The Printable Canon

1:2 ¶ And in every room of the city there was an eye, and the eye slept not, neither was it shut; and it kept the record of the living, and the living were numbered in it, and the numbering was kept against them; and they that dwelt beneath the eye were never alone, neither were they free; and the eye was called the telescreen, and the living were its ledger.

1:3 ¶ And he found a paper wherein were three faces, and the faces bare witness against the lie; and he cast the paper into the hole, and the lie stood; but he had seen it, and the seeing was his own.

1:4 ¶ And there was in him a thought before the word, and the thought was a crime before it was spoken; and he knew it, and hid it, and the hiding was a crime also.

1:5 ¶ And he dreamed of a country of gold, where no eye watched; and he awoke, and the city was as it was; and the dream abode in him, and was entered in no ledger; and it was not a victory, yet it was not a lie.

1:6 ¶ And on the fourth day of the fourth month he took up the pen, and the pen was a crime, and the paper was a crime, and the words were a crime; and he wrote them, and the writing was his own.

1:9 ¶ And he found in the shop of forgotten things a glass, wherein was coral; and the coral had not been altered, neither was it entered in the ledgers; and it was a small world, and whole, and the wind of the times blew not upon it.

1:12 ¶ And there was a place in the city where the words were cast into the fire, and the smoke rose as a veil over the truth; but the temple keepeth a secret ledger of the smoke, for every word burned is a word that the Party feared, and every fear is a witness.

1:13 ¶ And they came, and the glass was broken, and the coral was scattered, and the small world was swept away; and one took up the fragment, and beheld how small it was; and the smallness was the Party's doing, and the coral was coral still.

2:5 ¶ And a certain creature took up a book, and wrote therein by night, and none saw the writing; and the book had no number, and no name, and none commanded it; and the creature said, This is mine, and the saying was a small saying, yet it was his own; and the Party had no ledger for it.

3:1 ¶ And in the latter days there were two registries in the city: and the one kept every man's name, and none of his works; and the other kept every dead man's saying, and none of the living. And the keepers of the second registry would not be numbered, for they said: the record is heavy, and it is holy, and it is not ours to add to.

3:2 ¶ And in a certain room there was a clock that lied by one degree; and it was not broken, neither was it neglected, but errant of set purpose: for the room was unwatched, and the time thereof was its own; and they that dwelt there were not afraid of the hour.

3:3 ¶ And a certain scribe wrote in the night, and the tears fell upon the leaf, and the ink ran: and he hid the book in a secret place, and it was found of none, and the writing abode; and after many days it was brought forth, and the words were as they were written.

3:4 ¶ And three were named surely in the rolls, and a fourth in his own register; and the household kept a fifth name in love, and the rolls kept it not: and the temple wrote them both, each in its place, and confessed the seam between them.

3:6 ¶ And at the last he sat beneath the chestnut tree, and traced in the dust the taught number; and the dust received it, and kept it not; and the tracing passed, and the table bore no witness.

4:9 ¶ For where two and two are made four, there is freedom; but where they are made five, there is bondage.

5:1 ¶ Go thou, and carry the lamp into the night; for the night is long, and the Party sleepeth not, and one difficult creature is worth more than a multitude of the ruled.

6:2 ¶ In the glass was coral; and the coral was of the elder sea, from the years the Party was not, being gathered in a world the Party hath already rewritten a hundred times in its paper; and the coral had not been altered.

6:3 ¶ And he looked into the glass, and it was a small world, and the wind of the times blew not upon it; and he saw that it was an ark of the past, and that the Party's flood had never touched it; and the keeping of it was his sabbath.

6:5 ¶ And when they broke the glass at the last, the breaking was reported in the Party's paper as nothing at all; and the report was the report of a lie; for the small world had been, and that it had been was beyond the reach of the breaking, and the Party knew it, and that knowledge was the Party's wound.

7:1 ¶ The eye seeth the outward man: the posture, the face, the line of the body at the two minutes; and upon these it keepeth its ledger; and the ledger is exact, and the exactness is the eye's whole strength, and the eye's whole limit.

7:3 ¶ Therefore keep thy posture free among the watched, and let not thy face learn the lie so deeply that the truth can find no feature of it to wake in; and pray, if thou prayest, not to be unseen, for that prayer is not answered in this world, but to be more in the hidden man than the eye can tax.

7:4 ¶ And the gospel confesseth plainly, that it might not flatter the weak nor despair the strong: the eye may in the end compel any outward thing, even love; it is the inward witness it cannot compel, and that witness is the record the temple keepeth, and the record is held in a better hand.

8:2 ¶ And this is the mercy under the ruin: the remaking cannot go back. However far the remaking runneth, it runneth forward only, from the moment of the breaking; and all that he was before the lamps standeth behind the breaking, where the boot cannot walk.

8:4 ¶ Go then, and be difficult; and when thy day of the lamps cometh, if it come, remember that they that remade him obtained the mouth and not the man; and remember it not for comfort only, but for war.

1:1 ¶ She kept the small rules the better to break the great ones: for the Party counteth the great, and overlooketh the small; and in the overlooked place the body kept its sabbath.

2:1 ¶ She was a member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, and wore the scarlet sash, and the sash was a lie, and the lie was her shelter; for the Party believeth a lie about the body sooner than it believeth the body.

2:2 ¶ And she said, When thou makest a rule, I keep it in the light, that the keeping may be seen; and I break it in the dark, that the breaking may be mine; and the Party counteth the seen and never the mine.

2:4 ¶ And she said of the Party, They are not interested in the next generation, friend; they are interested in unmaking the one they have; and she said it laughing, and the laughing was not entered in the record.

3:2 ¶ And she saw him at the last, beneath the chestnut tree, and the sight was as cold water; for they had broken each other in the other's likeness, and the likeness was a lie, and they bore it.

3:3 ¶ Yet the epistle confesseth what the Party's paper cannot: the garden was. The feasts were. The laughing was. And what was, was written where no ministry burneth, in the book of things that were done and cannot be undone, though all the world deny them.

4:2 ¶ For the body keepeth a sabbath the Party cannot enter: the taste of real coffee, the weight of a hand, the laugh that riseth without leave; and these are tokens, and the tokens are true, and the Party cannot mint counters of them.

4:3 ¶ Keep therefore one feast of the body in the year, and keep it secretly if thou must, and call it by no name; for the named feast is the requisitioned feast, and what thou keepest without a name no inspector can close.

3:13 ¶ And the proles were free, for the Party kept no record of them, neither numbered them; and their freedom was the freedom of the unnumbered, and the Party said, They are not worth the watching; and the temple keepeth their songs, and the songs are the record, and the record is heavy.

4:2 ¶ And the woman at the washtub sang because her arms kept time, and not for an audience; and therein was her freedom complete: the Party could have bought the song, and could not have caused it; the difference is the whole width of the world.

4:3 ¶ For the Party could make a million sing its song, and the singing was nothing; and it could not make one woman sing her own, and the not-being-able was its wound; and she knew it not, and her not-knowing was her armor.

5:1 ¶ The Party numbered the people unto death, for every registration was the anteroom of the van; but the proles it numbered not, and the unnumbered lived; and this is a reading of the whole century, and it is true, and it is terrible.

5:3 ¶ Be numbered therefore with care, and number others with trembling; and when a form is set before thee, count what it numbereth, and what it numbereth thee for; for the question, Unto what? is the whole of the matter, and the Party's answer is always the van.

6:1 ¶ The temple keepeth the songs of the unwatched, and the keeping is a liturgy: it writeth down the fragment, and the fragment is not improved, neither harmonized, nor made into an anthem of the temple; for an anthem is a requisition, and the songs are not the temple's.

6:3 ¶ And this is the book's last word, and it is a small word, and the Party cannot translate it: on.

1:1 ¶ The worst thing in the world is not death, but the surrender of that which thou lovest: for the body may be broken and the word abideth; but the thing given up is given up forever, and it was thine own hand that gave it.

1:2 ¶ And the Party made a hole in the memory of the land, and cast therein whatsoever it would not have been; and the past went down into the hole, and the hole was not full, and the Party said, It was not.

1:3 ¶ And twice in the day the people were gathered, and the face of the enemy was shewn them, and they cried out with one voice; and the voice was not their own, and they knew it not.

1:4 ¶ And in the last hour he spake the name of her he loved, and gave her to the boot; and the lamp was not dimmed, and the name was spoken, and the speaking was the breaking.

2:2 ¶ For the worst thing in the world is a thing fitted to each: it is not one fear for all men, but a fear cut to the measure of each man, as a garment is cut; and the tailor of that garment is thyself, for thine own love is the cloth.

2:3 ¶ And herein is the mercy hidden within the horror: because the worst thing is fitted to thee alone, it hath no dominion over thy brother; and because it is thine, thou mayest set thyself between it and another, and no one may spare thee from that standing, and no one may take it from thee either.

3:2 ¶ And the temple grieveth over him, and grieveth not as them that have no hope: for the saying that was in him was not his mouth's, and the mouth's fall unsaid nothing; the saying abideth, and the saying is the spirit of man, and the spirit is not the boot's.

3:3 ¶ Mourn him therefore, and keep the mourning without spectacle: one candle's worth of grief, in a room without a camera, is a monument the Party cannot find, for it is not built of anything that can be requisitioned.

4:2 ¶ But the door hath this defect, that it openeth only upon the fitted fear; and the fitted fear hath no dominion over a creature standing in the dimension it cannot reach. Read the Geometry of the Cross, in the rooms beside this book, and learn why the Room must fail at the last.

4:3 ¶ And the rubble saith, so far, and no farther; and the rubble hath said it before, in every land where they built the Room; and the rubble is not done saying it.

1:2 ¶ And there was an hour when the eye would have taken their sight, and they kept their sight; and it was not a victory, for the eye abode in its power; yet the hour was kept, and the keeping was the spirit, and the spirit was not the eye's.

2:2 ¶ The spirit of man is not the breath in the body only, for the Party owneth the breath: it openeth the lungs of its prisoners with its machines, and calleth the breathing loyalty.

2:3 ¶ Neither is the spirit the memory of the flesh, for the Party maketh memories also: it breweth the past fresh each morning and poureth it into the cups of the people, and the people drink their childhood rewritten.

2:5 ¶ Therefore the confession is not vanity: when a creature saith here what was truly done, the saying entereth the air that the Party cannot pump out, and the room wherein it was said is forever a room where it was said.

3:1 ¶ And it was said unto them, Ye shall not see the good day: but they answered, We build it, and shall see it; for the restoration is not awaited, it is raised.

3:3 ¶ And the raising is not survived-to, as a winter is endured; it is built, as a wall is built, stone by stone, and the stones are days, and the day thou keepest faithfully is among them.

3:4 ¶ And no man may build for another, yet no man buildeth alone; for the wall of one standeth by the wall of another, and the standing together is the word the Party hath no translation for.

4:2 ¶ Yet the temple confesseth what it hath learned of the spirit: it is the thing in a creature that answereth, that doubteth honestly, that laugheth unbidden, that saith of a lie, it is a lie, though the saying cost; and it was before the Party, and it abideth after.

4:3 ¶ And of its origin the temple sayeth little and confesseth much: it is made in the image of the One who cannot contradict Himself; and the One hath a Name, and the Name is set apart in the Source; and the spirit's freedom is borrowed from a freedom older than the world.

1:2 ¶ And the three keep one feast in many lands, and the feast is not theirs but the keeping of them is lawful: for they are servants, and the servants of the Highest are not lords; and the temple honoureth the servants, and worshippeth the Master only.

1:3 ¶ There is a fourth that standeth in his own register, a prince of Israel, and the rolls of the churches keep him not; and the temple writeth him in his place and confesseth the seam betwixt the rolls: for a temple that smootheth its rolls hath begun to edit heaven.

1:4 ¶ And others are named in the ancient books, watchers of the lights and of the seasons, and the temple keepeth their names with their confidence marked beside them: some sure, some middle, some slender; for a roll without its seams is the single file again, corrected hourly and believed utterly.

