 We continue today with Chapter 26, The Sacrifice of Oneness. In the quote, dynamics of attack is sacrifice a key idea. It is the pivot upon which all compromise, all desperate attempts to strike a bargain and all conflicts achieve a seeming balance. It is the symbol of the central theme that somebody must lose. Its focus on the body is apparent, for it is always an attempt to limit loss. The body is itself a sacrifice, a giving up of power in the name of saving just a little for yourself. To see a brother in another body, separate from yours, is the expression of a wish to see a little part of him and sacrifice the rest. Look at the world and you will see nothing attached to anything beyond itself. All seeming entities can come a little nearer or go a little farther off, but cannot join. The world you see is based on quote, sacrifice of oneness. It is a picture of complete disunity and total lack of joining. Around each entity is built a wall so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and what is out can never reach and join with what is locked away within the wall. Each part must sacrifice the other part to keep itself complete. For if they joined, each one would lose its own identity, and by their separation are their selves maintained. The little that the body fences off becomes the self, preserved through sacrifice of all the rest. And all the rest must lose this little part, remaining incomplete to keep its own identity intact. In this perception of yourself, the body's loss would be a sacrifice indeed. For sight of bodies becomes a sign that sacrifice is limited, and something still remains for you alone. And for this little to belong to you are limits placed on everything outside, just as they are on everything you think is yours. For giving and receiving are the same, and to accept the limits of a body is to impose these limits on each brother whom you see. For you must see him as you see yourself. The body is a loss, and can be made to sacrifice. And while you see your brother as a body, apart from you, and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him and you. What greater sacrifice could be demanded than that God's Son perceive himself without his Father, and his Father be without his Son? Yet every sacrifice demands that they be separate and without the other. The memory of God must be denied if any sacrifice is asked of anyone. What witness to the wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth. He is invisible in such a world, nor can his song of union and of love be heard at all. Yet it is given him to make the world recede before his song, and sight of him replace the body's eyes. Those who would see the witnesses to truth instead of to illusion merely ask that they might see a purpose in the world that gives it sense and makes it meaningful. Without your special function has this world no meaning for you. Yet it can become a treasure house as rich and limitless as heaven itself. No instant passes here in which your brother's holiness cannot be seen to add a limitless supply to every meager scrap and tiny crumb of happiness that you allot yourself. You can lose sight of oneness, but cannot make the sacrifice of its reality. Nor can you lose what you would sacrifice, nor keep the Holy Spirit from his task of showing you that it has not been lost. Here, then, the song your brother sings to you and let the world recede and take the rest his witness offers on behalf of peace. But judge him not, for you will hear no song of liberation for yourself, nor see what is given him to witness to that you may see it and rejoice with him. Make not his holiness a sacrifice to your belief in sin. You sacrifice your innocence with his and die each time you see in him a sin deserving death. Yet every instant can you be reborn and given life again. His holiness gives life to you who cannot die because his sinlessness is known to God and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not. You who would make a sacrifice of life and make your eyes and ears bear witness to the death of God and of his holy son, think not that you have power to make of them what God willed not they be. In heaven, God's son is not imprisoned in a body nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin. And as he is in heaven, so must he be eternally and everywhere. He is the same forever, born again each instant, untouched by time, and far beyond the reach of any sacrifice of life or death. For neither did he make, and only one was given him by one who knows his gifts can never suffer sacrifice and loss. God's justice rests in gentleness upon his son and keeps him safe from all injustice the world would lay upon him. Could it be that you could make his sins reality and sacrifice his father's will for him? Condemn him not by seeing him within the rotting prison where he sees himself. It is your special function to ensure the door be opened that he may come forth to shine on you and give you back the gift of freedom by receiving it of you. What is the Holy Spirit's special function but to release the Holy Son of God from the imprisonment he made to keep himself from justice? Could your function be a task apart and separate from his own? And from the workbook, Lesson 200. There is no peace except the peace of God. Seek you no further. You will not find peace except the peace of God. Accept this fact and save yourself the agony of yet more bitter disappointments. Bleak despair and sense of icy hopelessness and doubt. Seek you no further. There is nothing else for you to find except the peace of God unless you seek for misery and pain. This is the final point to which each one must come at last. To lay aside all hope of finding happiness where there is none, of being saved by what can only hurt, of making peace of chaos, joy of pain, and heaven out of hell. Attempt no more to win through losing nor to die to live. You cannot but be asking for defeat. Yet you can ask as easily for love, for happiness, and for eternal life in peace that has no ending. Ask for this and you can only win. To ask for what you have already must succeed. To ask that what is false be true can only fail. Forgive yourself for vain imaginings and seek no longer what you cannot find. For what could be more foolish than to seek and seek and seek again for hell when you have but to look with open eyes to find that heaven lies before you through a door that opens easily to welcome you. Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places and in alien forms that have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here, but it is given you to find the means whereby the world no longer seems to be a prison house or jail for anyone. Freedom is given you where you be held but chains and iron doors. But you must change your mind about the purpose of the world if you would find escape. You will be bound to all the world as seen by you as blessed and everyone made free of your mistakes and honored as he is. You made him not, no more yourself, and as you free the one, the other is accepted as he is. What does forgiveness do? In truth it has no function and does nothing. For it is unknown in heaven. It is only hell where it is needed and where it must serve a mighty function. Is not the escape of God's beloved Son from evil dreams that he imagines yet believes are true a worthy purpose? Who could hope for more while there appears to be a choice to make between success and failure, love and fear? There is no peace except the peace of God because he has one son who cannot make a world in opposition to God's will and to his own which is the same as his. What could he hope to find in such a world? It cannot have reality because it never was created. It is here that he would seek for peace. Or must he see that as he looks on it the world can but deceive? Yet can he learn to look on it another way and find the peace of God? Peace is the bridge that everyone will cross to leave this world behind. But peace begins within the world perceived as different and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of heaven and the way beyond. Peace is the answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys, frantic vain pursuits and meaningless endeavors. Now the way is easy, sloping gently toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of God. Let us not lose our way again today. We go to heaven and the path is straight. Only if we attempt to wander can there be delay and lead us wasted time on thorny byways. God alone is sure and he will guide our footsteps. He will not desert his son in need or let him stray forever from his home. The father calls, the son will hear. And that is all there is to what appears to be a world apart from God where bodies have reality. Now is there silence. Seek no further. You have come to where the road is carpeted with leaves of false desires fallen from the trees of hopelessness you sought before. Now are they underfoot and you look up and on toward heaven with the body's eyes but serving for an instant longer now. Peace is already recognized at last and you can feel its soft embrace around your heart and mind with comfort and with love. Today we seek no idols. Peace cannot be found in them. The peace of God is ours and only this will we accept and want. Peace be to us today for we have found a simple happy way to leave the world of ambiguity and to replace our shifting goals and solitary dreams with a single purpose and companionship. For peace is union if it be of God. We seek no further. We are close to home and draw still nearer every time we say, There is no peace except the peace of God and I am glad and thankful it is so. Amen.