| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: which they must at last take a cruel fall, as Christ says,
Matthew vii. This good-will and favor, on which our confidence
rests, was proclaimed by the angels from heaven, when they sang
on Christmas night: "Gloria in excelsis Deo, Glory to God in the
highest, peace to earth, gracious favor to man."
IX. Now this is the work of the First Commandment, which
commands: "Thou shalt have no other gods," which means: "Since
I alone am God, thou shalt place all thy confidence, trust and
faith on Me alone, and on no one else." For that is not to have
a god, if you call him God only with your lips, or worship him
with the knees or bodily gestures; but if you trust Him with the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: She answered, 'or with fair philosophies
That lift the fancy; for indeed these fields
Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns,
Where paced the Demigods of old, and saw
The soft white vapour streak the crownèd towers
Built to the Sun:' then, turning to her maids,
'Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward;
Lay out the viands.' At the word, they raised
A tent of satin, elaborately wrought
With fair Corinna's triumph; here she stood,
Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: [10] "And sacrifices." Cf. Dem. "c. Lept." 137, {en toinun tois peri
touton nomois o Drakon . . . katharon diorisen einai}. "Now in the
laws upon this subject, Draco, although he strove to make it
fearful and dreadful for a man to slay another, and ordained that
the homicide should be excluded from lustrations, cups, and drink-
offerings, from the temples and the market-place, specifying
everything by which he thought most effectually to restrain people
from such a practice, still did not abolish the rule of justice,
but laid down the cases in which it should be lawful to kill, and
declared that the killer under such circumstances should be deemed
pure" (C. R. Kennedy).
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