Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud, obscuring voice
whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His
words from your awareness. Pain compels attention, drawing it away from
Him, and focusing upon itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for
they both are means to make the body real. What shares a common purpose
is the same. This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who
share in it within itself. Pleasure and pain are equally unreal, because
their purpose cannot BE achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for
they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning
which their purpose has.

Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. For either witness
is the same, and carries but one message: “You are here, within this
body, and you can be hurt. You can have pleasure, too, but only at the
cost of pain.” These witnesses are joined by many more. Each one seems
different because it has a different name, and so it seems to answer to
a different sound. Except for this, the witnesses of sin are all alike.
Call pleasure pain, and it will hurt. Call pain a pleasure, and the pain
behind the pleasure will be felt no more. Sin’s witnesses but shift from
name to name, as one steps forward and another back. Yet which is
foremost makes no difference. Sin’s witnesses hear but the call of
death.

This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your memories and all
your hopes. You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it tell
you what it is it feels. IT DOES NOT KNOW. It tells you but the names
you gave it to use, when YOU call forth the witnesses to its
reality. You cannot choose among them which are real, for any one you
choose is like the rest. This name or that, but nothing more, you
choose. You do not make a witness true because you called him by truth’s
name. The truth is found in him if it is truth he REPRESENTS. And
otherwise he lies, if you should call him by the holy Name of God
Himself.

God’s Witness sees no witnesses AGAINST the body. Neither does He harken
to the witnesses by other names which speak in other ways for its
reality. He KNOWS it is not real. For nothing could contain what you
believe it holds within. Nor could it tell a part of God Himself what it
should feel, and what its function is. Yet must He love whatever you hold
dear. And for each witness to the body’s death He sends a witness to
your life in Him Who knows no death. Each miracle He brings is witness
that the body is not real. Its pains and pleasures does He heal alike,
for ALL sin’s witnesses do His replace.

The miracle makes no distinctions in the names by which sin’s witnesses
are called. It merely proves that what they represent has no effects.
And this it proves because its own effects have come to take their
place. It matters not the name by which you called your suffering. It is
no longer there. The One Who brings the miracle perceived them all as
one, and called by name of fear. As fear is witness unto death, so is
the miracle the witness unto life. It is a witness no-one can deny, for
it is the EFFECTS of life it brings. The dying live, the dead arise, and
pain has vanished. Yet a miracle speaks not but for itself, but what it
represents.

Love, too, has symbols in a world of sin. The miracle forgives because
it stands for what is past forgiveness, and is true. How foolish and
insane it is to think a miracle is bound by laws which it came solely to
undo! The laws of sin have different witnesses, with different
strengths. And they attest to different sufferings. Yet 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. It is their SAMENESS that the miracle attests. It is their
sameness that it PROVES.

The laws which call them different are dissolved, and SHOWN as
powerless. The purpose of a miracle is to accomplish this. And God
Himself has guaranteed the strength of miracles for what they witness
to. Be witnesses unto the miracle, and not the laws of sin. There is no
need to suffer anymore. But there IS need that you be healed, because
the suffering of the world has made it deaf to its salvation and
deliverance.

The resurrection of the world awaits your healing and your happiness,
that you may demonstrate the healing of the world. The holy instant will
replace all sin, if you but carry its effects with you. And no-one will
elect to suffer more. What better function could you serve than this? Be
healed that you may heal, and suffer not the laws of sin to be applied
to you. And truth will be revealed to you who chose to let love’s
symbols take the place of sin.