for how shall I say the animal has
fear and the growing plant has not? And our fear tells us what to turn
away from, and it fits us for the fight of the mortal life. But in the
end will our fear be only the fear of evil? Fear is our counselor. It is
our friend.

"Now perhaps I have done wrong in trying to write this out. Perhaps I
have not helped the boy or anybody he tells. Perhaps I have offended
them. I know the sound of what I must have heard and the sight of what I
saw was clearer to me before I tried to tell about them. At first I kept
them back somewhere in my mind and didn't try to see them or hear them
too close. And when I did that, the great light was always there and I
was running toward it. But now I have tried to tell, I see it is no more
than words. They darken counsel. And I have put it back into my mind,
not so much to be thought about as to have at hand. And all my trouble
has gone. It has been a long trouble. I am over sixty now. But I am not
afraid of anything and I am not in doubt. When I see men suffering, I
know they are suffering for a reason. When I find the bird with a broken
wing or the rabbit bit by the trap I know God knows about them, and if I
cannot know, it proves it is not necessary I should. For there is the
great light. (But it is not likely the boy will see this account of it
at all, because I shall try to write it over--to write it better--and if
I make it clearer this will be destroyed.)

"Another thing: about the worship of God. He does not want us to worship
Him as we understand it, to crawl before Him as if He were an idol we
had set up to get us victories over our enemies and to fill us with
food. He wants us--what shall I say?--to open our hearts and our minds
and our ears and eyes to what He wants us to know. He is not an idol. He
is God. And all the way to Him, the horrible way through burnt
offerings, the blood of lambs and goats--blood, blood, all the way--is
the way that climbs up to the real sacrifice, the last of all: the man's
own heart.

"One thing more: the greatest thing that ever happened to me was old
Billy Jones. Was it because I was sorry for him? Was it because I could
do something for him? I don't know. But I tell the boy that the man or
the woman that makes him shed his blood in pity for them, that is the
man or woman that will open his eyes to what we call Eternal Life. What
is Eternal Life? Is it living forever? I do not know. But the
words--those two wor