion of protection stands against the faith in murder. Here stands the body torn between the natural desire to communicate and the unnatural intent to murder and to die. Think you, the form that murder takes can offer safety. Can guilt be absent from a battlefield and from the workbook. Lesson 182. I will be still an instant and go home. This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. A memory of home keeps haunting you as if there were a place that called you to return. Although you do not recognize the voice nor what it is the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are in exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb. At other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again. No one but knows whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they are sad and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but a stream. Yet who in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny he understands the words we speak. We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home. He goes uncertainly about an endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find, not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he seeks cannot be made by him. There is no substitute for heaven. All he ever made was hell. Perhaps you think it is your childhood home that you would find again. The childhood of your body and its place of shelter are a memory now so distorted that you merely hold a picture of a past that never happened. Yet there is a child in you who seeks his father's house and knows that he is alien here. This childhood is eternal, with an innocence that will endure forever. Where this child shall go is holy ground. It is his holiness that lights up heaven and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein our earth and heaven joined as one. It is this child in your father, in you, your father knows as his own son. It is this child who knows his father. He desires to go home so deeply, so unceasingly, his voice cries unto you to let him rest awhile. He does not ask for more than just a few instance of respite, just an interval in which he can return to breathe again the holy air that fills his father's house. You are his home as well. He will return. But give him just a little time to be himself within the peace that is his home, resting in silence and in peace and love. This child needs your protection. He is far from home. He is so little that he seems so easily shut out. His tiny voice so readily obscured. His call for help almost unheard amid the grating sounds and harsh and rasping noises of the world. Yet does he know that in you still abides his sure protection. You will fail him not. He will go home and you along with him. This child is your defenselessness, your strength. He trust in you. He came because he knew you would not fail. He whispers of his home unceasingly to you. For he would bring you back with him that he himself might stay and not return again where he does not belong and where he lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts. His patience has no limits. He will wait until you hear his gentle voice within you, calling you to let him go in peace along with you to where he is at home in you with him. When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear his voice. So poignantly he calls to you that you will not resist him longer. In that instant he will take you to his home and you will stay with him in perfect stillness, silent in their peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt. Sublimely certain that you are at home. Rest with him frequently today. For he was willing to become a little child that you might learn of him, how strong is he who comes without defenses, offering only love's messages to those who think he is their enemy. He holds the might of heaven in his hand and calls them friend and gives his strength to them that they may see he would be friend to them. He asks that they protect him, for his home is far away and he will not return to it alone. Christ is reborn as but a little child each time a wanderer would leave his home, for he must learn that what he would protect is but this child who comes defenseless and who is protected by defenselessness. Go home with him from time to time today. You are as much an alien here as he. Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence. Christ has called you friend and brother. He has even come to ask your help in letting him go home today, completed and completely. He has come as does a little child who must beseech his father for protection and for love. He rules the universe and yet he asks unceasingly that you return with him and take illusions as your gods no more. You have not lost your innocence. It is for this you yearn. This is your heart's desire. This is the voice you hear and this the call which cannot be denied. The holy child remains within you. His home is yours. Today he gives you his defenselessness and you accept it in exchange for all the toys of battle you have made. And now the way is open and the journey has an end in sight at last. Be still and instant and go home with him and be at peace a while. Amen.