I think you are perhaps too conscious of
waiting for something. Your task lies ahead of you, but the work of love
can begin at once and anywhere."
"Yes," I said, "I feel that now and here. Will you not tell me something
of yourself in return? I cannot read your mind clearly--it is occupied
with something I cannot grasp--what is your work in heaven?"
"Oh," he said lightly, "that is easy enough, and yet you would not
understand it. I have been led through the shadow of fear, and I have
passed out on the other side. And my duty is to release others from
fear, as far as I can. It is the darkest shadow of all, because it
dwells in the unknown. Pain, without it, is no suffering at all; indeed
pain is almost a pleasure, when one knows what it is doing for one. But
fear is the doubt whether pain or suffering are really helping us; and
just as memory never has any touch of fear about it, so hope may
likewise have done with fear."
"But how did you learn this?" I said.
"Only by fearing to the uttermost," he replied. "The power--it is not
courage, because that only defies fear--cannot be given one; it must be
painfully won.
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