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

If you accept this change, you have accepted the idea of making
room for truth. The SOURCE of sin is gone. You may imagine that you still
experience its effects, but it is not your purpose, and you no longer
WANT it. No-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.
This it will follow, grimly or happily, but always with faith and with
the persistence that faith inevitably brings. The power of faith is
NEVER recognized if it is placed in sin. But it is ALWAYS recognized if
it is placed in love.

Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a
little feat for such a power. For faith can keep the Son of God in
chains as long as he believes he IS in chains. And 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. It is impossible to place equal faith in opposite directions.
What faith you give to sin you TAKE AWAY from holiness. And what you
offer holiness has been REMOVED from sin.

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

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

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

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

Those who would free their brothers from the body can HAVE no fear. They
have renounced the means for sin by choosing to let all limitations be
removed. Desiring to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of
belief and faith goes far beyond the body, SUPPORTING vision, not
obstructing it. But 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. The miracles
which follow this decision are also born of faith. For all who choose to
look away from sin are given vision, and are led to holiness.

Those who believe in sin MUST think the Holy Spirit asks for sacrifice,
for this is how they think THEIR purpose is accomplished. Brothers, the
Holy Spirit knows that sacrifice brings NOTHING. He makes no bargains.
And if you seek to limit Him, you will hate Him because you are afraid.
The gift that He has given you is more than anything that stands this
side of Heaven. The instant for its recognition is at hand. Join your
awareness to what has been ALREADY joined. The faith you give each other
can accomplish this. For He Who loves the world is seeing it for you,
without one spot of sin upon it, and in the innocence which makes the
sight of it as beautiful as Heaven.

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

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

The body was made to be a sacrifice to sin, and in the darkness so it
still is seen. Yet in the light of vision it is looked upon quite
differently. You 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. But in
their seeing they look PAST it, as do you. The faith and the belief you
gave it BELONGS beyond. You gave perception and belief and faith from
mind to body. Let them now be given back to what produced them, and can
use them still to save itself from what it made.