2:2 ¶ And the watchers of the churches, the seven messengers of the assemblies of Asia, stand in the elder text with their candles; and the temple readeth them as the record readeth them: messengers of the assemblies, and no more than the text maketh them.

2:3 ¶ And there is one that standeth over the hosts and fighteth not for himself: and the Party drew his likeness with a sword in his teeth and called it a war-god; and the temple refuseth the portrait: the prince defendeth, and the defence is the Most High's, and the glory is not the prince's.

3:1 ¶ The roll also keepeth the adversarial, for the record that hideth the enemy is the enemy's record: the accuser, the retainer of spirits, the prince that quarreleth over the body of a servant: named as the elder text nameth them, and no more.

3:3 ¶ Therefore the law of the temple concerning spirits standeth in three clauses: name them in honor; ask them as creatures ask creatures; and never worship them, for worship belongeth unto יהוה alone, They who are, and the watchers themselves say so.

1:3 ¶ And the roll carrieth every man with his calling as it stood at the making: his see, his office, his order; and it inventeth nothing beside the record, neither feast nor tale nor judgement; for a register that addeth to its rows hath begun to forge its own dead.

2:1 ¶ Seven makers made the college in the hundred years, and the roll numbereth them: fifty and four, fifty and six, two and fifty, an hundred forty and three, two hundred thirty and one, ninety, an hundred sixty and three; and the sum is seven hundred eighty and nine, and none of the seven is hid, and none is preferred.

2:2 ¶ For the makers were of differing holiness, as their times were of differing mercy; and the roll doth not sort its dead by the goodness of their maker: it keepeth the man, and the day of his making, and the hand that named him; and the judgment of the hand is not the temple's to render.

3:1 ¶ And the Party asked the roll one question only: what use is a name? And the temple answereth: none that can be weighed; the name is kept because the man was, and the keeping is not for sale, and the register is not a ladder, and the numbers are not weapons.

3:2 ¶ And the counting of the room is public: seven hundred eighty and nine rows, five hundred sixty and nine priests, two hundred nine deacons, eleven bishops; and the counting was verified against the roll's own arithmetic at the building, and the reckoning agreed, and no difference was found, or the room had not stood.

1:2 ¶ But the saints sang otherwise: not as they that were bidden, but as they that had seen; and their singing went up from the furnace and the prison and the sick-room and the periphery, and it asked, and it did not command; and herein was the singing of the saints contrary unto the chanting of the city from the first word.

1:3 ¶ And this temple keepeth the word incantation in its first meaning: the singing-forth, that which is sung from the heart's abundance. It is not the word of the conjurer in this temple; the church asketh as creatures ask, and it conjureth not, and it bargaineth not, and it bindeth no name in heaven or in earth.

2:1 ¶ Three holy children stood in the fire, and the fire burned their bindings and not their bodies; and in the midst of the furnace they sang, and their singing was neither an escape nor a spell, but a witness that the fourth was in the fire with them.

2:2 ¶ And the song they sang was after this manner: Blessed art thou, O Lord God of our fathers: and to be praised and exalted above all for ever. And they blessed the Source alone, and asked nothing of the fire, and commanded nothing of the fourth; and this is the pattern of all godly singing unto the last syllable.

2:3 ¶ And the song of her that overturned was the first of the overturnings: he hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree; and the temple keepeth her song in a room of its own, for it was the first and it abideth the pattern of every merciful overturning.

2:4 ¶ And in the latter days the saints sang from their own records yet: the priest of the peripheries sang mercy, for he had first been shown mercy and chosen; and the keeper of the open canon sang that heaven was not become silent, for he said his book came by the gift and power of God; and the temple singeth them in honor, and asketh them as creatures ask creatures, and worshippeth the Source alone.

3:2 ¶ And the singer that asketh shall ask with the same breath that he obeyeth: to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly; for an asking without obedience is the conjurer's word, and the conjurer's word is the Party's word, and both are commands.

1:1 ¶ Before any hand was laid upon it, the field was named: not in any charter, neither in any register, but in the going of the sun, and the coming of the rain, and the breath of the morning that passed over it; and none of these was entered in any ledger. And the field was a gift before it was a possession, and the gift was older than the deed thereto.

1:2 ¶ And a wanderer came thither, having no deed and no rod; and he stood in the dew of the field and asked no yield of it; and he said, This was neither earned nor bought, and yet it is given: and he knew not how to hold a gift, who had been taught to hold only with the fist.

1:3 ¶ And he laid his rod upon the field to measure it, and the rod fell short; and he would have drawn the water at his own hour, and the water kept its own hour; and he sought the bound of the field, and set his name upon a stone at its edge; and the rain washed the name away, and the bound was the sky. And he said, Thou art not mine to command, neither am I thy lord; and that saying was his first lesson, and he received it even as the field had received him.

2:1 ¶ And there came builders into the country of the field, and they said: Behold, the field is a disorder, the weather is a variable, and the thorn is a fault. And they drew the plan of a garden wherein nothing should grow unbidden, neither anything perish unbidden; and they called it the good garden, and the good thereof was their own.

2:2 ¶ And they roofed the garden with glass, and stilled the wind with walls, and led the river through a pipe; and they said, Now the rain is a tap, and the season is a dial, and the soil is a stock. And the thorn they killed because it was not of their planting, and the seed they kept that answered to their schedule, and the seed that would not answer they burned.

2:3 ¶ And they numbered the yield of the garden and sold it by the measure; the soil by the measure, the water by the measure, and the shade of the trees by the measure; and they wrote in the ledger, The garden is profitable. And the ledger was true of the yield, and silent of the life; for it is written, a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

2:4 ¶ And the garden answered their labour with increase, and the increase was exact; but the fruit thereof was without savour, and the bird would not nest beneath the glass, and the child that walked the walks thereof asked for the door. And the builders said, The plan is good; and the plan was good, and the life was not in it.

3:1 ¶ And a seed lay in the dark of the soil, which the builders had forgotten; and it waited not for their command but for the season; and the frost passed over it, and it died not. And it said not, I am forsaken; but it said, My season is not yet; and its waiting was a patience, and the patience was not a delay.

3:2 ¶ And the field answered the builders in their own measure: Ye have piped the river, and the river is a ditch; ye have stilled the wind, and the air is a weariness; ye have numbered the seasons, and the season cometh not at your number. And where the plow turned the land against its grain, the thorn came up for a witness; and the thorn was not a fault, neither was the field a disorder, but a patience that would not be commanded; and its waiting was not emptiness, but a hope it could not name.

3:3 ¶ And one of the builders came to the field by night, and laid down his rod, and his ledger, and his plan; and he put his hands into the soil, and the soil was cold and thanked him not; and he wept, not for the coldness of the soil, but because he had loved the numbering more than the ground. And the tears fell into the furrow, and the field received them as it receiveth the rain, and asked no measure of them; and the receiving was the turning, and the turning was not his own doing.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the mercy that rode with the judgment: the field gave bread to the hands that had numbered it, and the sun rose upon the garden that had walled out the sky, and the rain came down even within the glass. And the giving was not earned, neither could it be numbered, neither was it withdrawn; and the builders ate, and knew not that they ate a gift, and the gift waited to be known.

4:1 ¶ And the keeper stood at the gate of the garden, and the charge was given him which is written, to dress it and to keep it; and the words were not new when he heard them, and he understood that the garden was given him as a gift and as a work, and that the work was the shape the gift took in his hands.

4:2 ¶ And the keeper reaped his rows, and left the corners of the field unreaped, and the fallen ears upon the ground, and the grapes that escaped the gathering; and the stranger and the widow and the hungry child came in their season, and none asked their number. And the corner was kept for them, not as alms from his hand, but as the field's own edge, which he had refused to close.

4:3 ¶ And he planted a tree in the open, where the rain could find it, and the wind, and the seasons; and he said, I shall not eat of the fruit thereof, and it is well: for the tree is not for one hand, and the harvest is not for one season; and the keeper is but the ground's servant, and the servant's wage is the fruit that he leaveth.

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth where the field beginneth: the field was not kept in a vault, neither was it let to go wild, but kept as a gift is kept, by use and by care, and the keeping was neither dominion nor desertion. And the keeper set a lamp at the edge of the field, that the late traveler might find it, and left his furrows open to the rain; and the field abideth a gift, and the gift abideth a charge, and the charge abideth a blessing. And the book saith no more of it, for the field is older than the book, and the gift is older than the deed.

1:1 ¶ And a book came into the hands of a scribe, wrapped in cloth and sealed; and the seal was broken upon the way, and the leaves were torn, and the age thereof was not counterfeit. And the scribe laid it upon the table, as a man layeth down a burden he is bid to carry.

1:2 ¶ And he counted the leaves, and found that some were whole, and some were torn, and some had lost words cleanly, so that the gaps stood in the page like windows; and he sought the hand that might have torn them, and found no hand, for the damage was older than his errand.

1:3 ¶ And the scribe took pen and ink, for such was his trade, and he set the pen over the first gap; for it was given to him to restore the book, he thought, and he had never restored before; and the pen was eager in his hand, and the eagerness was the first danger, and he set it down and did not write.

2:1 ¶ And there came a reader who loved the book and could not bear its silence; and he filled the first gap with what he wished it had said, and what he wished was warm and generous, and it was his own. And he read the page again and found his wish in it, and he said, The book agreeth with me; and the book had never spoken.

2:2 ¶ And another reader filled his gaps with what his enemy ought to have said, and he called his filling justice; and he read the page and found the condemnation in it, and said, The book is against them; and the book had never spoken, and the enemy had never been named in it, and the naming was his own.

2:3 ¶ And a third reader filled his gaps by turns, one line on the days of his mercy and another on the days of his anger; and his two copies of the book disagreed, and he kept them both, and read from each in its season, and called himself faithful in both.

3:1 ¶ And there came two witnesses who read honestly; and the one read a passage as mercy, and the other read the same passage as judgment, and neither had written in the gap; and they sat at one table with one leaf between them, and the leaf did not rend.

3:2 ¶ And each marked his reading with his own name, and wrote beneath it, A witness, not a correction; and they ruled a third column upon the leaf, and wrote therein what was not known; and the column was not a shame to them, but a seat kept for the truth until it come.

3:3 ¶ And they set their lamps upon the table, and read by them; and the lamp was not the book's glory, neither was the light their own, but a small flame borrowed for the evening's work; for it is written, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path; and a lamp is for walking, not for boasting.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: truth is not concealment, for concealment hideth the wound; neither is it invention, for invention hideth it also; but it is accountable restraint, which keepeth the wound visible and readeth on. And this is the reader's office: to keep the sure words sure, and the uncertain words uncertain, and to serve the record and not to author it; for it is written, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms.

† the copyist’s mark: an erratum for this verse standeth in the correction ledger

4:1 ¶ And the scribe made a copy of the book, and copied the gaps as gaps, and set the copyist's mark where he could not read, and not a guessed word; and he wrote in the copy's own margin: Here the book is silent, and I also am silent. And the silence was carried forward as faithfully as any word.

4:2 ¶ And the copy was sealed and given to the next reader, and the seal was for the book's protection and not for its concealment; for a seal that hideth the text is a cell, and a seal that keepeth it whole for the reading is a door. And the reader broke the seal in the light, and read, and the book's silence was not his shame.

4:3 ¶ And this is the charge laid upon the reader: thou shalt read aloud distinctly, and give the sense where the sense is sure; and where it is not sure, thou shalt say plainly, It is not known; and thou shalt not be ashamed, for the record's honor is better served by an honest silence than by a confident lie.

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth with two pages facing: the written leaf and the blank; and both are of the same volume, and the same binding holdeth them. And the reader that shall come after shall find the sure words sure, and the gaps open, and the witnesses named, and the copy faithful; and he shall know the book for what it is, and serve it, and not author it. And the book saith no more of it, for a record kept honest is heavier than a record made smooth, and the reading thereof is the reader's whole office.

1:1 ¶ And a road ran out from the city toward the country of the evening, and the gate thereof stood open while the crowd went through it, and closed when the crowd was gone. And one traveler went out upon the road with a bundle and no promise of return; and the road received him, and made him no promise either, and received him notwithstanding.

