1. Reason cannot see sin but can see errors, and leads to their correction. 2It does not value them, but their correction. 3Reason will also tell you that when you think you sin, you call for help. 4Yet if you will not accept the help you call for, you will not believe that it is yours to give. 5And so you will not give it, thus maintaining the belief. 6For uncorrected error of any kind deceives you about the power that is in you to make correction. 7If it can correct, and you allow it not to do so, you deny it to yourself and to your brother. 8And if he shares this same belief you both will think that you are damned. 9This you could spare him and yourself. 10For reason would not make way for correction in you alone.
2. Correction cannot be accepted or refused by you without your brother. 2Sin would maintain it can. 3Yet reason tells you that you cannot see your brother or yourself as sinful and still perceive the other innocent. 4Who looks upon himself as guilty and sees a sinless world? 5And who can see a sinful world and look upon himself apart from it? 6Sin would maintain you and your brother must be separate. 7But reason tells you that this must be wrong. 8If you and your brother are joined, how could it be that you have private thoughts? 9And how could thoughts that enter into what but seems like yours alone have no effect at all on what is yours? 10If minds are joined, this is impossible.
3. No one can think but for himself, as God thinks not without His Son. 2Only were Both in bodies could this be. 3Nor could one mind think only for itself unless the body were the mind. 4For only bodies can be separate, and therefore unreal. 5The home of madness cannot be the home of reason. 6Yet it is easy to leave the home of madness if you see reason. 7You do not leave insanity by going somewhere else. 8You leave it simply by accepting reason where madness was. 9Madness and reason see the same things, but it is certain that they look upon them differently.
4. Madness is an attack on reason that drives it out of mind, and takes its place. 2Reason does not attack, but takes the place of madness quietly, replacing madness if it be the choice of the insane to listen to it. 3But the insane know not their will, for they believe they see the body, and let their madness tell them it is real. 4Reason would be incapable of this. 5And if you would defend the body against your reason, you will not understand the body or yourself.
5. The body does not separate you from your brother, and if you think it does you are insane. 2But madness has a purpose, and believes it also has the means to make its purpose real. 3To see the body as a barrier between what reason tells you must be joined must be insane. 4Nor could you see it, if you heard the voice of reason. 5What can there be that stands between what is continuous? 6And if there is nothing in between, how can what enters part be kept away from other parts? 7Reason would tell you this. 8But think what you must recognize, if it be so.
6. If you choose sin instead of healing, you would condemn the Son of God to what can never be corrected. 2You tell him, by your choice, that he is damned; separate from you and from his Father forever, without a hope of safe return. 3You teach him this, and you will learn of him exactly what you taught. 4For you can teach him only that he is as you would have him, and what you choose he be is but your choice for you. 5Yet think not this is fearful. 6That you are joined to him is but a fact, not an interpretation. 7How can a fact be fearful unless it disagrees with what you hold more dear than truth? 8Reason will tell you that this fact is your release.
7. Neither your brother nor yourself can be attacked alone. 2But neither can accept a miracle instead without the other being blessed by it, and healed of pain. 3Reason, like love, would reassure you, and seeks not to frighten you. 4The power to heal the Son of God is given you because he must be one with you. 5You are responsible for how he sees himself. 6And reason tells you it is given you to change his whole mind, which is one with you, in just an instant. 7And any instant serves to bring complete correction of his errors and make him whole. 8The instant that you choose to let yourself be healed, in that same instant is his whole salvation seen as complete with yours. 9Reason is given you to understand that this is so. 10For reason, kind as is the purpose for which it is the means, leads steadily away from madness toward the goal of truth. 11And here you will lay down the burden of denying truth. 12This is the burden that is terrible, and not the truth.
8. That you and your brother are joined is your salvation; the gift of Heaven, not the gift of fear. 2Does Heaven seem to be a burden to you? 3In madness, yes. 4And yet what madness sees must be dispelled by reason. 5Reason assures you Heaven is what you want, and all you want. 6Listen to Him Who speaks with reason, and brings your reason into line with His. 7Be willing to let reason be the means by which He would direct you how to leave insanity behind. 8Hide not behind insanity in order to escape from reason. 9What madness would conceal, the Holy Spirit still holds out for everyone to look upon with gladness.
9. You are your brother’s savior. 2He is yours. 3Reason speaks happily indeed of this. 4This gracious plan was given love by Love. 5And what Love plans is like Itself in this: Being united, It would have you learn what you must be. 6And being one with It, it must be given you to give what It has given, and gives still. 7Spend but an instant in the glad acceptance of what is given you to give your brother, and learn with him what has been given both of you. 8To give is no more blessed than to receive. 9But neither is it less.
10. The Son of God is always blessed as one. 2And as his gratitude goes out to you who blessed him, reason will tell you that it cannot be you stand apart from blessing. 3The gratitude he offers you reminds you of the thanks your Father gives you for completing Him. 4And here alone does reason tell you that you can understand what you must be. 5Your Father is as close to you as is your brother. 6Yet what is there that could be nearer you than is your Self?
11. The power you have over the Son of God is not a threat to his reality. 2It but attests to it. 3Where could his freedom lie but in himself, if he be free already? 4And who could bind him but himself, if he deny his freedom? 5God is not mocked; no more His Son can be imprisoned save by his own desire. 6And it is by his own desire that he is freed. 7Such is his strength, and not his weakness. 8He is at his own mercy. 9And where he chooses to be merciful, there is he free. 10But where he chooses to condemn instead, there is he held a prisoner, waiting in chains his pardon on himself to set him free.