| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: before God. No man is righteous before Him. And Christ says,
John 16, 8: The Holy Ghost will reprove the world of sin.
This, then, is the thunderbolt of God by which He strikes in a
heap [hurls to the ground] both manifest sinners and false
saints [hypocrites], and suffers no one to be in the right
[declares no one righteous], but drives them all together to
terror and despair. This is the hammer, as Jeremiah says, 23,
29: Is not My Word like a hammer that breaketh the rock in
pieces? This is not activa contritio or manufactured
repentance, but passiva contritio [torture of conscience],
true sorrow of heart, suffering and sensation of death.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: the high-colored, heterogeneous architecture, the huge white marble
facades glittering in the strong, crude light, and bedizened
with gilded lettering, the multifarious awnings, banners,
and streamers, the extraordinary number of omnibuses, horsecars,
and other democratic vehicles, the vendors of cooling fluids,
the white trousers and big straw hats of the policemen,
the tripping gait of the modish young persons on the pavement,
the general brightness, newness, juvenility, both of people
and things. The young men had exchanged few observations;
but in crossing Union Square, in front of the monument to Washington--
in the very shadow, indeed, projected by the image of the |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: ridge. Here it was impossible not to believe it had snowed. The forest was
as still as night, and looked very strange with the white aisles lined by
black tree trunks and the gray fog shrouding the tree-tops. Soon we were
climbing again, and I saw that Hiram meant to head the canyon where I had
left Dick.
The fog split and blew away, and the brilliant sunlight changed the forest.
The frost began to melt, and the air was full of mist. We climbed and
climbed--out of the stately yellow-pine zone, up among the gnarled and
blasted spruces, over and around strips of weathered stone. Once I saw a
cold, white snow-peak. It was hard enough for me to carry my rifle and keep
up with the hunter without talking. Besides, Hiram had answered me rather
The Young Forester |