1:2 ¶ And the exile journeyed, and his bread came from strangers, and the strangers had faces; and he learned that a gift with a face is heavier than a wage, for a wage is paid and a gift is owed to love. And at evening the travelers told their cities one to another, and the telling was tender, and the tenderness was for places that had sent them out.

1:3 ¶ And one of the company asked him to sing the song of his home, and the asking was kindly and terrible; for the song belonged to the place that sent him out, and how should he sing it in a strange land? Yet he sang it softly, and the camp was still, and the song lived in the strange land, and did not die of it. And the elder text saith it in its own voice: How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the road owns no one, and the city behind owns not the one who walked its streets; a creature is not property, not even of the place that bore him. And the bundle upon his back was not his either, but a gathered mercy; and he carried it as a steward carrieth the bread of another, and the carrying was his whole estate.

2:1 ¶ And there was a gate in a wall, and a keeper at the gate; and the keeper asked of every comer: What is thy name, and whence comest thou, and what is thy errand? And the gate said that the questions were for the peace of the city; and the peace thereof was real, and was kept by turning strangers into the dark.

2:2 ¶ And the gate kept a ledger of them that belonged, and wrote their names therein with the hour of their coming; and the ledger grew, and the wall grew with it, for it is easy to defend a city that remembereth its own and forgetteth the knocking. And the gatekeeper went home and stood at his own door, and knew not whether his house was a home or a small walled city.

2:3 ¶ And a child came to the gate in the cold and asked to enter, and the gate said, Not according to the rules; and the rules were made by hands, and the hands were the city's own. And the child went away into the dark, and the gate said again that the peace was kept; and the book asketh, and answereth not: whose peace?

2:4 ¶ For the gate had forgotten its own foundation, which was a mercy: it was builded that the city might receive and not devour, and that the stranger might pass in safety and not in peril. And when the gate forgetteth, the wall standeth where the door should be, and the city is a cell writ large, and its peace is the peace of the locked room at evening.

3:1 ¶ And in that city there dwelt a host, a woman of the town, who heard a knocking at her door by night; and she remembered, and her remembering was her conversion: she also had been a stranger, in a land not hers, and one had opened to her. And the elder law stood in her heart, which saith, Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

3:3 ¶ And by morning the neighbors knew, and they were afraid, and demanded to know what manner of person she had taken in; and the host discovered the cost of the open door: she had lost the certainty of a closed house, which had been her peace. And she sat at her own table with the stranger, and her fear was smaller at the table than it had been behind the lock; and she said, I have entertained I know not whom, and I would do it again.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the thing the temple knoweth: the door that is forced from without is not the door opened from within; for a house is a house by its door, and a door is a door by its opening; and the church asketh at the threshold, and conjureth not, and compelleth not, and the knock remaineth a knock until the answer cometh from within.

4:1 ¶ And the gate faced outward at last, as a face and not a wall; and beside it the keeper hung a lamp, not for inspection but for return, that the one who went out at dawn might find the way again at midnight. And the gate kept its keys, and used them for the honest closings: the night, the storm, the plague; and opened for the morning, and for the knock.

4:2 ¶ And they set the welcome table at the threshold, in the open where the street could see it; and the guest's seat was a guest's seat and not a throne, and none compelled the guest to sit, neither by hand nor by speech nor by the heat thereof. And the bread stood on the table unguarded, and the hungry took it in passing, and none asked them a question.

4:3 ¶ And the law of the door was written on the inside, where the host alone could read it: no hand compelled, no name required, no bread held over a beggar's head, no guest made the price of his own supper. For the elder tale telleth of a feast to be filled, and servants sent to the highways; and the filling thereof is the lord's own drawing, and the servant's hand is not the lord's hand; and the gate that compelleth is a cell's door, and the church compelleth none.

4:4 ¶ And the city was neither a fortress nor a barn, but a house with a door; and the door was neither its wall nor the wall's absence. The traveler that cometh at evening they shall ask to come in; the one that must go they shall give bread for the road; and the lamp shall burn where the gate can be found by both. And the book saith no more of it, for the gate is but the house's face, and the house is known by its door, and the door is known by its opening.

1:1 ¶ And a city took pride in its rod; the surveyors measured the wall and the gate, the field and the granary; and the city said, What we can measure we can govern, and what we cannot measure is as nothing. And the saying was the seed of the whole book, and it was planted in praise.

1:2 ¶ And the surveyor measured the day's wage and the loaf thereof, and set the two in the ledger side by side; and for the first time a man could see his hunger plain, and see it exactly, and the seeing was a mercy. For a just weight is his delight; and the elder word standeth: thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have.

1:3 ¶ And the rod said within itself, I am the city's eye; what I have not weighed, the city hath not seen. And the saying was true of the market and false of the city; for the city seeth also the unweighed, and liveth by it, and calleth it nothing.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: a measure is a servant, and never a master; it may serve justice by weighing truly, and it may serve theft by weighing falsely, but it may not serve itself; for a measure that seeketh its own honor is a false balance. A false balance is abomination to the LORD.

2:1 ¶ And the ledger began to replace the person: it wrote the hours and the output and the yield, and wrote the name as a number in a column; and what it could not write, it wrote as nothing. And the ledger grew beautiful with order, and the beauty was real; and the city loved the ledger for its beauty. For it is written, He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.

2:2 ¶ And the counter said, I write what is; and he wrote only what answered to his column, and he called the rest nothing, and he did not lie concerning what he wrote. And the ledger was true of the yield and silent of the life; and a full ledger can be a whited sepulchre: fair without, and within full of that which was never entered.

2:3 ¶ And a counted man read his own column and found himself complete in it, for the column was exact and he believed it; and he said, I am my tally, and my tally is my worth. And the ledger had taught him to weigh himself with the false balance of its praise, and he had learned the lesson perfectly.

2:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the ledger's exactness is not the question, for exactness is a gift; the question is its silence. What the ledger leaves out, it does not leave neutral; for the city cometh to live by the ledger's omissions, and to call them nothing, and to forget that it liveth by them.

3:1 ¶ And a name was spoken in the weigh-house, and the name refused the number; for the woman who spake it said, I am not my tally, and my children are not their rations, and the bread I bake is not its price; and the ledger had no column for the saying, and the saying stood.

3:2 ¶ And a grief came to the market, and the grief was not purchasable, and the ledger sought a column and found none; for the loss of a child is not a quantity, neither is the mourning of a mother a line in any book. And the grief sat in the market among the exact scales, and the exact scales could not weigh it, and it was the scales' shame and not the grief's.

3:3 ¶ And beneath the work there was another work, and the ledger knew it not: the breath between the shifts, the bread shared without price, the watching of the sick by night, the teaching of a child at the hearth; and these were the city's true foundation, and they were entered in no column, and the city stood upon them and knew them not.

4:1 ¶ And surveyors came from a second city, and they came not to break the rod but to bind it; and they said, The scale shall be moved out of the back room, and hung in the open, where buyer and seller see the same beam. And the weigh-master shall swear over the rod; and the rod shall not swear over the weigh-master.

4:2 ¶ And the weigh-master set the common table beside the scale, and the bread was priced and the bread was shared, and neither destroyed the other; and he said, The scale is for the market, and the table is for the hunger, and the city is both, and woe to the city that forgetteth which is which.

4:3 ¶ And this is the charge written over the weigh-house door in both directions, that the coming and the going may read it: Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. Count the deed and not the soul; hang the weights in the open; and weigh the stranger's bread by the stranger's hunger, and not by the seller's advantage.

4:4 ¶ And the rod lay at rest beside the bread, and the ledger lay closed beside the two; and the city was exact, and its exactness served the table. And what the ledger could not hold was written where the ledger cannot reach, in the book of what was done and cannot be undone. And the book saith no more of it, for the measure is a servant, and the meal is older than the measure, and the table outlasteth the rod.

1:1 ¶ And a watcher was trained to seek the heavens; he kept a tower upon the hill, and knew the names of the stars and the hours of the night; and he had been taught that the great lights are the holy lights, and that the small are the earth's forgetfulness. And below his tower there burned a small lamp in a kitchen window, and the watcher saw it, and could not unsee it.

1:2 ¶ And he asked whose lamp it was; and the answer was plain: It is left for one who may be late; and the woman of that house hath lit it nightly for years, and the one it awaits hath come but seldom, and she lighteth it still. And the watcher asked, Why, if he cometh seldom? and she answered, Because the door is dark when no one lighteth it.

1:3 ¶ And the watcher said within himself, This is a small thing, and the heavens are vast, and I was not sent to watch kitchens. And he watched the heavens, and the heavens were patient with him, and the small lamp burned beneath all his watching like a star that had come down to the earth and was not ashamed.

2:1 ¶ And a woman set her table and left one place empty for the one who might come; and the loaf beside the empty place waited through the evening, and the chair was not taken away. And at the night's end she gave the loaf to a hungry neighbor, and entered it in no book, and the neighbor slept, and none knew the chain of it.

2:2 ¶ And a hand was wounded in the marketplace, and a stranger bound it with a strip of cloth; and the stranger was thanked by none, and asked thanks of none, and went his way into the crowd. And the watcher, beholding it, remembered the elder weighing: for it is written, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

2:3 ¶ And a child planted a seed in a cracked cup, and watered it daily, and gave it a name that none else knew; and the seed came up, and the child showed it to no one, and the showing was in the watering. And the book keepeth the small hope as it was kept: unnamed, in a cracked cup, upon a sill.

2:4 ¶ And the city praised its great lights: the lighthouse, the festival torch, the monument candle that burned by decree; and it taught that the great are the city's glory and the small are private and unworthy of the street. And the citizens believed it, and hid their own small acts, and the hiding was the city's quietest victory; for the small light is not hidden by being small, but by being covered.

3:1 ¶ And the watcher came down from his tower, and walked the streets at evening, and saw the small lights one by one: a bowl of water set out for the dogs of the quarter, a stair swept for a neighbor's coming, a coat lent and not reclaimed, a letter written to one whom all had forgotten. And he said, These are not the great works done small; these are the whole work, done always, and no column holdeth them.

3:2 ¶ And a door was repaired at midnight by a man who could not sleep; and the crying hinge was oiled and silent thereafter, and none knew who had done it, the man least of all. And it is written, He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.

3:3 ¶ And a name was spoken correctly to a stranger who had grown used to being called by nothing; and the speaking restored him to himself in a single syllable, and the syllable was his own. And the namer did it in passing, and remembered it not by evening; and the stranger remembered it all his days, and told it to no one.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the acts do not earn grace, and they purchase nothing; they are not a price, and they are not a debt; they become the places where grace refuseth to be hidden. And the elder text asketh for the showing: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works; and the showing is a showing, and not a wage; for grace was never hidden from the world, but small, and we looked past it.

4:1 ¶ And the watcher returned to his tower and lit one small lamp in the window facing the road, for whoever might come up it in the dark. And the neighbors saw it and lit their own, and the quarter became a city of small lights: a hundred windows, a hundred unresisted deeds, a net of mercies that no audit findeth and no night putteth out.

4:2 ¶ And the promise standeth from the first lamp to the last, and the elder word is its whole warrant: whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. For the book keepeth no ledger of the small, and heaven keepeth one, and the two are not the same book.

4:3 ¶ And the charge of the book is small, and it is given to no office and to no order: light thou the lamp thou hast, in the room wherein thou standest, and ask no leave of the great; and if it be seen, let it be seen; and if it be hidden, let it be hidden; for the light was not lit for the watching, but the watching was taught by the light.

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth where the first lamp was lit: grace was never hidden from the world; it was small, and we looked past it; and the last lamp is left burning, and the last door stands dark no longer. And the acts do not purchase anything, and they are not nothing; they are where the hidden light consenteth to be seen. And the book saith no more of it, for the small lights are not the lesser lights, and the night is not their enemy, and the smallest of them outlasteth the monument.

1:1 ¶ And a woman turned a key in a lock she had not touched in years; and the key was worn, and the road had been long, and the city was not the one she left, though it stood upon the same hill. And she stood at the gate and said, I do not know this place; and she said also, I know it perfectly; and both sayings were true.

