| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: must thou, therefore, prove thy loving affection for me by thy
keeping of God's commandments, and by thy continuance in this
place even to the end, living as thou hast learned and been
instructed, and alway remembering my poor and slothful soul.
Rejoice, therefore, with great joy, and make merry with the
gladness that is in Christ, because thou hast exchanged the
earthly and corruptible for the eternal and incorruptible; and
because there draweth nigh the reward of thy works, and thy
rewarder is already at hand, who shall come to see the vineyard
which thou hast dressed, and shall richly pay thee the wages of
thine husbandry. `Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: informed of the state of ecclesiastical affairs in England. And he
asked me eagerly after Dr. Pusey, for whose conversion the good man
had continued ever since to pray night and morning.
'I thought he was very near the truth,' he said; 'and he will reach
it yet; there is so much virtue in prayer.'
He must be a stiff, ungodly Protestant who can take anything but
pleasure in this kind and hopeful story. While he was thus near
the subject, the good father asked me if I were a Christian; and
when he found I was not, or not after his way, he glossed it over
with great good-will.
The road which we were following, and which this stalwart father
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: be for the last time. With my eyes quite open, I say; and if I did
not hesitate at the beginning do you think that I would draw back
now?'
'You do not know!' she cried, with rising agitation. 'This
country, even this garden, is death to you. They all believe it; I
am the only one that does not. If they hear you now, if they heard
a whisper - I dread to think of it. O, go, go this instant. It is
my prayer.'
'Dear lady, do not refuse me what I have come so far to seek; and
remember that out of all the millions in England there is no other
but yourself in whom I can dare confide. I have all the world
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