1. The miracle does nothing. 2All it does is to undo. 3And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done. 4It does not add, but merely takes away. 5And what it takes away is long since gone, but being kept in memory appears to have immediate effects. 6This world was over long ago. 7The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them and loved them for a little while. 8The miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects. 9Remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its presence, not effects.
2. All the effects of guilt are here no more. 2For guilt is over. 3In its passing went its consequences, left without a cause. 4Why would you cling to it in memory if you did not desire its effects? 5Remembering is as selective as perception, being its past tense. 6It is perception of the past as if it were occurring now, and still were there to see. 7Memory, like perception, is a skill made up by you to take the place of what God gave in your creation. 8And like all the things you made, it can be used to serve another purpose, and to be the means for something else. 9It can be used to heal and not to hurt, if you so wish it be.
3. Nothing employed for healing represents an effort to do anything at all. 2It is a recognition that you have no needs which mean that something must be done. 3It is an unselective memory, that is not used to interfere with truth. 4All things the Holy Spirit can employ for healing have been given Him, without the content and the purposes for which they have been made. 5They are but skills without an application. 6They await their use. 7They have no dedication and no aim.
4. The Holy Spirit can indeed make use of memory, for God Himself is there. 2Yet this is not a memory of past events, but only of a present state. 3You are so long accustomed to believe that memory holds only what is past, that it is hard for you to realize it is a skill that can remember now. 4The limitations on remembering the world imposes on it are as vast as those you let the world impose on you. 5There is no link of memory to the past. 6If you would have it there, then there it is. 7But only your desire made the link, and only you have held it to a part of time where guilt appears to linger still.
5. The Holy Spirit’s use of memory is quite apart from time. 2He does not seek to use it as a means to keep the past, but rather as a way to let it go. 3Memory holds the message it receives, and does what it is given it to do. 4It does not write the message, nor appoint what it is for. 5Like to the body, it is purposeless within itself. 6And if it seems to serve to cherish ancient hate, and gives you pictures of injustices and hurts that you were saving, this is what you asked its message be and that it is. 7Committed to its vaults, the history of all the body’s past is hidden there. 8All of the strange associations made to keep the past alive, the present dead, are stored within it, waiting your command that they be brought to you, and lived again. 9And thus do their effects appear to be increased by time, which took away their cause.
6. Yet time is but another phase of what does nothing. 2It works hand in hand with all the other attributes with which you seek to keep concealed the truth about yourself. 3Time neither takes away nor can restore. 4And yet you make strange use of it, as if the past had caused the present, which is but a consequence in which no change can be made possible because its cause has gone. 5Yet change must have a cause that will endure, or else it will not last. 6No change can be made in the present if its cause is past. 7Only the past is held in memory as you make use of it, and so it is a way to hold the past against the now.
7. Remember nothing that you taught yourself, for you were badly taught. 2And who would keep a senseless lesson in his mind, when he can learn and can preserve a better one? 3When ancient memories of hate appear, remember that their cause is gone. 4And so you cannot understand what they are for. 5Let not the cause that you would give them now be what it was that made them what they were, or seemed to be. 6Be glad that it is gone, for this is what you would be pardoned from. 7And see, instead, the new effects of cause accepted now, with consequences here. 8They will surprise you with their loveliness. 9The ancient new ideas they bring will be the happy consequences of a Cause so ancient that It far exceeds the span of memory which your perception sees.
8. This is the Cause the Holy Spirit has remembered for you, when you would forget. 2It is not past because He let It not be unremembered. 3It has never changed, because there never was a time in which He did not keep It safely in your mind. 4Its consequences will indeed seem new, because you thought that you remembered not their Cause. 5Yet was It never absent from your mind, for it was not your Father’s Will that He be unremembered by His Son.
9. What you remember never was. 2It came from causelessness which you confused with cause. 3It can deserve but laughter, when you learn you have remembered consequences that were causeless and could never be effects. 4The miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and interference. 5Never changed from what It is. 6And you are Its Effect, as changeless and as perfect as Itself. 7Its memory does not lie in the past, nor waits the future. 8It is not revealed in miracles. 9They but remind you that It has not gone. 10When you forgive It for your sins, It will no longer be denied.
10. You who have sought to lay a judgment on your own Creator cannot understand it is not He Who laid a judgment on His Son. 2You would deny Him His Effects, yet have They never been denied. 3There was no time in which His Son could be condemned for what was causeless and against His Will. 4What your remembering would witness to is but the fear of God. 5He has not done the thing you fear. 6No more have you. 7And so your innocence has not been lost. 8You need no healing to be healed. 9In quietness, see in the miracle a lesson in allowing Cause to have Its Own Effects, and doing nothing that would interfere.
11. The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is still. 2It reaches gently from that quiet time, and from the mind it healed in quiet then, to other minds to share its quietness. 3And they will join in doing nothing to prevent its radiant extension back into the Mind which caused all minds to be. 4Born out of sharing, there can be no pause in time to cause the miracle delay in hastening to all unquiet minds, and bringing them an instant’s stillness, when the memory of God returns to them. 5Their own remembering is quiet now, and what has come to take its place will not be wholly unremembered afterwards.
12. He to Whom time is given offers thanks for every quiet instant given Him. 2For in that instant is God’s memory allowed to offer all its treasures to the Son of God, for whom they have been kept. 3How gladly does He offer them unto the one for whom He has been given them! 4And His Creator shares His thanks, because He would not be deprived of His Effects. 5The instant’s silence that His Son accepts gives welcome to eternity and Him, and lets Them enter where They would abide. 6For in that instant does the Son of God do nothing that would make himself afraid.
13. How instantly the memory of God arises in the mind that has no fear to keep the memory away! 2Its own remembering has gone. 3There is no past to keep its fearful image in the way of glad awakening to present peace. 4The trumpets of eternity resound throughout the stillness, yet disturb it not. 5And what is now remembered is not fear, but rather is the Cause that fear was made to render unremembered and undone. 6The stillness speaks in gentle sounds of love the Son of God remembers from before his own remembering came in between the present and the past, to shut them out.
14. Now is the Son of God at last aware of present Cause and Its benign Effects. 2Now does he understand what he has made is causeless, having no effects at all. 3He has done nothing. 4And in seeing this, he understands he never had a need for doing anything, and never did. 5His Cause is Its Effects. 6There never was a cause beside It that could generate a different past or future. 7Its Effects are changelessly eternal, beyond fear, and past the world of sin entirely.
15. What has been lost, to see the causeless not? 2And where is sacrifice, when memory of God has come to take the place of loss? 3What better way to close the little gap between illusions and reality than to allow the memory of God to flow across it, making it a bridge an instant will suffice to reach beyond? 4For God has closed it with Himself. 5His memory has not gone by, and left a stranded Son forever on a shore where he can glimpse another shore that he can never reach. 6His Father wills that he be lifted up and gently carried over. 7He has built the bridge, and it is He Who will transport His Son across it. 8Have no fear that He will fail in what He wills. 9Nor that you be excluded from the Will that is for you.