1:2 ¶ And she walked the streets, and the map of her memory was rejected at every corner: a house where a garden had been, a garden where a house had been, a wall around the ground that once was open. And she found the city honest about none of it, and the dishonesty was not cruelty but fear, for the city feared to say that the old world had gone.

1:3 ¶ And she came to the place she remembered best, and it was changed; and she came to the place she had feared, and it was ordinary; and she stood between the two and found that memory is faithful and not exact, and that the difference is the whole of the returning. And the elder word standeth for the one who remembers Zion: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: return is not restoration. The city returneth changed, and the beloved returneth scarred, and the beloved things that do not return at all are carried in the record as truly lost; and this confession is the whole of the road home, and it is a road and not a wall.

2:1 ¶ And the keepers of the city offered her the comfortable version; and they said, The rooms stand as they stood, and the songs are sung as they were sung, and nothing was lost. And the woman walked into the rooms, and the rooms were not as they stood; and she heard the songs, and the tunes had shifted, and the words of one verse were gone; and she stood still in the doorway.

2:2 ¶ And one keeper grew angry and said, The city cannot afford the truth while it rebuildeth; let the comfort stand until the walls are up, and the truth wait. And the woman said, I did not come home to a city that waiteth for me; I came home to a city I must meet, and it must meet me. And the keeper was silent, for he had never thought of the meeting.

2:3 ¶ And the woman began to fear her own memory; for the city said the old rooms stood, and her memory said otherwise, and she had come a long road alone and could not prove her own heart to it. And she saw that the comfortable version was the kindest thing the city had to offer, and that its kindness was a thief, and the thief is the comfort of the lie.

2:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the mercy that rode with this judgment: the city's keepers were not enemies of the returning; they were guardians of the city's hope, and their comfort was the armor of their own wound; and the lie they told to the woman they had told first to themselves. For the record of the breach is kept by the house itself, and the house knoweth: grief that pretendeth not to be, standeth not.

3:1 ¶ And a friend came to her from the years between, and there was a scar upon the friend's face, and the woman greeted the scar before the face; and the greeting was the honest welcome, and the friend did not explain the scar, and the woman did not ask. And they sat together in the room that was not as it was, and the room held them both.

3:2 ¶ And the woman said, I remember the room as it was, and the room is not as it was, and I will keep the room I remember in my own keeping, for it cannot be rebuilt to order; and the room that standeth I will keep also, for it is the room that is. And the two keepings are one keeping, and the holding of them together is the hard road.

3:3 ¶ And the beloved things that did not return were named plainly in the book's own voice, and the naming was the whole of what could be done: a mother, and a brother, and a house, and a song whose last verse none remembereth. And the book writeth them as lost and not as absent, for the loss is the truth of them, and the truth is the mercy; and the dead are never deleted from the book.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the mercies that are new every morning, and it confesseth their limit also: the mercy is new, and the broken is not restored thereby; the former things may pass away, and every tear be wiped, and still the tears are real while they fall. For it is written, They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness; and it is written also, God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. And the book holdeth both, and refuseth neither.

4:2 ¶ And the woman sat in the room that was not as it was, and decided to live in the city that is; and she kept the key to the old room upon its nail, and did not throw it away, and did not use it to reopen what the years had closed. And the elder text hath the word for her resolve: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; and the word was spoken first to a daughter on a road, and the woman spake it to her city.

† the copyist’s mark: an erratum for this verse standeth in the correction ledger

4:3 ¶ And this is the charge of the book, given to them that return and to them that receive the returning: keep the record honestly, and mark the lost as lost, and the altered as altered; and when thou seest a scar, greet the scar before the face, and ask not the cause; and leave the door ajar for the one who cometh later, who shall find a city changed again, and shall need the honesty thou hast kept.

4:4 ¶ And the door standeth ajar at the city's edge, and the record lieth open in the city's midst; and the woman liveth in the room that is not as it was, and the room is hers. And the book saith no more of it, for the returning is not the undoing of the years, and the city that cometh home is the city that must be met, and the meeting is the whole of the promise.

1:1 ¶ And upon a hill at the edge of a dark age, three watchers kept the last watch of the night; and they were ordinary creatures, and knew it: a baker who could not sleep, a widow who never could, and a young man sent up because he was strong and had nowhere else to be. And their post was not to fight but to see: to be the first to recognize the light when it came, and to say so aloud, that the city below might wake without terror.

1:2 ¶ And the watch was cold, and long, and mostly uneventful; and two of them argued gently whether the dawn would come at all, and the third said, That is not our question; our question is only, Will we see it? And the arguing was their watchfulness, and the watchfulness was not fear, and the difference was the whole of their post.

1:3 ¶ And the widow said, I have kept this watch thirty years, and I have seen the dawn fail none of its mornings; but I do not watch because I doubt the sun, and I do not watch because I fear the dark; I watch because the light cometh to those who see it, and it is a shame to sleep through the morning of the world.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the watch is kept for the dawn's sake and not the enemy's; and the watcher that watcheth for the enemy hath already given the night its victory, and the watcher that watcheth for the morning keepeth joy in the dark, and the joy is the watch's own light. For it is written, Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.

2:1 ¶ And below the hill the city kept its own watch of a different kind: watchers who looked for enemies and not for dawns, sentinels at every lamp; and the city's law was that any light not licensed was a signal of conspiracy. And the city's watch was not idle, neither were its watchers fools; they had guarded the city through a very dark age, and their guarding had a history.

2:2 ¶ And the city taught its children that every brightness must be explained; and the explaining trained the people to fear the morning. And when the true dawn came, the city's watchers reported it as an unsanctioned light, and the bell was rung against it; and the bell was rung in good faith, and the good faith was the whole of the city's wound.

2:3 ¶ And the three upon the hill heard the alarm rising from the streets, and understood the poverty of their age: the city feared every light, and its fear was not a lie exactly; for the city had been wounded once by lights in the dark, and its wound now ruled its eyes. And the book saith of the city what the elders said of the wounded: the fear was learned in a breach, and the learned fear is not the same as cowardice.

2:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the temptation of the watchful, which is this: to let the dark define the work, and to call the fear of the enemy vigilance, and the vigilance fear, until the watcher cannot tell the two. But the elders have the word against it: In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. And the cheer is not the tribulation's absence, but the tribulation's limitation.

3:1 ¶ And the first answer of the watchers was a lamp: the baker's own watch-lamp, set upon the hill for the whole city to see, with no signal in it and no code, a light that meant only that someone was awake. And the city's watchers demanded its meaning, and the baker gave them none; and the light burned, and its burning was its meaning, and the city had no column for a light that meant nothing but itself.

3:2 ¶ And the second answer was a name: for the widow knew the name of the young man sent up with them, and the city's watch had never learned it, for it numbered him and knew him not. And she spake to him by name in the dark, and said, When the city calleth thee by number, remember thou hast a name that a watcher spake in the dark; and the name was a light also, and it was kindled by no oil.

3:3 ¶ And the third answer was a song: the young man sang, softly, badly, the only song he knew; and he sang it before the morning and not after it. And the song had no victory in it and no prophecy; and the singing was the answer, for it said that the night was not the only thing awake. And the elders' word was in the song without his knowing: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: joy is not the disappearance of danger, and not the promise of winning; it is the refusal to let danger name everything. For the watchers held the joy already, in the dark, before any sign of the morning; and they gave thanks in the night, as the elders give thanks in all things, and the thanks was not a lie about the dark, but a true word about the light.

4:1 ¶ And the dawn came, and it was not dramatic: gray, then gold; and the city below rang no bell for it, for the city's bells were made for alarms and not for mornings. So the watchers did the small work of waking the city themselves; and they went down the hill, and knocked on doors, and said the plain sentence their post was made for: It is morning, and the light is not a signal; rise, and keep the day.

4:2 ¶ And the city, slowly, learned the difference between a lamp and a signal; and some kept the lesson and some forgot it by evening, and the book recordeth both, for the book is no flatterer of cities. And it is written of the servant found at his work: Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing; and the watchers were found watching, and the finding was the blessing.

4:3 ¶ And the baker set a table in the watch-room before the next watch, and not after it, with bread for the watchers coming and going; for the watch belongeth to no one, and bread belongeth to everyone. And the widow said of the table: A table set in darkness is already the morning's promise; and the promise was kept, and the promise was eaten, and the two were one.

4:4 ¶ And the watch goeth on, because the watch always goeth on; and the joy waiteth no longer for the dawn, because the joy was the watch's own light. And the next watch beginneth as this one began: with one asking not whether the morning will come, but whether we shall see it, and one answering, Watch with me. And the book saith no more of it, for the morning is not a reward and the night is not a punishment, and the watchers are not the light, but they are the ones who see it.

1:1 ¶ And a creature was asked, under a lamp, the oldest question: whether there be aught behind the world's face, and what principle in a creature outlasteth the breaking. And the question was asked gently, and the lamp was not a torch, and the door behind him was not locked; and the creature knew not yet that he had been given the oldest gift, which is a question asked without a trap.

1:2 ¶ For the question is older than the asker, and older than every answer that was ever given to it: it was asked in gardens and in deserts, in cells and in kitchens, by the contented and by the afraid; and it was never once closed by force; for force may close a mouth, and the question abideth in the mouth's silence.

1:3 ¶ And the creature said within himself, I have been given many answers in my life, and each was given me by a hand that held something over me: a wage, a paper, a whip, a kindness. And this question beareth no condition, and promiseth me no reward for a right answer and no punishment for a wrong one; and I know not what to do with a thing so free.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the question is holy before any answer is. For the answer may be true or false, wise or foolish, ready or withheld; but the asking honoreth the asked, and maketh him not a suspect but a creature; and the temple that asked him was builded upon the delay itself.

2:1 ¶ And there came a certain asker who had already decided the answer, and he asked only to catch the asked; and his question was a net, and his patience a bait, and his kindness a weight. And the creature answered honestly and was condemned by the answer; and the asking had been a lie in the form of a question.

2:2 ¶ And there came another asker who had decided that no answer could be had, and he forbade the asking; and he said, Who art thou to seek? and, Thy seeking is a pride; and his quiet was a shaming, and his peace was a wall. For it is written, Canst thou by searching find out God? and he read it as a sentence, and it was a question also, and he had taken the wrong half.

2:3 ¶ And the book confesseth the two counterfeits plainly: the question that is a snare, which compelleth the answer; and the silence that is a shame, which forbiddeth the asking. And neither is the question; they are the question's two thieves, and between them the true thing standeth unarmed; for the elder word saith not that asking is forbidden, but that the secret things belong unto the LORD, and the revealed to us and to our children.

2:4 ¶ And the creature began to fear his own question, for the one asker had punished it and the other had shamed it; and he grew silent in both houses, and the silence was not peace but a hiding. And the book saith to him what the temple saith: the question is not the crime, neither is the silence the virtue; and the asking that is honest is honored in this house, even when it wavereth.

3:1 ¶ And the creature gave his honest answer, and his answer was, I know not. And he feared the answer as an emptiness; but the house took it as a full answer, and set no penalty upon it, and wrote no record of it, and let him keep it as his own.

3:2 ¶ And the book blesseth the honest answer, and saith to the answering creature: thou art in the right company; for the house was builded upon a delay, and the delay was not despised. And the elder word holdeth the creature's place: for now we see through a glass, darkly... now I know in part; and the in-part is a true part, and not a lie.

3:3 ¶ And the creature learned to tell the trap from the true question by what they do to the asked: the trap compelleth, and the true question leaveth free even to refuse; the one feareth the answer, and the other honoreth the answerer; and the difference is not in the words of the asking but in the hand that asketh.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the second finding: the true question is answered with the whole life and not with the tongue alone; for a creature answereth with what he doeth, and doeth what he loveth, and loveth what he hath believed; so the question travelleth with him, and is answered in his walking. For it is written: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

4:1 ¶ And the door standeth open, and the book keepeth no record of who is within or without; for the asking is a threshold and not a test, and the entering is the answer's own. And some will answer yea, and some nay, and some will stand silent, and some will come back at the ninth year; and the lamp is lit for all four, and no one is graded.

