1. God asks for nothing, and His Son, like Him, need ask for nothing. ²For there is no lack in him. ³An empty space, a little gap, would be a lack. ⁴And it is only there that he could want for something he has not. ⁵A space where God is not, a gap between the Father and the Son is not the Will of Either, Who have promised to be one. ⁶God’s promise is a promise to Himself, and there is no one who could be untrue to what He wills as part of what He is. ⁷The promise that there is no gap between Himself and what He is cannot be false. ⁸What will can come between what must be one, and in Whose Wholeness there can be no gap?

2. The beautiful relationship you have with all your brothers is a part of you because it is a part of God Himself. ²Are you not sick, if you deny yourself your wholeness and your health, the Source of help, the Call to healing and the Call to heal? ³Your savior waits for healing, and the world waits with him. ⁴Nor are you apart from it. ⁵For healing will be one or not at all, its oneness being where the healing is. ⁶What could correct for separation but its opposite? ⁷There is no middle ground in any aspect of salvation. ⁸You accept it wholly or accept it not. ⁹What is unseparated must be joined. ¹⁰And what is joined cannot be separate.

3. Either there is a gap between you and your brother, or you are as one. ²There is no in between, no other choice, and no allegiance to be split between the two. ³A split allegiance is but faithlessness to both, and merely sets you spinning round, to grasp uncertainly at any straw that seems to hold some promise of relief. ⁴Yet who can build his home upon a straw, and count on it as shelter from the wind? ⁵The body can be made a home like this, because it lacks foundation in the truth. ⁶And yet, because it does, it can be seen as not your home, but merely as an aid to help you reach the home where God abides.

4. With this as purpose is the body healed. ²It is not used to witness to the dream of separation and disease. ³Nor is it idly blamed for what it did not do. ⁴It serves to help the healing of God’s Son, and for this purpose it cannot be sick. ⁵It will not join a purpose not your own, and you have chosen that it not be sick. ⁶All miracles are based upon this choice, and given you the instant it is made. ⁷No forms of sickness are immune, because the choice cannot be made in terms of form. ⁸The choice of sickness seems to be of form, yet it is one, as is its opposite. ⁹And you are sick or well, accordingly.

5. But never you alone. ²This world is but the dream that you can be alone, and think without affecting those apart from you. ³To be alone must mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot but be sick. ⁴This seems to prove that you must be apart. ⁵Yet all it means is that you tried to keep a promise to be true to faithlessness. ⁶Yet faithlessness is sickness. ⁷It is like the house set upon straw. ⁸It seems to be quite solid and substantial in itself. ⁹Yet its stability cannot be judged apart from its foundation. ¹⁰If it rests on straw, there is no need to bar the door and lock the windows and make fast the bolts. ¹¹The wind will topple it, and rain will come and carry it into oblivion.

6. What is the sense in seeking to be safe in what was made for danger and for fear? ²Why burden it with further locks and chains and heavy anchors, when its weakness lies, not in itself, but in the frailty of the little gap of nothingness whereon it stands? ³What can be safe that rests upon a shadow? ⁴Would you build your home upon what will collapse beneath a feather’s weight?

7. Your home is built upon your brother’s health, upon his happiness, his sinlessness, and everything his Father promised him. ²No secret promise you have made instead has shaken the Foundation of his home. ³The winds will blow upon it and the rain will beat against it, but with no effect. ⁴The world will wash away and yet this house will stand forever, for its strength lies not within itself alone. ⁵It is an ark of safety, resting on God’s promise that His Son is safe forever in Himself. ⁶What gap can interpose itself between the safety of this shelter and its Source? ⁷From here the body can be seen as what it is, and neither less nor more in worth than the extent to which it can be used to liberate God’s Son unto his home. ⁸And with this holy purpose is it made a home of holiness a little while, because it shares your Father’s Will with you.