1. How willing are you to forgive your brother? 2How much do you desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? 3These questions are the same, in different form. 4Forgiveness is your peace, for herein lies the end of separation and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss. 5This is the “sacrifice” salvation asks, and gladly offers peace instead of this.
2. Swear not to die, you holy Son of God! 2You make a bargain that you cannot keep. 3The Son of Life cannot be killed. 4He is immortal as his Father. 5What he is cannot be changed. 6He is the only thing in all the universe that must be one. 7What seems eternal all will have an end. 8The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. 9All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons and the lives of men; all things that change with time and bloom and fade will not return. 10Where time has set an end is not where the eternal is. 11God’s Son can never change by what men made of him. 12He will be as he was and as he is, for time appointed not his destiny, nor set the hour of his birth and death. 13Forgiveness will not change him. 14Yet time waits upon forgiveness that the things of time may disappear because they have no use.
3. Nothing survives its purpose. 2If it be conceived to die, then die it must unless it does not take this purpose as its own. 3Change is the only thing that can be made a blessing here, where purpose is not fixed, however changeless it appears to be. 4Think not that you can set a goal unlike God’s purpose for you, and establish it as changeless and eternal. 5You can give yourself a purpose that you do not have. 6But you can not remove the power to change your mind, and see another purpose there.
4. Change is the greatest gift God gave to all that you would make eternal, to ensure that only Heaven would not pass away. 2You were not born to die. 3You cannot change, because your function has been fixed by God. 4All other goals are set in time and change that time might be preserved, excepting one. 5Forgiveness does not aim at keeping time, but at its ending, when it has no use. 6Its purpose ended, it is gone. 7And where it once held seeming sway is now restored the function God established for His Son in full awareness. 8Time can set no end to its fulfillment nor its changelessness. 9There is no death because the living share the function their Creator gave to them. 10Life’s function cannot be to die. 11It must be life’s extension, that it be as one forever and forever, without end.
5. This world will bind your feet and tie your hands and kill your body only if you think that it was made to crucify God’s Son. 2For even though it was a dream of death, you need not let it stand for this to you. 3Let this be changed, and nothing in the world but must be changed as well. 4For nothing here but is defined as what you see it for.
6. How lovely is the world whose purpose is forgiveness of God’s Son! 2How free from fear, how filled with blessing and with happiness! 3And what a joyous thing it is to dwell a little while in such a happy place! 4Nor can it be forgot, in such a world, it is a little while till timelessness comes quietly to take the place of time.