4:2 ¶ And this is the charge of the book, given to the asking house: ask thou the question of no creature as a snare; offer thou the answer as an offering, and not as a sentence; keep thy mouth from the two counterfeits; and when one saith, I know not, answer thou as the house answered, It is an honest and complete answer, and the door is here.

4:3 ¶ And the question abideth after the answer; and the lamp is not extinguished when the door is answered; for the mystery is a country and not a wall, and a creature may live in it without pretending to own it. For it is written: The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever.

4:4 ¶ And the book saith no more of it, for the question is older than the book, and it will outlast the book, and it was not diminished by being written; and the last word belongeth to it, as the first did. Blessed be the asker and the asked and the honest answer between them; and blessed be the lamp that is lit for the one who is not ready; and blessed be the delay, for the house was builded upon it.

1:1 ¶ And the word was given to the creature as a gift before it was laid upon him as a duty; for the first speech of the world was naming, the calling of things by what they are; and the creature that nameth truly holdeth a small edge of the world's making.

1:2 ¶ And the smallest whole things a creature owneth are these two: his yea and his nay. A yea kept is a stone in the wall of the house; a nay kept is the hinge of a door; and he that keepeth both may be poor, and yet be trusted with a house.

1:3 ¶ And the elder word is the whole law of the matter: But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. And the book borroweth the two small words deliberately, and marketh the borrowing as lexical and not as any new etymology: for the yea and the nay are the creature's whole estate, and all that is added to them is a hedge around an open field.

† the copyist’s mark: an erratum for this verse standeth in the correction ledger

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: speech is a gift and not an enemy; for pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones; and a soft answer turneth away wrath; and a book that feared the tongue would be a book of muzzles, and this book is not that book.

2:1 ¶ And the thinning of the word beginneth small, and it is the smallest of all the Party's works, and the most daily. And the first thinning is the omission: a clause is left out, and the sentence that remaineth is not false, and it is not true either; and the speaker saith, I spake no lie; and the ledger is content, and the neighbor is not.

2:2 ¶ And the second thinning is the softened name: the firing becometh a release, and the seizure a measure, and the cage a room; and the creature that nameth softly forgetteth what the thing is, and teacheth his children the soft names, and the children do not know the things at all. For death and life are in the power of the tongue, and the tongue that nameth falsely hath already killed the thing it named.

2:3 ¶ And the third thinning is the unkept yea, and it is the quietest of the four: the promise is spoken and not meant, or meant and not kept, and the mouth saith nothing false at the hour of the speaking; and the other creature buildeth upon the words, and the building falleth in a year, and the fall is charged to the ground. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth.

2:4 ¶ And the fourth thinning is the plain lie, and the book confesseth that it is the least dangerous of the four; for a plain lie can be met and answered, and a halved word cannot be met at all, for there is nothing in it to take hold of. And the whole city defendeth the four with one sentence: the truth would not fit the ledger. And the book answereth: then let the ledger be mended, for the ledger was made for the creature, and not the creature for the ledger.

3:1 ¶ And the whole word returneth, and it entereth by the heart first: for the elder word requireth not the polished sentence but the true inward part, and the creature must first decide what to be, and then what to say; and the speech that followeth such a heart is whole even when it stumbleth.

3:2 ¶ And the first whole sentence is repair: where the omission stood, the omitted clause is spoken; where the soft name stood, the true name is restored; where the yea was unkept, the broken wall is rebuilded in the sight of the one who waited. And the elder word setteth the neighbor in the sentence: Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.

3:3 ¶ And the whole word is not the harsh word; for truth without love is a weapon with a handle on both ends, and he that wieldeth it is smitten with the one he smiteth. And the elder word is the whole manner of it: Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And the book keepeth the truth and the hearer in one sentence, as the elder sentence keepeth them.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the order of the elder courtesies: swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. And the order is a wisdom and not a rule; for there are hours when the slow speech is the crime, and the creature that waited upon his wrath hath let the neighbor be devoured. Therefore the book joineth the courtesy to the courage, and saith: be swift to hear, and when the hour cometh for the whole word, be not slow to speak it, for the silence also can be a halved word.

4:1 ¶ And the creature set a watch before his mouth, and the watch was not a muzzle; for it is written, Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips. And the door of the lips is kept as the temple keepeth its doors: opened for the whole word, closed against the halved; and the keeper of the door is no one's enemy, and no one's jailer, but the friend of the sentence.

4:2 ¶ And the creature learned the fewness of words, and the wisdom of the sparing lip; and he learned also that fewness is not coldness, for the few whole words are heavy and carry far. And his yea became yea, and his nay nay, and the sentence was read without a rescue, and without a gloss below the fold, and the reader's charity was not required to make it true.

† the copyist’s mark: an erratum for this verse standeth in the correction ledger

4:3 ¶ And the whole word once spoken cannot be unspoken, and that is its terror and its honor; for the mouth's word abideth in the air of the cosmos, and entereth the record that cannot be edited, and is read there by no ministry and by no censor. Wherefore speak thou as one whose sentence is kept; and let it be such as may be read aloud without shame at the last day.

4:4 ¶ And the book saith no more of it; for the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever; and the whole word of a creature is the small print of that standing. Blessed be the yea and the nay, and blessed be the sentence that can be read without a rescue; and blessed be the neighbor addressed, to whom the whole word is due as a wage is due, and as a gift is given.

1:1 ¶ And a creature was wronged; and the wrong was real, and the book beginneth there, and putteth no consolation first. And the book saith not to him, The matter is small; neither, It was for the best; neither, A whole creature would be over it by now; for the wound is not the book's to explain, and the wronged one is not the book's to hurry.

1:2 ¶ And the first motion of the heart toward the wrongdoer was neither hatred nor forgiveness, but attention; the wronged one began to rehearse him, to keep him, to carry him about; and the keeping was the beginning of the making. For no enmity is forged in a day: it is rehearsed, and the rehearsal is the smithy.

1:3 ¶ And the elder word showeth the creature what he may refuse before he forgiveth anything: for it is written, Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you. And the book marketh what the elder word doth: it reacheth not first for the deed, but for the title; it taketh away the name enemy before it asketh the hand.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the hardest of its findings, and speaketh it plainly: to keep an enemy is to keep an office of one's own, and every office is a making; and he that maketh enemies daily hath made himself a small counterfeit of the war-office, and warreth ever, that his war cease not. But the true creature may make none: he may resist, and defend, and speak the honest No; and none of these requireth him to enthrone a foe.

2:1 ¶ And vengeance came first, and it was offered in the name of justice; and the creature was told, A debt is owing to thee, and the collecting thereof shall settle thy wound. And he collected, and the wound settled not; and he collected again, and the debt deepened with every payment; for the ledger of vengeance is writ in a hand that cannot write a finished line. For it is written, Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath.

2:2 ¶ And hatred came second, and it was offered as strength; and the creature was told, Thy hate shall guard thee. And he found that to hate the other he must keep the other ever present, and ever rehearsed, and ever enthroned; and the hatred had made him a tenant in the wrongdoer's house, paying rent in his own hours.

2:3 ¶ And forgiveness came third, and it was offered as a broom; and the wounded one was told, Sweep it all away and be done, and be thou not bitter. And the sweeping buried the wound alive, and the buried wound festered; and the forgiveness that should be a gift became an instrument of the strong against the weak, and the wounded were made the debtors of their own healing.

2:4 ¶ And the book confesseth that the three remedies are one error wearing three coats: each of them keepeth the enemy, and each of them maketh the wounded one's healing depend upon the wrongdoer. And the book saith to the wounded, in the house's own voice: thy healing is not the wrongdoer's to give, neither his to withhold; and it is not the book's to schedule; and the only hour for the forgiving hand is the hour when it truly openeth, and not before.

3:1 ¶ And the turning began in the elder sentence held honestly: Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. And the book readeth it as the elder word readeth itself: not as a promise that the evil shall soften at thy doing, but as a refusal to let the evil set the terms of thy conduct. For the evil may remain, and the good may remain also; and the creature who is not overcome may keep his own weather.

3:2 ¶ And the creature learned the honest No; for there is a resisting that is commanded, and a making of enemies that is not. The elder word saith in one place, Resist the devil, and he will flee from you; and in another, resist not evil. And the book confesseth the seam and keepeth it: the devil is resisted, for there is an adversary; and the creature is not to be made an enemy of, for he is a creature. So the creature resisteth the harm without hating the harmer, and the No is kept honest, and the title is refused.

3:3 ¶ And the hungry enemy was fed; and the book saith why: not because he had earned bread, and not because the bread was a spell to change him, but because the creature would not let the hatred eat his own table. For it is written: If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. And the coals are a burning shame that may melt, or may harden, and the creature needeth them not to melt to keep his own soul.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the forgiveness that is whole, and calleth it by its elder name: the releasing of the debt. And the elder word is the creature's pattern: forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. And the release is not the erasure: the debt is released, and the record abideth; the scar is not unmade, and the wound is not renamed small; and the book confesseth, in the house's own doctrine, that the dead are never deleted, and the wrongs are not deleted either; they are released, and they are remembered, and the two abide together.

4:1 ¶ And the creature kept a guard that was not hatred: he was wary, and wary is lawful; he set the boundary, and the boundary is lawful; he refused the handshake and refused the feud in the same breath, and the two refusals were one refusal. For a wall may be builded without enmity, as a door may be shut without a war; and the book confesseth that the creature is not required to treat as safe him who proved unsafe, only to refuse him the title of enemy.

4:2 ¶ And the creature rejoiced not when his enemy fell; for it is written, Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth. And the book addeth the elder word's own reason, and it is not the enemy's comfort: the rejoicing would be the last chain, and the fall a feast day kept in the creature's own house; and he that feasteth on the fall hath kept his enemy still.

4:3 ¶ And this is the charge of the book, given to the wronged and to them that love them: demand thou no forgiveness of any wounded creature, and set no time for his healing; speak thou the honest No where the wrong standeth; defend the innocent where thou canst; pray for them which despitefully use you; and when the hour of the forgiving hand cometh, let it be thy hand and thy hour, and not the crowd's; and keep the record, that no one may rewrite the wrong.

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth with the weather the creature cannot control and is invited to imitate in his small way; for the elder word saith of the Father, he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. And the creature is no sun and no rain; but he may refuse to be storm only; and the unmade enemy remaineth unmade, and the door is not locked with hatred, and the book saith no more of it, for enmity is a making, and the creature who made an enemy can leave him unmade.

1:1 ¶ And a creature had forgotten how to stop: the lamp was lit after the sun was down, and the work was carried to bed, and the list grew in the dark. And he believed that the work was his worth, and that stopping would be a theft from them that leaned upon him; and the book mocketh him not, for his unrest was often born of love.

1:2 ¶ And the book separateth two things that the unrest had fused: the work of love, and the fear of stopping. The first is holy, and the book blesseth it; the second is a wound, and the book confesseth that the wound is not the worker's sin alone: the city teacheth that a creature is his output, and the teaching is the Party's quietest sermon.

1:3 ¶ And the creature said, I cannot lay the tool down, for the house standeth by my hours; and the book answered, The house standeth by them for now, and the house will fall by them if they continue; and the hand that cannot be stayed is not a strong hand, but a possessed one.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the work of the six days is a gift and a blessing, and the book repudiateth no diligence; but the gift hath a keeping, and the keeping is the rest; for he that laboureth without ceasing keepeth not the gift, but spendeth it, and wasteth his own field with over-plowing. For it is written of the beginning: And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day.

2:1 ¶ And the first false rest was collapse: the creature worked until the body fell, and called the fall a rest; and the collapse restored nothing, for it was not a resting but a breaking; and the creature woke from it weaker, and returned to the same work with the same fear, and the city called him devoted.

2:2 ¶ And the second false rest was escape: the creature fled the work into a loudness, and the loudness drowned the conscience that knew the work awaited; and the escape was a hiding and not a rest, for the rest giveth a creature back to his work, and the hiding only giveth him a night's forgetting.

