| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: says, I. Peter ii, "Ye shall live as free men, but not using your
liberty for a cloak of maliciousness," as if he said: The freedom
of faith does not permit sins, nor will it cover them, but it
sets us free to do all manner of good works and to endure all
things as they happen to us, so that a man is not bound only to
one work or to a few. So also St. Paul, Galatians v: "Use not
your liberty for an occasion to the flesh." Such men must be
urged by laws and hemmed in by teaching and exhortation. The
third class are wicked men, always ready for sins; these must be
constrained by spiritual and temporal laws, like wild horses and
dogs, and where this does not help, they must be put to death by
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: the records of the little world they had engulfed: the
annihilation of whole families, the extinction of races, had, in
more than one instance, rendered vain all efforts to recognize
the dead. It required the subtle perception of long intimacy to
name remains tumefied and discolored by corruption and exposure,
mangled and gnawed by fishes, by reptiles, and by birds;--it
demanded the great courage of love to look upon the eyeless faces
found sweltering in the blackness of cypress-shadows, under the
low palmettoes of the swamps,--where gorged buzzards started from
sleep, or cottonmouths uncoiled, hissing, at the coming of the
searchers. And sometimes all who had loved the lost were
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: circular ballroom. If that roof could speak, what love-stories could
it not tell!
This interesting medley gave the Sceaux balls at that time a spice of
more amusement than those of two or three places of the same kind near
Paris; and it had incontestable advantages in its rotunda, and the
beauty of its situation and its gardens. Emilie was the first to
express a wish to play at being COMMON FOLK at this gleeful suburban
entertainment, and promised herself immense pleasure in mingling with
the crowd. Everybody wondered at her desire to wander through such a
mob; but is there not a keen pleasure to grand people in an incognito?
Mademoiselle de Fontaine amused herself with imagining all these town-
|
