| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: increase faith, although all works also help to do this, as St.
Peter says, II. Peter i: "Wherefore the rather, brethren, give
diligence through good works to make your calling and election
sure."
XIX. The First Commandment forbids us to have other gods, and
thereby commands that we have a God, the true God, by a firm
faith, trust, confidence, hope and love, which are the only works
whereby a man can have, honor and keep a God; for by no other
work can one find or lose God except by faith or unbelief, by
trusting or doubting; of the other works none reaches quite to
God. So also in the Second Commandment we are forbidden to use
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: We may have all our sails blown away. Every
stitch of canvas has been on her since we broke
ground at the mouth of the Mei-nam, fifteen days
ago . . . or fifteen centuries. It seems to me
that all my life before that momentous day is in-
finitely remote, a fading memory of light-hearted
youth, something on the other side of a shadow.
Yes, sails may very well be blown away. And that
would be like a death sentence on the men. We
haven't strength enough on board to bend another
suit; incredible thought, but it is true. Or we may
The Shadow Line |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: sounds in relation to the organs of speech. The phonograph affords a
visible evidence of the nature and divisions of sound; we may be truly said
to know what we can manufacture. Artificial languages, such as that of
Bishop Wilkins, are chiefly useful in showing what language is not. The
study of any foreign language may be made also a study of Comparative
Philology. There are several points, such as the nature of irregular
verbs, of indeclinable parts of speech, the influence of euphony, the decay
or loss of inflections, the elements of syntax, which may be examined as
well in the history of our own language as of any other. A few well-
selected questions may lead the student at once into the heart of the
mystery: such as, Why are the pronouns and the verb of existence generally
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