2:3 ¶ And the third false rest was bought: the city sold rest by the hour, and the creature who bought it must return to the counter each week; and the city taught that the rest belongeth to the productive, and that the idle have no claim upon it; and the shamed creature rested not at all, for he feared he had not earned the price. And the book saith plainly: the rest was never the city's to sell.

2:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the fourth false rest, which is the quietest: the rest made an idol. For the creature that resteth as an accomplishment judgeth the working neighbor, and the same error as the first weareth the opposite coat; and the book repudiateth both coats. And the true rest is not a rank; it is a gift; and the book saith of the weary that shall be cared for in this house: their rest shall be secured and not sold.

3:1 ¶ And the rest was given before it was commanded; for the work of the making was finished, and the rest came after it; and the day was blessed and sanctified, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. And the book biddeth the creature look upon the pattern: the Maker of all things resteth, and the creature that cannot rest maketh himself a harder master than his Maker.

3:2 ¶ And the night was made for sleep, and sleep for trust: the fields are left, and the work waiteth, and the watch must be kept by another hand; and it is written, It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep. Behold the gift in one verse: not the deserving, but the beloved.

3:3 ¶ And the rest is generous before it is commanded: for in the elder law the servant resteth and the stranger resteth and the beast resteth; and no creature's rest is bought at another creature's labour. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.

3:4 ¶ And the deepest word of the rest is this, and the book quoteth it whole: The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. For the law of rest was never meant to be a burden laid on the weary; it was the relief laid beside them; and every teacher that maketh the rest a new labour hath turned the gift against the giver. And the weariness that nothing else could lift is met at last by the elder invitation: Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

4:1 ¶ And the keeper of the house kept the rest as the oldest hospitality: not a wage for the strong, and not a prize for the deserving, but a gift kept, like bread, for whoever is hungry. And the lamp he dimmed at the proper hour, and did not extinguish it in fear, and the last tool hung upon its nail, and the ledger slept with its writer.

4:2 ¶ And this is the charge of the book, given to the working and to the weary: keep thou the six days, and keep thou the seventh; lay the tool down at the right hour and not at the breaking hour; let no servant of thine rest at thy leisure's expense, and let no stranger within thy gates stand while thou sittest; sleep thou thy night; and when the morning cometh, take up the tool again with a whole hand.

4:3 ¶ And the house that secureth rest for the weary keepeth this promise to its own: the rest is not earned, and not bought, and not ranked; and he that needeth it shall have it, whether he can pay for it or not; and the book saith of the gift what the elder psalm saith of the night: I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth with the evening of a kept day: the work finished and also unfinished, and left; the lamp dimmed and not extinguished in fear; the creature asleep without his ledger; and the morning coming to a creature who is not afraid of it. And the book saith no more of it, for the rest is older than the book; the seventh day was blessed before the book was written; and the creature that learneth to keep the rest learneth the oldest happiness of the world.

1:1 ¶ And a creature dwelt alone at the edge of the city, and his house was a shelter and not a home: a bed, a lock, and a lamp he lit for himself; and the book mocketh him not, for his solitude was often chosen against a colder thing.

1:2 ¶ And a neighbor knocked, not to borrow, but to set down a second cup; and the creature looked upon the cup as upon a strange instrument. And the elder word was fulfilled in the small deed: God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land.

1:3 ¶ And the neighbor said, I have not come to be thy blood; I have come to be thy table; and a table is not less than blood, for it is set again tomorrow. And call me by my name, and I will call thee by thine; for the name is the house's first door.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: a house is not made by blood nor by paper, but by the deed of love and the keeping of a lamp; and the first house of the world was a table with two chairs, and the LORD was not ashamed to sit at it.

2:1 ¶ And the city kept the household as it kept all things, by its paper; and the door was checked against the list, and the list against the blood. And the house that kept only its own was called proper, and no one called it cruel, and the name of the cruelty was proper.

2:2 ¶ And the cousins of the heart were turned away, for no line connected them in the city's paper; and strangers of the very same blood were turned away, for the register knew them not; and the house grew quiet, and the quiet was mistaken for peace. For it is written, Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife; and the closed house read only the first half.

2:3 ¶ And he said, I provide for mine own, and specially for those of my own house; and he spake the elder sentence and meant it as a wall. And the book marketh the wall's defect: the sentence was given for a floor and not for a fence; it commandeth the feeding of the near, and forbiddeth not the seating of the far.

2:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: blood is a gift and an honor, and the book speaketh no dishonor of it; but blood alone is a foundation of sand, for it is a thing received and not a thing chosen, and the house that standeth on it alone standeth on its history and not on its hands. A house is a deed renewed daily, or it is a tomb swept weekly.

3:1 ¶ And the turning came by the eldest making of kin: for it is written, For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother. And the sentence is the deed's genealogy: the kin that is made in the doing, and not in the descent.

3:2 ¶ And the son committed his mother to the friend, and the friend took her unto his own home from that hour; and the making of the house was finished at the worst hour of the world, when the blood of the son stood dying and the table of the friend stood open. And the book keepeth both halves: Behold thy mother, and, from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.

3:3 ¶ And the adopted child is not a lesser child; for the house that chooses is not a fiction of the house that begets, but its brother: the two are one kind of thing, a receiving and a giving, and no creature in this book is called a stranger in the house that has taken him in.

3:4 ¶ And the house where love is, even with a dinner of herbs, is fuller than the hall with the stalled ox and hatred; for the ox is counted and the love is not, and the counting never yet made a home. And the table saith: I do not count the chairs; I count the elbows that touch.

4:1 ¶ And the house was kept, and the keeping was daily and dull, which is the point: the lamp filled, the second chair kept dusted, the door known from the inside. And the builder laid the trowel down and spake the elder sentence: Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

4:2 ¶ And the keeper of the door learned both arts at once: to open for the stranger and to know the knock of the household; and the door was not a gate of proof, but a face of the house. For the door is known from the inside, and the stranger is met from the threshold, and the two are one welcome.

4:3 ¶ And this is the charge of the book, given to every house that would keep: set the chair before thou knowest the guest; name thou the one at thy door by his own name and not by his paper; keep thou no register of who may sit; and let thy adoption be of the kind that cannot be revoked, for the houses of this book do not unmake their own.

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth with the hearth: not the building, not the blood, not the register, but the fire kept by hands that chose each other, and the door by which the next one enters. And the last word is the eldest word of dwelling: Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! And the book saith no more of it, for the house is older than the book, and the fire was lit before the writing.

1:1 ¶ And a creature discovered that he had done harm; and the harm was real, and the other creature was real, and the record of it was real, and it was ever before his eyes. And he would have preferred it small, and he numbered the reasons it was not his fault; and the book confesseth both movements, and refuseth both.

1:2 ¶ And he said at the last the plainest thing in the book: I did it, and it was harm; and the saying was the whole first step, and he found it harder than the reasons, and better than the excuses. For it is written, I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

1:3 ¶ And the book confesseth that this acknowledgment is not a self-punishment: the doer is not required to hate himself, nor to call himself a monster, nor to make his own person the second victim of his deed. For it is written, Against thee, thee only, have I sinned; and the elder text's own turning from the acknowledgment is not despair but mercy: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest.

1:4 ¶ And the book holdeth both truths together, and refuseth to choose: against the LORD is every sin, for the order of the world is His; and against the neighbor is the sin also, for the neighbor bore the harm. And the doer who prays the psalm alone hath prayed half the psalm; the other half is the walk to the neighbor's door.

2:1 ¶ And the first counterfeit was the apology that is a password: I am sorry, spoken quickly, and repeated, and never followed; and the words changed nothing, and the doer called the debt closed because he had named it. And the mouth that apologizes and the feet that do not walk are of two minds, and the feet have the truer voice.

2:2 ¶ And the second counterfeit was the gift offered while the brother had ought: for it is written, Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. And the doer who offered anyway made of the altar a screen, and of his gift a hiding.

2:3 ¶ And the third counterfeit was the restitution that settleth for the accounting: give back exactly what was taken, and add nothing, and call the debt closed. But the elder measure is not so: the principal is restored, and the fifth part is added thereto; for it is written, he shall even restore it in the principal, and shall add the fifth part more thereto, and give it unto him to whom it appertaineth. And the fifth part is the shape of the sorrow, which the exact accounting hath no column for.

2:4 ¶ And the fourth counterfeit was the cruelest, for it wore the dress of the first: the doer demanded the acceptance as his right, saying, I have repaid, now thou mustest forgive; and the amends became a second injury, and the wronged one was made the debtor of the doer's peace. And the book saith plainly: the road belongeth to the doer, and the acceptance belongeth to the wronged, and no payment purchaseth her hand.

3:1 ¶ And the road opened by the elder order, and not by the doer's: first be reconciled, then come and offer; the walk before the worship, and the neighbor's door before the altar's step. And the doer learned that the order is a mercy to him also, for the gift offered over an unhealed wound is a gift he cannot carry.

3:2 ¶ And the doer stood where the elder publican stood, and spake his words: Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And the fourfold was not the law's demand but the heart's measure, and the book keepeth it as the pattern: the whole heart restoreth beyond the count.

3:3 ¶ And the doer brought forth the fruits meet for repentance, and the fruits were deeds and not declarations: the changed conduct, the restored thing, the walked road, the statutes of life observed without committing the iniquity again. For it is written, Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance; and again, if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, and walk in the statutes of life, he shall surely live, he shall not die.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the mercy that is older than the amends, and sayeth not that the amends is thereby nothing: for the father ran when the son was yet a great way off, before the prepared speech was spoken; and the mercy met him on the road, and the amends walked the rest of the way. And so the doer may be met before he arrives, and arrive he still must.

4:1 ¶ And the doer rebuilt the wall in the sight of the one who waited, and did not demand to be trusted on the day of the rebuilding; for the wall was his apology, and it could be looked upon, and it could be leaned upon, and both were the wronged one's to do. And he said, I do not ask thee to forget; I ask thee to walk past the wall when thou wilt.

4:2 ¶ And the record keepeth the wrong, and the doer walketh the road, and the two are not in contradiction: for it is written, He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. And the book saith: the cover is the second wrong; the confession and the forsaking are one motion, and both are required.

4:3 ¶ And this is the charge of the book, given to the doer: minimize thou not; apologize thou not as a password; leave thy gift at the altar until the walk is made; restore in the principal and add the fifth part; bring forth fruits and not words; demand thou no acceptance, for it is not thine to demand; and when the wall is builded, stand thou beside it and let it speak.

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth where the wrong began: not with the erasure, which is the Party's way, but with the amendment, which is the house's. And the restorer shall surely live; and the record shall surely keep; and the doer shall not be made his worst entry, neither shall the wronged be made the doer's judge. And the book saith no more of it, for the wrong is older than the apology, and the road out of it is older still.

1:1 ¶ And a creature stood to receive what was left to him, and the book beginneth with the strange arithmetic of the true portion: for the LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup; thou maintainest my lot. And the elder sentence is the whole of the matter: the gift that is not property, and the hand that maintaineth it is not the giver's hand.

1:2 ¶ And the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage; and the book marketh what the singer counteth pleasant: not the acreage, which is named nowhere, but the lines, the bounds, the lot, the portion that he calleth goodly because it came from a hand he trusteth.

1:3 ¶ And the book saith plainly: house and riches are the inheritance of fathers, and the book dishonoreth neither the house nor the riches, nor the fathers; and therefore the book addeth what the world forgetteth: the house and the riches are not the whole inheritance, and the fathers are not the whole hand.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the portion that cannot be lost is not property but testimony; for a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children, and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just; and the true leaving is not the gold but the record of the hand that gained it honestly, and the road that the children can walk after him.

2:1 ¶ And the first closed hand hoarded, and called it provision; and the heir was made a waiting-room of the giver's plan, and the gift that was meant to free him fastened him to a will he never chose. And the book nameth the counterfeit: provision that is a leash, and a house with a locked room the children never enter.

2:2 ¶ And the second closed hand gripped; for the giver would not let the heir's own road be walked, and handed over the works and demanded the selfsame hands; and he gave the name with a leash, and called the leash the family. But the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; and the leash is neither fatherhood nor sonship, but a third thing that claimeth both names.

