T-27.VI:The Witnesses to Sin

1. 1Pain demonstrates the body must be real. 2It is a loud, obscuring voice whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. 3Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Him and focusing upon itself. 4Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means to make the body real. 5What shares a common purpose is the same. 6This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who share in it within itself. 7Pleasure and pain are equally unreal, because their purpose cannot be achieved. 8Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. 9And they share the lack of meaning which their purpose has.

2. 1Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. 2For either witness is the same, and carries but one message: “You are here, within this body, and you can be hurt. 3You can have pleasure, too, but only at the cost of pain.” 4These witnesses are joined by many more. 5Each one seems different because it has a different name, and so it seems to answer to a different sound. 6Except for this, the witnesses of sin are all alike. 7Call pleasure pain, and it will hurt. 8Call pain a pleasure, and the pain behind the pleasure will be felt no more. 9Sin’s witnesses but shift from name to name, as one steps forward and another back. 10Yet which is foremost makes no difference. 11Sin’s witnesses hear but the call of death.

3. 1This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your memories and all your hopes. 2You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it tell you what it is it feels. 3It does not know. 4It tells you but the names you gave to it to use, when you call forth the witnesses to its reality. 5You cannot choose among them which are real, for any one you choose is like the rest. 6This name or that, but nothing more, you choose. 7You do not make a witness true because you called him by truth’s name. 8The truth is found in him if it is truth he represents. 9And otherwise he lies, if you should call him by the holy Name of God Himself.

4. 1God’s Witness sees no witnesses against the body. 2Neither does He harken to the witnesses by other names that speak in other ways for its reality. 3He knows it is not real. 4For nothing could contain what you believe it holds within. 5Nor could it tell a part of God Himself what it should feel and what its function is. 6Yet must He love whatever you hold dear. 7And for each witness to the body’s death He sends a witness to your life in Him Who knows no death. 8Each miracle He brings is witness that the body is not real. 9Its pains and pleasures does He heal alike, for all sin’s witnesses do His replace.

5. 1The miracle makes no distinctions in the names by which sin’s witnesses are called. 2It merely proves that what they represent has no effects. 3And this it proves because its own effects have come to take their place. 4It matters not the name by which you called your suffering. 5It is no longer there. 6The One Who brings the miracle perceives them all as one, and called by name of fear. 7As fear is witness unto death, so is the miracle the witness unto life. 8It is a witness no one can deny, for it is the effects of life it brings. 9The dying live, the dead arise, and pain has vanished. 10Yet a miracle speaks not but for itself, but what it represents.

6. 1Love, too, has symbols in a world of sin. 2The miracle forgives because it stands for what is past forgiveness and is true. 3How foolish and insane it is to think a miracle is bound by laws that it came solely to undo! 4The laws of sin have different witnesses with different strengths. 5And they attest to different sufferings. 6Yet to the One Who sends forth miracles to bless the world, a tiny stab of pain, a little worldly pleasure, and the throes of death itself are but a single sound; a call for healing, and a plaintive cry for help within a world of misery. 7It is their sameness that the miracle attests. 8It is their sameness that it proves. 9The laws that call them different are dissolved, and shown as powerless. 10The purpose of a miracle is to accomplish this. 11And God Himself has guaranteed the strength of miracles for what they witness to.

7. 1Be you then witness to the miracle, and not the laws of sin. 2There is no need to suffer any more. 3But there is need that you be healed, because the suffering and sorrow of the world have made it deaf to its salvation and deliverance.

8. 1The resurrection of the world awaits your healing and your happiness, that you may demonstrate the healing of the world. 2The holy instant will replace all sin if you but carry its effects with you. 3And no one will elect to suffer more. 4What better function could you serve than this? 5Be healed that you may heal, and suffer not the laws of sin to be applied to you. 6And truth will be revealed to you who chose to let love’s symbols take the place of sin.