"But Jesus Christ came, and His story is the story of the will of God. For men believed His father was God. That is to keep in our minds always the fatherhood of God. And his mother was believed to be a virgin. I do not know how to say this, but I was given to believe that that was no more true than I had thought, but still that it was the truest of all. It is one of the things we are to believe. We are to learn from it--how can I say?--that there is a heavenly birth out of purity and light. It is a symbol. That is the word: a symbol. And His death for mankind is the everlasting symbol of man's duty: to die for one another. And He went into the grave, and ascended into heaven, and so shall we all die and live again. But every observance of every church is a symbol--nothing more. And the man that was a god is a symbol and nothing more. But nothing could be more. For to find a symbol that has lasted, in one form or another, since the beginning of the world is to learn that it is something the world itself is built on. It is the picture book we are given before we can read print. And it means that something is working out--and is not yet--and the eye of man hath not seen or the ear of man heard. And about fear--that is the most wonderful of all and the hardest to tell. It is our friend. At first everything fed upon everything else; and so it does now, 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.)