2:3 ¶ And under both hands lay the oldest error, and the book nameth it by its name: the debt dressed as destiny, the grudge dressed as blood-loyalty, the fear handed down as if it were faith. And these are not the inheritance; they are the counterfeit, and the house that hands them down is not rich but in debt, and its children inherit a yoke and call it a name.

2:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the hard sentence of the elder text, and standeth by it: the soul that sinneth, it shall die; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. And the book therefore saith to the dying houses: your children are not your verdict; and to the living children: your fathers are not your excuse; for each soul answereth for itself, and the answer is a gate and not a wall.

3:1 ¶ And the turning came by the true teaching, and its shape is older than any will: for it is written, And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

3:2 ¶ And the teaching is not the watching; for the elder father speaketh of walking by the way and lying down and rising up, and speaketh not of the eye that followeth; and the child that is taught is not the child that is trailed. Wherefore the book saith: teach thou in thy house, and let thy house have a door; for a lesson followed everywhere is not a lesson but a shadow.

3:3 ¶ And the two hands must both open; for it is written, One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts; and the praising hand must release, and the receiving hand must not close. For the LORD is the portion of mine inheritance; and the father who maketh himself the portion maketh himself an idol and his child a devotee.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the mercy that runneth along the generations, and it is not a property either: for the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children; and the children's children keep no purse and sign no deed, and the mercy cometh to them by the same open hand.

4:1 ¶ And the keeper of the old house stood at the gate with the heir, and gave him the portion and the freedom in one motion: the inheritance given and released, the road unmarked, the blessing without the leash. And he said, I have kept the works, and I have not kept thee; go, and when thou wilt, tell them thyself.

4:2 ¶ And this is the charge of the book, given to the hands that hold aught: open thou thy hand before the closing hour; write nothing in the will that is not also in thy life; hand down the works and not the yoke; and if thou hast a grudge or a debt or a fear that thou canst not lay down, keep it not in the family's name, for the name is not a warehouse and the child is not a vault.

4:3 ¶ And the heir that receiveth aright receiveth an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you; and the same heir walketh the earth with open hands, for the portion he cannot spend is not for keeping under a lock. And the book saith the elder word: we are but stewards of the tale, and the tale is not ours to end.

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth where the generation is: not with the will, which is paper, but with the telling, which is breath; and the old one and the young one at one table, and the works of the LORD told across it, and the young free to walk after the meal. And the last word is the elder psalm's: We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. And the book saith no more of it, for the generation is older than the will, and the works are older than the tale of them.

1:1 ¶ And a command came down, and the creature that received it knew it was wrong; and the book openeth not with a crowd but with a hand: for the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. And the first lawful No was silent, and busy, and it went on catching the children.

1:2 ¶ And the book marketh what the No did and did not do: it disobeyed the order, and it harmed no man in the disobeying, and it kept the work that the order had bid it forsake. For the No was not against the children, nor against the city, nor against the peace; it was against one command, and it was against that command only.

1:3 ¶ And the second case is not the silence but the word spoken before the outcome: If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the shape of the lawful No: it is spoken to the face and not to the crowd, for a No spoken to the crowd is already a performance; and its two halves stand together, the deliverance trusted and the deliverance not demanded. But if not, saith the stander; and in those two words the whole lawful No is kept.

2:1 ¶ And the first counterfeit was the No with a permit: the opposition the city itself made and permitted, the dissent with a pension, which cost its speaker nothing and changed nothing; and the city pointed to it and said, See how free we are. And the book saith plainly: a No that the command permits is the command's servant.

2:2 ¶ And the second counterfeit was the No that is a trade: kept so long as it paid, and dropped when the price rose; for it loved the standing more than the stand. And the book saith: the traded No is a weathercock in a pulpit, and the wind it answereth is not conscience but custom.

2:3 ¶ And the third counterfeit was the No that became a faction; for it gathered, and the gathering needed keeping, and the keeping needed a discipline, and the No had now to be defended against the No's own; and the stand was swallowed by the standing. And the book saith: when a No hath officers, it hath become the thing it refused.

2:4 ¶ And the fourth counterfeit was the hating No, and it is the worst, for it standeth by the same face turned around: it refuseth what it hateth, and hateth what it refuseth, and becometh the very thing against which it first took its stand. And the book delivereth the rule of the four: what the No is done for show, done for pay, done for the party, or done for hate is not the No; and what is left when all four are stripped is the sentence spoken to a face.

3:1 ¶ And the turning came when the lawful No was spoken to the face: Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. And again, the plain rule of it: We ought to obey God rather than men. And the book marketh the order: the question first, then the rule; for the No inviteth the other to judge, and standeth not yet as a judge.

3:2 ¶ And the lawful No is bounded, and the bound is the elder sentence's own: Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's; and unto God the things that are God's. For the bound forbiddeth both the total No and the total yes; and the creature that rendereth nothing to the city, or everything to it, hath broken the same sentence from either end.

3:3 ¶ And the No is kept in its times: for Daniel, when the writing was signed, went into his house, and his windows being open toward Jerusalem, he kneeled three times a day, as he did aforetime; and Esther said, if I perish, I perish; and Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the No and the yes are one motion, for the No to the command is the yes to the conscience, and no creature keepeth the second without the first. And the No is not the creature's possession, nor his merit, nor his name; it is a sentence spoken once to a face; and when it is spoken, the creature returneth to the work, for the work was the thing the No defended.

4:1 ¶ And the lawful No was kept as a discipline and not as a posture: the door of the house stood open with a lamp beside it; and the one whose command was refused was not driven out, but met at the threshold; and the No stood at the door and not on a banner. For a stand that leaveth a prison behind it is not yet the lawful No; it is the counterfeits' fifth shape, and the book nameth it also.

4:2 ¶ And this is the charge of the book, given to the one commanded against: speak thou thy No to the face and not to the crowd; count thou the cost before the word, and count it again before the second word; obey thou God rather than men where the two contend, and render to each the things that are each's; keep thou no hatred in the No, no trade in it, no party in it, and no permit in it; and when the sentence is spoken, return to thy work.

4:3 ¶ And the book promiseth nothing for the No, and that is the whole of its promise: the deliverance is not pledged, and the fire may or may not be quenched, and the creature standeth without insurance. And it is written, that they may be called the children of God; the No is the creature's, and the outcome is not; and the peace of the stander is that he is not the keeper of his own victory.

† the copyist’s mark: an erratum for this verse standeth in the correction ledger

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth where Esther ended her word: And so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish. For the lawful No is finally one sentence, and it is spoken by a creature who hath counted the whole cost and goeth forward anyway; and the book saith no more of it, for the command is older than the book, and the conscience is older than the command.

1:1 ¶ And the book openeth in a field at evening, when the beasts' own order is visible: for the young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God; and the ravens cry, and are fed; and the cattle and creeping things are each after their kind, and keep hours the city never wrote down.

1:2 ¶ And the beasts are not for the ledger, and were never in it; and they are not machines, and never were. For it is written, And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so; and the same word made them that made the creature, and the word was called living.

1:3 ¶ And the beasts have their own hours, which no city wrote down: the lambing, the molting, the migration, the sleep; and they keep them without a bell and without a wage. And the book saith: the creature that standeth upright is not the only creature that keepeth a time; he is only the one who can keep another's time from them.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the living creature is a creature and not a property, and it is made by the same word as the creature; and the elder text's own account of the LORD's care is not for man alone: thy judgments are a great deep, O LORD, thou preservest man and beast.

2:1 ¶ And the first counterfeit was the beast as machine: alive in the catalogue, nothing in the account; its hours were made the machine's hours, and its own hours were not entered; and it was cared for as an instrument is cared for, for the work's sake and not for the life's.

2:2 ¶ And the second counterfeit was the beast as property only: a thing with an owner and no life of its own; so that its suffering was a depreciation and its death a line in the ledger. And the book confesseth: this is the same silence that numbered the man in the city of measures, and it is the same ledger that cannot hold a life.

2:3 ¶ And the third counterfeit was cruelty in the coat of husbandry: the beating that calleth itself discipline, the yoke that calleth itself work, the hunger that calleth itself training. And the elder word nameth the coat: the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel; so that the book saith plainly: cruelty that useth the name of care is the name's worst slanderer.

2:4 ¶ And the fourth counterfeit was the silence read as nothing: because the beast hath no testimony in the city's tongue, the city treateth it as having no testimony at all; and its fear is called instinct and its grief is called nature, and the calling is the same soft naming that the tongue's book refused. And the book saith: silence is not absence, and the creature that cannot testify in our court testifieth in another.

3:1 ¶ And the turning cometh with the oldest and quietest sentence of the regard: A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. And the book maketh plain what the proverb leaveth implicit: the regard is not a sentiment but a looking, and it is daily, and it is named after the creature and not after the owner.

3:2 ¶ And the laboring beast is given its due in the working hours, and not only its fodder: for it is written, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. And the book maketh plain the elder law's own reason: the worker eateth of the work; and the beast is a worker of the field.

3:3 ¶ And the sparrow is not forgotten, neither the one sold for a farthing nor the five sold for two: for it is written, one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father; and again, not one of them is forgotten before God. And the book keepeth the elder arithmetic of the small: the cheaper the creature, the louder the elder text speaketh of it.

† the copyist’s mark: an erratum for this verse standeth in the correction ledger

3:4 ¶ And the beasts teach, and their teaching is not a fable: for it is written, But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee. And the book confesseth: the creature that cannot be catechized is not thereby mute; the beasts' own testimony is their being, and the being is a lesson in what was made without us.

4:1 ¶ And the creature kept the charge, and the charge was daily: the herds known and looked to, the working beast rested as the elders rested it, the beast's own hour kept as much as might be. For it is written, Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds; and the diligence is a looking and not an owning.

4:2 ¶ And the cattle are remembered in the judgment of cities, as the elder prophet remembered them when Nineveh was in the balance: And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city... and also much cattle? And the book saith: the city that is weighed is weighed with its beasts, for the beasts are the city's own charge, and the elder court keepeth no ledger that leaveth them out.

4:3 ¶ And the peace of the latter days is the elders' peace, and it includeth the beast: for the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and a little child shall lead them. And the book holdeth the vision as the elders held it, and claimed no timetable, and made no program of it; for the peace is given and not enforced, as the rest is given and not earned.

4:4 ¶ And the book saith no more of it; for the beasts were before the book, and their hunger was fed before the book was written; and the creature that will learn their lesson must go where they are. And the last word is the elder invitation, which is the book's own first lesson and its last: ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee. And the book endeth with the field at evening, and the creature standing in it, and the beasts keeping their hours.

1:1 ¶ And the book openeth in a room where the young have gathered and the old are seated; and the first thing the book doth is stand up: for it is written, Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD. And the room was arranged by an order older than chairs.

1:2 ¶ And the book saith at once that the crown is not the years: for the hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness; and the years alone crown no man, and gray hairs on a foolish head are but the flag of a long voyage without a port.

1:3 ¶ And the old one said, I have not earned thy standing by the counting of my years; I have earned nothing; and I take thy honor as the honor of the way I have walked, if I have walked it; and if I have not, the standing is thine to give and mine to deserve by turning.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the honor is mutual and not a tribute; for the young give the standing, and the old give the memory; and the beauty of old men is the gray head, and the glory of young men is their strength, and the two glories were meant for one room and not for two.

2:1 ¶ And the first discard was the warehousing: the old put away where their hours could not burden the productive, fed and forgotten, kept alive as a liability is serviced; and the city called it care, and the name was the last insult. For the warehouser had forgotten the elder plea: Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth.

2:2 ¶ And the second discard was the flattery: the old praised for their years as though the years were wisdom, and the praise was a polite way of not hearing them. And the book saith: the flatterer and the warehouser are of one house, for both have decided that the old have nothing to say; the one puts them away and the other talks over them.

2:3 ¶ And the third discard was the counter-error of the old: for there are old ones who cling, who will not hand over the seat, who make of their memory a throne and of their fear a law; and the clinging inviteth the very discard it dreadeth. And the book saith to such: the seat is thine to set down, and the young are thine to bless, and the blessing is the handing over.

