But he could not stand out as regards another matter, which caused him some anxiety. Panky insisted that my father should give them a receipt for the money, and there was an altercation between the Professors on this point, much longer than I can here find space to give. Hanky argued that a receipt was useless, inasmuch as it would be ruin to my father ever to refer to the subject again. Panky, however, was anxious, not lest my father should again claim the money, but (though he did not say so outright) lest Hanky should claim the whole purchase as his own. In so the end Panky, for a wonder, carried the day, and a receipt was drawn up to the effect that the undersigned acknowledged to have received from Professors Hanky and Panky the sum of £4, 10s. (I translate the amount), as joint purchasers of certain pieces of yellow ore, a blanket, and sundry articles found without an owner in the King’s preserves. This paper was dated, as the permit had been, XIX. xii. 29.
My father, generally so ready, was at his wits’ end for a name, and could think of none but Mr. Nosnibor’s. Happily, remembering that this gentleman had also been called Senoj—a name common enough in Erewhon—he signed himself “Senoj, Under-ranger.”
Panky was now satisfied. “We will put it in the bag,” he said, “with the pieces of yellow ore.”
“Put it where you like,” said Hanky contemptuously; and into the bag it was put.
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.