1. All special relationships have sin as their goal. ²For they are bargains with reality, toward which the seeming union is adjusted. ³Forget not this; to bargain is to set a limit, and any brother with whom you have a limited relationship, you hate. ⁴You may attempt to keep the bargain in the name of “fairness,” sometimes demanding payment of yourself, perhaps more often of the other. ⁵Thus in the “fairness” you attempt to ease the guilt that comes from the accepted purpose of the relationship. ⁶And that is why the Holy Spirit must change its purpose to make it useful to Him and harmless to you.

2. If you accept this change, you have accepted the idea of making room for truth. ²The source of sin is gone. ³You may imagine that you still experience its effects, but it is not your purpose and you no longer want it. ⁴No one allows a purpose to be replaced while he desires it, for nothing is so cherished and protected as is a goal the mind accepts. ⁵This it will follow, grimly or happily, but always with faith and with the persistence that faith inevitably brings. ⁶The power of faith is never recognized if it is placed in sin. ⁷But it is always recognized if it is placed in love.

3. Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? ²This is indeed a little feat for such a power. ³For faith can keep the Son of God in chains as long as he believes he is in chains. ⁴And when he is released from them it will be simply because he no longer believes in them, withdrawing faith that they can hold him, and placing it in his freedom instead. ⁵It is impossible to place equal faith in opposite directions. ⁶What faith you give to sin you take away from holiness. ⁷And what you offer holiness has been removed from sin.

4. Faith and belief and vision are the means by which the goal of holiness is reached. ²Through them the Holy Spirit leads you to the real world, and away from all illusions where your faith was laid. ³This is His direction; the only one He ever sees. ⁴And when you wander, He reminds you there is but one. ⁵His faith and His belief and vision are all for you. ⁶And when you have accepted them completely instead of yours, you will have need of them no longer. ⁷For faith and vision and belief are meaningful only before the state of certainty is reached. ⁸In Heaven they are unknown. ⁹Yet Heaven is reached through them.

5. It is impossible that the Son of God lack faith, but he can choose where he would have it be. ²Faithlessness is not a lack of faith, but faith in nothing. ³Faith given to illusions does not lack power, for by it does the Son of God believe that he is powerless. ⁴Thus is he faithless to himself, but strong in faith in his illusions about himself. ⁵For faith, perception and belief you made, as means for losing certainty and finding sin. ⁶This mad direction was your choice, and by your faith in what you chose, you made what you desired.

6. The Holy Spirit has a use for all the means for sin by which you sought to find it. ²But as He uses them they lead away from sin, because His purpose lies in the opposite direction. ³He sees the means you use, but not the purpose for which you made them. ⁴He would not take them from you, for He sees their value as a means for what He wills for you. ⁵You made perception that you might choose among your brothers, and seek for sin with them. ⁶The Holy Spirit sees perception as a means to teach you that the vision of a holy relationship is all you want to see. ⁷Then will you give your faith to holiness, desiring and believing in it because of your desire.

7. Faith and belief become attached to vision, as all the means that once served sin are redirected now toward holiness. ²For what you think is sin is limitation, and whom you try to limit to the body you hate because you fear. ³In your refusal to forgive him, you would condemn him to the body because the means for sin are dear to you. ⁴And so the body has your faith and your belief. ⁵But holiness would set your brother free, removing hatred by removing fear, not as a symptom, but at its source.

8. Those who would free their brothers from the body can have no fear. ²They have renounced the means for sin by choosing to let all limitations be removed. ³As they desire to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of their belief and faith sees far beyond the body, supporting vision, not obstructing it. ⁴But first they chose to recognize how much their faith had limited their understanding of the world, desiring to place its power elsewhere should another point of view be given them. ⁵The miracles that follow this decision are also born of faith. ⁶For all who choose to look away from sin are given vision, and are led to holiness.

9. Those who believe in sin must think the Holy Spirit asks for sacrifice, for this is how they think their purpose is accomplished. ²Brother, the Holy Spirit knows that sacrifice brings nothing. ³He makes no bargains. ⁴And if you seek to limit Him, you will hate Him because you are afraid. ⁵The gift that He has given you is more than anything that stands this side of Heaven. ⁶The instant for its recognition is at hand. ⁷Join your awareness to what has been already joined. ⁸The faith you give your brother can accomplish this. ⁹For He Who loves the world is seeing it for you, without one spot of sin upon it, and in the innocence that makes the sight of it as beautiful as Heaven.

10. Your faith in sacrifice has given it great power in your sight; except you do not realize you cannot see because of it. ²For sacrifice must be exacted of a body, and by another body. ³The mind could neither ask it nor receive it of itself. ⁴And no more could the body. ⁵The intention is in the mind, which tries to use the body to carry out the means for sin in which the mind believes. ⁶Thus is the joining of mind and body an inescapable belief of those who value sin. ⁷And so is sacrifice invariably a means for limitation, and thus for hate.

11. Think you the Holy Spirit is concerned with this? ²He gives not what it is His purpose to lead you from. ³You think He would deprive you for your good. ⁴But “good” and “deprivation” are opposites, and cannot meaningfully join in any way. ⁵It is like saying that the moon and sun are one because they come with night and day, and so they must be joined. ⁶Yet sight of one is but the sign the other has disappeared from sight. ⁷Nor is it possible that what gives light be one with what depends on darkness to be seen. ⁸Neither demands the sacrifice of the other. ⁹Yet on the absence of the other does each depend.

12. The body was made to be a sacrifice to sin, and in the darkness so it still is seen. ²Yet in the light of vision it is looked upon quite differently. ³You can have faith in it to serve the Holy Spirit’s goal, and give it power to serve as means to help the blind to see. ⁴But in their seeing they look past it, as do you. ⁵The faith and the belief you gave it belongs beyond. ⁶You gave perception and belief and faith from mind to body. ⁷Let them now be given back to what produced them, and can use them still to save itself from what it made.