1. Reason cannot see sin but can see errors, and leads to their correction. ²It does not value them, but their correction. ³Reason will also tell you that when you think you sin, you call for help. ⁴Yet if you will not accept the help you call for, you will not believe that it is yours to give. ⁵And so you will not give it, thus maintaining the belief. ⁶For uncorrected error of any kind deceives you about the power that is in you to make correction. ⁷If it can correct, and you allow it not to do so, you deny it to yourself and to your brother. ⁸And if he shares this same belief you both will think that you are damned. ⁹This you could spare him and yourself. ¹⁰For reason would not make way for correction in you alone.

2. Correction cannot be accepted or refused by you without your brother. ²Sin would maintain it can. ³Yet reason tells you that you cannot see your brother or yourself as sinful and still perceive the other innocent. ⁴Who looks upon himself as guilty and sees a sinless world? ⁵And who can see a sinful world and look upon himself apart from it? ⁶Sin would maintain you and your brother must be separate. ⁷But reason tells you that this must be wrong. ⁸If you and your brother are joined, how could it be that you have private thoughts? ⁹And how could thoughts that enter into what but seems like yours alone have no effect at all on what is yours? ¹⁰If minds are joined, this is impossible.

3. No one can think but for himself, as God thinks not without His Son. ²Only were Both in bodies could this be. ³Nor could one mind think only for itself unless the body were the mind. ⁴For only bodies can be separate, and therefore unreal. ⁵The home of madness cannot be the home of reason. ⁶Yet it is easy to leave the home of madness if you see reason. ⁷You do not leave insanity by going somewhere else. ⁸You leave it simply by accepting reason where madness was. ⁹Madness and reason see the same things, but it is certain that they look upon them differently.

4. Madness is an attack on reason that drives it out of mind, and takes its place. ²Reason does not attack, but takes the place of madness quietly, replacing madness if it be the choice of the insane to listen to it. ³But the insane know not their will, for they believe they see the body, and let their madness tell them it is real. ⁴Reason would be incapable of this. ⁵And if you would defend the body against your reason, you will not understand the body or yourself.

5. The body does not separate you from your brother, and if you think it does you are insane. ²But madness has a purpose, and believes it also has the means to make its purpose real. ³To see the body as a barrier between what reason tells you must be joined must be insane. ⁴Nor could you see it, if you heard the voice of reason. ⁵What can there be that stands between what is continuous? ⁶And if there is nothing in between, how can what enters part be kept away from other parts? ⁷Reason would tell you this. ⁸But think what you must recognize, if it be so.

6. If you choose sin instead of healing, you would condemn the Son of God to what can never be corrected. ²You tell him, by your choice, that he is damned; separate from you and from his Father forever, without a hope of safe return. ³You teach him this, and you will learn of him exactly what you taught. ⁴For you can teach him only that he is as you would have him, and what you choose he be is but your choice for you. ⁵Yet think not this is fearful. ⁶That you are joined to him is but a fact, not an interpretation. ⁷How can a fact be fearful unless it disagrees with what you hold more dear than truth? ⁸Reason will tell you that this fact is your release.

7. Neither your brother nor yourself can be attacked alone. ²But neither can accept a miracle instead without the other being blessed by it, and healed of pain. ³Reason, like love, would reassure you, and seeks not to frighten you. ⁴The power to heal the Son of God is given you because he must be one with you. ⁵You are responsible for how he sees himself. ⁶And reason tells you it is given you to change his whole mind, which is one with you, in just an instant. ⁷And any instant serves to bring complete correction of his errors and make him whole. ⁸The instant that you choose to let yourself be healed, in that same instant is his whole salvation seen as complete with yours. ⁹Reason is given you to understand that this is so. ¹⁰For reason, kind as is the purpose for which it is the means, leads steadily away from madness toward the goal of truth. ¹¹And here you will lay down the burden of denying truth. ¹²This is the burden that is terrible, and not the truth.

8. That you and your brother are joined is your salvation; the gift of Heaven, not the gift of fear. ²Does Heaven seem to be a burden to you? ³In madness, yes. ⁴And yet what madness sees must be dispelled by reason. ⁵Reason assures you Heaven is what you want, and all you want. ⁶Listen to Him Who speaks with reason, and brings your reason into line with His. ⁷Be willing to let reason be the means by which He would direct you how to leave insanity behind. ⁸Hide not behind insanity in order to escape from reason. ⁹What madness would conceal, the Holy Spirit still holds out for everyone to look upon with gladness.

9. You are your brother’s savior. ²He is yours. ³Reason speaks happily indeed of this. ⁴This gracious plan was given love by Love. ⁵And what Love plans is like Itself in this: Being united, It would have you learn what you must be. ⁶And being one with It, it must be given you to give what It has given, and gives still. ⁷Spend but an instant in the glad acceptance of what is given you to give your brother, and learn with him what has been given both of you. ⁸To give is no more blessed than to receive. ⁹But neither is it less.

10. The Son of God is always blessed as one. ²And as his gratitude goes out to you who blessed him, reason will tell you that it cannot be you stand apart from blessing. ³The gratitude he offers you reminds you of the thanks your Father gives you for completing Him. ⁴And here alone does reason tell you that you can understand what you must be. ⁵Your Father is as close to you as is your brother. ⁶Yet what is there that could be nearer you than is your Self?

11. The power you have over the Son of God is not a threat to his reality. ²It but attests to it. ³Where could his freedom lie but in himself, if he be free already? ⁴And who could bind him but himself, if he deny his freedom? ⁵God is not mocked; no more His Son can be imprisoned save by his own desire. ⁶And it is by his own desire that he is freed. ⁷Such is his strength, and not his weakness. ⁸He is at his own mercy. ⁹And where he chooses to be merciful, there is he free. ¹⁰But where he chooses to condemn instead, there is he held a prisoner, waiting in chains his pardon on himself to set him free.