When all was now concluded, my father laughingly said, "If you have dealt
unfairly by me, I forgive you. My motto is, 'Forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us.'"

"Repeat those last words," said Panky eagerly. My father was alarmed at
his manner, but thought it safer to repeat them.

"You hear that, Hanky? I am convinced; I have not another word to say.
The man is a true Erewhonian; he has our corrupt reading of the
Sunchild's prayer."

"Please explain."

"Why, can you not see?" said Panky, who was by way of being great at
conjectural emendations. "Can you not see how impossible it is for the
Sunchild, or any of the people to whom he declared (as we now know
provisionally) that he belonged, could have made the forgiveness of his
own sins depend on the readiness with which he forgave other people? No
man in his senses would dream of such a thing. It would be asking a
supposed all-powerful being not to forgive his sins at all, or at best to
forgive them imperfectly. No; Yram got it wrong. She mistook 'but do
not' for 'as we.' The sound of the words is very much alike; the correct
reading should obviously be, 'Forgive us our trespasses, but do not
forgive them that trespass against us.' This makes sense, and turns an
impossible prayer into one that goes straight to the heart of every one
of us." Then, turning to my father, he said, "You can see this, my man,
can you not, as soon as it is pointed out to you?"

My father said that he saw it now, but had always heard the words as he
had himself spoken them.