1. Is healing frightening? 2To many, yes. 3For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies are accusers. 4They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can have no trust and that the damaged have no grounds for peace. 5Who has been injured by his brother, and could love and trust him still? 6He has attacked and will attack again. 7Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected from him. 8To forgive may be an act of charity, but not his due. 9He may be pitied for his guilt, but not exonerated. 10And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but add to all the guilt that he has really earned.
2. The unhealed cannot pardon. 2For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. 3They would retain the consequences of the guilt they overlook. 4Yet no one can forgive a sin that he believes is real. 5And what has consequences must be real, because what it has done is there to see. 6Forgiveness is not pity, which but seeks to pardon what it thinks to be the truth. 7Good cannot be returned for evil, for forgiveness does not first establish sin and then forgive it. 8Who can say and mean, “My brother, you have injured me, and yet, because I am the better of the two, I pardon you my hurt.” 9His pardon and your hurt cannot exist together. 10One denies the other and must make it false.
3. To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox that reason cannot see. 2For it maintains what has been done to you deserves no pardon. 3And by giving it, you grant your brother mercy but retain the proof he is not really innocent. 4The sick remain accusers. 5They cannot forgive their brothers and themselves as well. 6For no one in whom true forgiveness rests can suffer. 7He holds not the proof of sin before his brother’s eyes. 8And thus he must have overlooked it and removed it from his own. 9Forgiveness cannot be for one and not the other. 10Who forgives is healed. 11And in his healing lies the proof that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing.
4. Forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to your brother and yourself. 2You must attest his sins have no effect on you to demonstrate they are not real. 3How else could he be guiltless? 4And how could his innocence be justified unless his sins have no effect to warrant guilt? 5Sins are beyond forgiveness just because they would entail effects that cannot be undone and overlooked entirely. 6In their undoing lies the proof that they are merely errors. 7Let yourself be healed that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother and yourself.
5. A broken body shows the mind has not been healed. 2A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect. 3What you would prove to him you will believe. 4The power of witness comes from your belief. 5And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. 6Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. 7And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony of his innocence. 8It is this testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. 9For here is his forgiveness proved to him.
6. A miracle can offer nothing less to him than it has given unto you. 2So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did not do. 3And so is he convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you. 4Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone. 5And hopelessness and death must disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. 6This call has power far beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. 7The ancient calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto His Own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. 8Brother, there is no death. 9And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. 10He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. 11Yet it is given you to show him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.
7. How just are miracles! 2For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother and yourself. 3Your healing saves him pain as well as you, and you are healed because you wished him well. 4This is the law the miracle obeys; that healing sees no specialness at all. 5It does not come from pity but from love. 6And love would prove all suffering is but a vain imagining, a foolish wish with no effects. 7Your health is a result of your desire to see your brother with no blood upon his hands, nor guilt upon his heart made heavy with the proof of sin. 8And what you wish is given you to see.
8. The “cost” of your serenity is his. 2This is the “price” the Holy Spirit and the world interpret differently. 3The world perceives it as a statement of the “fact” that your salvation sacrifices his. 4The Holy Spirit knows your healing is the witness unto his, and cannot be apart from his at all. 5As long as he consents to suffer, you will be unhealed. 6Yet you can show him that his suffering is purposeless and wholly without cause. 7Show him your healing, and he will consent no more to suffer. 8For his innocence has been established in your sight and his. 9And laughter will replace your sighs, because God’s Son remembered that he is God’s Son.
9. Who, then, fears healing? 2Only those to whom their brother’s sacrifice and pain are seen to represent their own serenity. 3Their helplessness and weakness represent the grounds on which they justify his pain. 4The constant sting of guilt he suffers serves to prove that he is slave, but they are free. 5The constant pain they suffer demonstrates that they are free because they hold him bound. 6And sickness is desired to prevent a shift of balance in the sacrifice. 7How could the Holy Spirit be deterred an instant, even less, to reason with an argument for sickness such as this? 8And need your healing be delayed because you pause to listen to insanity?
10. Correction is not your function. 2It belongs to One Who knows of fairness, not of guilt. 3If you assume correction’s role, you lose the function of forgiveness. 4No one can forgive until he learns correction is but to forgive, and never to accuse. 5Alone, you cannot see they are the same, and therefore is correction not of you. 6Identity and function are the same, and by your function do you know yourself. 7And thus, if you confuse your function with the function of Another, you must be confused about yourself and who you are. 8What is the separation but a wish to take God’s function from Him and deny that it is His? 9Yet if it is not His it is not yours, for you must lose what you would take away.
11. In a split mind, identity must seem to be divided. 2Nor can anyone perceive a function unified which has conflicting purposes and different ends. 3Correction, to a mind so split, must be a way to punish sins you think are yours in someone else. 4And thus does he become your victim, not your brother, different from you in that he is more guilty, thus in need of your correction, as the one more innocent than he. 5This splits his function off from yours, and gives you both a different role. 6And so you cannot be perceived as one, and with a single function that would mean a shared identity with but one end.
12. Correction you would do must separate, because that is the function given it by you. 2When you perceive correction is the same as pardon, then you also know the Holy Spirit’s Mind and yours are One. 3And so your own Identity is found. 4Yet must He work with what is given Him, and you allow Him only half your mind. 5And thus He represents the other half, and seems to have a different purpose from the one you cherish, and you think is yours. 6Thus does your function seem divided, with a half in opposition to a half. 7And these two halves appear to represent a split within a self perceived as two.
13. Consider how this self-perception must extend, and do not overlook the fact that every thought extends because that is its purpose, being what it really is. 2From an idea of self as two, there comes a necessary view of function split between the two. 3And what you would correct is only half the error, which you think is all of it. 4Your brother’s sins become the central target for correction, lest your errors and his own be seen as one. 5Yours are mistakes, but his are sins and not the same as yours. 6His merit punishment, while yours, in fairness, should be overlooked.
14. In this interpretation of correction, your own mistakes you will not even see. 2The focus of correction has been placed outside yourself, on one who cannot be a part of you while this perception lasts. 3What is condemned can never be returned to its accuser, who had hated it, and hates it still as symbol of his fear. 4This is your brother, focus of your hate, unworthy to be part of you and thus outside yourself; the other half, which is denied. 5And only what is left without his presence is perceived as all of you. 6To this remaining half the Holy Spirit must represent the other half until you recognize it is the other half. 7And this He does by giving you and him a function that is one, not different.
15. Correction is the function given both, but neither one alone. 2And when it is fulfilled as shared, it must correct mistakes in you and him. 3It cannot leave mistakes in one unhealed and set the other free. 4That is divided purpose, which can not be shared, and so it cannot be the goal in which the Holy Spirit sees His Own. 5And you can rest assured that He will not fulfill a function that He does not see and recognize as His. 6For only thus can He keep yours preserved intact, despite Your separate views of what your function is. 7If He upheld divided function, you were lost indeed. 8His inability to see His goal divided and distinct for you and him, preserves yourself from the awareness of a function not your own. 9And thus is healing given you and him.
16. Correction must be left to One Who knows correction and forgiveness are the same. 2With half a mind this is not understood. 3Leave, then, correction to the Mind that is united, functioning as one because it is not split in purpose, and conceives a single function as its only one. 4Here is the function given it conceived to be its Own, and not apart from that its Giver keeps because it has been shared. 5In His acceptance of this function lies the means whereby your mind is unified. 6His single purpose unifies the halves of you that you perceive as separate. 7And each forgives the other, that he may accept his other half as part of him.