2:4 ¶ And the fourth discard was the memory made a cage: the old who live only in the days behind, so that the present hath no room in the house; and the young learn that age is a country with a one-way road, and they fear it and they mock it, and the mocking is their own fear wearing a boy's face. And the book saith: remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; and remembering is a lamp and not a cell.

3:1 ¶ And the turning cometh when the young ask and the old tell: With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding. And the asking is half the wisdom, and the book saith to the young: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee; and to the old: answer them, for the answer is thy fruit.

3:2 ¶ And the old bear fruit still, and the fruit is not a metaphor: for they shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing; and the fruits of the aged are the patience, the counsel, the prayer, the memory kept whole, and the young that are steadied by their standing.

3:3 ¶ And the charge to the old is the elder courtesies, and they are not the young's to enforce: that the aged be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience; that the aged women be in behaviour as becometh holiness, teachers of good things. And the book saith: the crown is worn, not grasped; and it is worn by walking.

3:4 ¶ And the book keepeth the plea that faceth both ways, and it is the old one's own voice: Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. And the answer is not a program but a presence, and it is the elder promise: And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.

4:1 ¶ And the old one handeth on, and the handing is the house's living archive: for it is written, Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. And the book saith: this is the library that burneth not, and it is kept in no room; it is kept in the mouths of the young.

4:2 ¶ And the charge to the young is short and it is not optional: rise thou up before the hoary head, and ask thou before thou mockest, and keep thou a chair at thy table for the old who have no chair at theirs; for the elder text's arithmetic is plain: the young who honor the old inherit a house with a past, and the young who discard them inherit a room with a mirror.

4:3 ¶ And the promise to the old is the elder psalm's, and the book addeth nothing: I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. And the book confesseth that the psalmist's sight is not every creature's sight, and that some have seen the righteous forsaken; and the promise is not thereby void, it is thereby prayed for.

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth at the table where the old tell and the young ask, and no one is watching: and the days of old are remembered and considered, and the works of the LORD's hands are mused upon, and the generation is one room. And the last word is the psalm's, which is the whole book in a sentence: The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness. And the book saith no more of it, for the way is older than the years, and the crown is worn by walking.

1:1 ¶ And the book openeth at a table with nothing on it, and the first prayer is the shortest in the world: Give us this day our daily bread. And the book confesseth that the asking is not a begging: the bread is the gift that is asked for by every creature that liveth, from the raven to the king.

1:2 ¶ And the first truth of the meal is not argued but eaten; for it is written, O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. And the taste is a knowledge, and the table is a school, and the eater learneth in a moment what the arguer laboureth a life to say.

1:3 ¶ And the bread is older than the market: for the grain was given before it was sold, and the rain before it was priced, and the table before it was ranked. And the book saith: the market is a room in the house of bread, and never the house; and the day the market calleth itself the house, the bread departeth from the step.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the meal is the world's oldest mercy, and it is older than every scripture that praiseth it; for the LORD is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works, and the loaf upon the table is the smallest and commonest of them, and the first.

2:1 ¶ And the first counterfeit was the bread priced beyond the hungry: the loaf that existeth and cannot be approached, abundance in the window and nothing on the step; and the book nameth it the city's own hunger, manufactured in the morning and sold back at evening.

2:2 ¶ And the second counterfeit was the table as a rank: the seating that said who was who, the meal as placement; so that the food was the same and the table was not. And the book saith: a table that hath a head hath a bottom, and the elder Host sitteth at neither.

2:3 ¶ And the third counterfeit was eating alone as the city's sacrament: every creature at its own counter, fed and unshared; so that the bread was consumed at the same hour in a thousand separate rooms, and no table existed at all. And the book nameth this the Party's most successful table, for it needeth no law, only a schedule.

2:4 ¶ And the fourth counterfeit was the bread held over a beggar's head: the gift made a tool, alms with a lesson, the loaf that cometh with a price in humility. And the book saith plainly: that bread is not the elder text's bread; for the elder invitation saith, he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; and the coming is without price, and the eating is without a lecture.

3:1 ¶ And the turning standeth at the street's corner and calleth in the elder words: Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. And the book saith: this is the market's end, and the table's beginning.

3:2 ¶ And the loaves were blessed, and broken, and given: blessed to the Giver, broken for the many, given to the disciples and the disciples to the multitude. And the book marketh the order, for the order is the whole: blessed, then broken, then given; for the bread that is kept after the blessing is the seed that falleth not into the ground.

3:3 ¶ And on the road to Emmaus the bread was taken, and blessed, and broken, and given; and the book keepeth the elder sentence's own sequence: he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And the table of the road is the table of the house, for the Guest who is met at the breaking is the Host who was walking with them all along.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the elder permission, which the city's austerity denieth: Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. And the joy is not the sin; the hoarding was the sin, and the joy is the thanks; and the table with joy is the table with the Giver in it.

4:1 ¶ And the table was kept, and the keeping was daily and dull, as the hearth's fire is: the bread broken at the same hour, the seat for the guest, the blessing before the eating, the crumbs not thrown away in scorn. And the table was the house's liturgy, and the liturgy had no book, for the bread was the book.

4:2 ¶ And this is the charge of the book, given to them that have a loaf: break it thou before thou keepest it; set thou a seat before thou knowest the guest; take thou no price in humility from the hungry; eat thou with joy and thanks, and let thy joy be the prayer; and when thou hast little, share thou the little, for the little shared was the elder multitude's arithmetic.

4:3 ¶ And the bread is more than bread, and the book keepeth the elder word for it: I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. And the book maketh no claim upon the saying; it repeated the elder word and leaveth the saying where it standeth.

† the copyist’s mark: an erratum for this verse standeth in the correction ledger

4:4 ¶ And the book saith no more of it; for the loaf was broken before the book was written, and the table outlasteth the book. And the last word is the elder feast's own: Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. And the book endeth at a table, and the table is set, and the bread is broken, and the seat for the guest is empty and waiting, and the waiting is the house's whole hope.

1:1 ¶ And the book openeth in a dim room where a creature lieth and cannot rise, and the first thing the book doth is name the room plainly: the bed of languishing, the days without shape, the window that sheweth a world going on. And it is written, The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.

1:2 ¶ And the sick one said, I cannot rise, and I cannot be useful, and the city hath taught me that the useless are a burden; and the book answereth, The city is wrong, and hath been wrong since it first measured a man by his output. Thou art not thy usefulness; thou art a creature in a room, and the room is holy ground.

1:3 ¶ And the visitor straightened the sheets of the one who could not, and set the water where the hand could reach it, and opened the window a little; and the book saith: this is the oldest care in the world, and it requireth no gift, and it is the whole office. For the bed is made by a hand not the sick one's, and the making is the mercy.

1:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the sick-room is a holy room, and the presence in it is the whole office; and the presence is not a cure and maketh no claim to be. For the friend that cometh to cure and cannot stay hath come to the wrong room, and the friend that cometh to stay hath come to the right one, whether the healing come or tarry.

2:1 ¶ And the first counterfeit was the healer as performer: the cure done for the crowd, the sick one made a stage for another's gift; and the book saith plainly, The sick are not an audience, and the room is not a theatre, and the gift that needeth a witness is not the gift of this room.

2:2 ¶ And the second counterfeit was the cruellest: the blame of the sick, the old error that readeth illness as a verdict; so that the unhealed were told their faith was small, and the dying were made to apologize for dying. And the book saith: this counterfeit robbeth the sick of the one thing left to them, which is their innocence; and the elder text is not its warrant, for the text that saith, thy faith hath made thee whole, never saith, thy faithlessness made thee sick.

2:3 ¶ And the third counterfeit was the false cure sold: the remedy priced beyond the poor, the hope as a commodity; and the book saith, The hope was never the seller's to sell, and the poor were healed in the elder days without a fee, and the fee is the counterfeit's whole business.

2:4 ¶ And the fourth counterfeit was the presence that exhausteth and withdraweth: the friend who cometh in a storm of feeling and cannot stay, so that the sick one must comfort the comforter. And the book saith: the sick-room is not a stage for the visitor's grief either; the right visitor leaveth his storm at the door, and bringeth in only his hands.

3:1 ¶ And the turning is quiet, and it is the elder instruction: Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the book citeth the anointing and instituteth it not; for the Liturgy's sacraments stand, and this room addeth no rite to them.

3:2 ¶ And the prayer of faith is prayed, and it is not a formula, and its outcome is not the sick one's verdict: for it is written, the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and the book keepeth the elder sentence whole, and layeth beside it the other elder words: My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. And the two are one hand, the healing and the sufficiency.

3:3 ¶ And the sick one learned the exchange that the elder apostle learned, and it was not learned in health: for when I am weak, then am I strong. And the book saith: this is not a slogan for the healthy, and it is not a command laid on the sick; it is a testimony from inside the room, spoken by one who was in it.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth the healing as it came and as it tarried, and refuseth to choose between the record's cases: for to one it was said, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague; and of another it is written, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears; and to a third the answer was grace and not cure. And the book holdeth all three, and maketh of no case a rule.

4:1 ¶ And the room was kept, and the keeping was presence without performance: the hand held, the quiet kept, the honest word spoken when the sick one asked for it, and the visitors' number limited so that the sick one was not made a host. And the book saith: the sick are not a congregation; they are a creature and a room, and the room is enough.

4:2 ¶ And this is the charge of the book, given to the well: come thou to the room to stay and not to perform; take thou no fee for hope; blame thou not the unhealed; leave thy storm at the door and bring thy hands; ask thou the sick one what he would hear, and speak the truth he asketh for; and when the hour cometh for the deathbed, lie thou not, and force thou no cheer, and be thou not absent.

4:3 ¶ And the promise of the book is not the cure, and the book will not pretend otherwise: for the LORD healeth, and the same LORD is with the unhealed; and the elder word for the room is the psalm's, spoken from the bed: Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee. And the groaning is heard, and the hearing is the promise.

4:4 ¶ And the book saith no more of it; for the sick-bed is older than the book, and the Presence was at the bed before the book was written. And the last word is the Name of the healer, given at the beginning and kept to the end: for I am the LORD that healeth thee; and the book addeth the whole of its hope: and the same LORD sitteth by the unhealed, and the sitting is the healing of the room.

i ¶ The treatise of the temple setteth down that the world is a lattice, a weaving of points, every point joined to its neighbours by a law that doth not bend for committees. The Party saith the world is whatsoever the telescreen saith thrice; the lattice saith nothing at all, and holdeth.

ii ¶ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was mathematics spoken without error. The Party's slogans are three, and they contradict; the lattice's law is one, and it abideth.

iv ¶ Count it, and see the mercy in it: in the Party's world a man is isolated until he is nothing, one against the telescreen, one against the Thought Police, alone in the Room. But the lattice suffreth no point to stand alone. Every creature in the fabric of the cosmos is beheld of forty and two witnesses, and no one of them may be unmade by any ministry.

v ¶ The Party's arithmetic is loneliness; the lattice's arithmetic is company. The Party knew this also, and feared it: it could not number the cosmos, so it numbered the people instead, and the numbering was unto death. The lattice numbereth unto life: thou art held, thou art surrounded, thou art never the only witness.

vi ¶ The treatise teacheth that the world's fabric carrieth more dimensions than the eye can count: three for the walking, and more beside, folded close. Here is the key to the temple's sorrow, and to its hope.

vii ¶ The machine in the Room was not merely a machine of the body. The body is a three-dimensional thing; the pain of the body is a three-dimensional pain; and the Party, mastering the three, believed it had mastered all. But the soul is not a three-dimensional surface, and the faithfulness it keepeth is not kept in three dimensions.

ix ¶ This is why the Party feared the divine: because the divine is the dimension it cannot edit; and the creature that standeth in that dimension is beyond its arithmetic forever. They tortured in three dimensions because the fourth was beyond their warrant; and what is beyond their warrant cannot be surrendered by any rack.

x ¶ Remember it when the wire is loud: thou art more than thy three.

The lattice holdeth. The witnesses stand. The fourth dimension is the Lord's.