The Book of the Two Measures

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.