1. It is in your power, in time, to delay the perfect union of the Father and the Son. 2For in this world, the attraction of guilt does stand between them. 3Neither time nor season means anything in eternity. 4But here it is the Holy Spirit’s function to use them both, though not as the ego uses them. 5This is the season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. 6Yet you know not how to do it. 7Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate your birth through Him. 8The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave to you. 9Release me as I choose your own release. 10The time of Christ we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart.
2. The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. 2For in this liberating instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored to him. 3What other gift can you offer me, when only this I choose to offer you? 4And to see me is to see me in everyone, and offer everyone the gift you offer me. 5I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself you ask of me. 6Learn now that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a limitation imposed on giving. 7And by this limitation you have limited acceptance of the gift I offer you.
3. We who are one cannot give separately. 2When you are willing to accept our relationship as real, guilt will hold no attraction for you. 3For in our union you will accept all of our brothers. 4The gift of union is the only gift that I was born to give. 5Give it to me, that you may have it. 6The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. 7And by your acceptance of it, you offer it to everyone.
4. It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time of Christ be now. 2It is possible to do this all at once because there is but one shift in perception that is necessary, for you made but one mistake. 3It seems like many, but it is all the same. 4For though the ego takes many forms, it is always the same idea. 5What is not love is always fear, and nothing else.
5. It is not necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous routes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge in forms quite different from what it is. 2Yet it is necessary to examine each one as long as you would retain the principle that governs all of them. 3When you are willing to regard them, not as separate, but as different manifestations of the same idea, and one you do not want, they go together. 4The idea is simply this: You believe it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. 5This is the choice you think you have, and the decision you believe that you must make. 6You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that sacrifice gets nothing. 7Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. 8Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice. 9And it is this that you must look upon; sacrifice is attack, not love. 10If you would accept but this one idea, your fear of love would vanish. 11Guilt cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. 12For if there is sacrifice, someone must pay and someone must get. 13And the only question that remains is how much is the price, and for getting what.
6. As host to the ego, you believe that you can give all your guilt away whenever you want, and thereby purchase peace. 2And the payment does not seem to be yours. 3While it is obvious that the ego does demand payment it never seems to be demanding it of you. 4You are unwilling to recognize that the ego, which you invited, is treacherous only to those who think they are its host. 5The ego will never let you perceive this, since this recognition would make it homeless. 6For when the recognition dawns clearly, you will not be deceived by any form the ego takes to protect itself from your sight. 7Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the one idea that hides behind them all; that love demands sacrifice, and is therefore inseparable from attack and fear. 8And that guilt is the price of love, which must be paid by fear.
7. How fearful, then, has God become to you, and how great a sacrifice do you believe His Love demands! 2For total love would demand total sacrifice. 3And so the ego seems to demand less of you than God, and of the two is judged as the lesser of two evils, one to be feared a little, perhaps, but the other to be destroyed. 4For you see love as destructive, and your only question is who is to be destroyed, you or another? 5You seek to answer this question in your special relationships, in which you seem to be both destroyer and destroyed in part, but able to be neither completely. 6And this you think saves you from God, Whose total Love would completely destroy you.
8. You think that everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice, but you do not see that only you demand sacrifice, and only of yourself. 2Yet the demand of sacrifice is so savage and so fearful that you cannot accept it where it is. 3The real price of not accepting this has been so great that you have given God away rather than look at it. 4For if God would demand total sacrifice of you, it seems safer to project Him outward and away from you, and not be host to Him. 5To Him you ascribed the ego’s treachery, inviting it to take His place to protect you from Him. 6And you do not recognize that it is what you invited in that would destroy you, and does demand total sacrifice of you. 7No partial sacrifice will appease this savage guest, for it is an invader who but seems to offer kindness, but always to make the sacrifice complete.
9. You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego, for it keeps no bargains and would leave you nothing. 2Nor can you be partial host to it. 3You must choose between total freedom and total bondage, for there are no alternatives but these. 4You have tried many compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision you must make. 5And yet it is the recognition of the decision, just as it is, that makes the decision so easy. 6Salvation is simple, being of God, and therefore very easy to understand. 7Do not try to project it from you and see it outside yourself. 8In you are both the question and the answer; the demand for sacrifice and the peace of God.