1. Pain 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. Sin 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. This 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. God’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. The 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. Love, 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. Be 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. The 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.