Mark 2 and Matthew 9 read as a description of the audience. He was preaching the word when four men carried in a paralytic; seeing their faith he said, my son, your sins are forgiven; the scribes thought in their hearts that this was blasphemy, who can forgive sin but God alone; and discerning what they contemplated he asked which is easier, to say your sins are forgiven, or rise, take up your bed and walk. Neville's reading turns on the last line of the episode - they glorified God who had given such authority to men - because it was a man who did it, and we are that man. The four men are the four senses: the ancients counted four, not five, joining taste and touch because both depend on contact while sight, sound and scent stand apart, and they are the four rivers that run out of Eden. So every listener came in borne on the backs of those four - the bank balance, the tax due on the fifteenth, the notice under the door, the unemployment - and is told to get up and walk out unaided by them, which means to ignore what they report and see instead the world as it would be seen were the wish already true. The story carries its own answer to the objection that only God forgives: who forgave you? I assumed. Who assumed? I assumed - and that is God, whose name is I AM. It also carries the doctrine of vicarious faith, which Neville draws from the detail that the healer speaks first to the bearers and not to the man: the paralytic himself had no faith, so faith held for him by others was enough, and quite often that is easier than faith held for oneself - in spite of myself, you can pull me out of it.