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.