| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: Baptism. This is blasphemy [against God].
XV. Of Human Traditions.
The declaration of the Papists that human traditions serve for
the remission of sins, or merit salvation, is [altogether]
unchristian and condemned, as Christ says Matt. 15, 9: In vain
they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of
men. Again, Titus 1, 14: That turn from the truth. Again, when
they declare that it is a mortal sin if one breaks these
ordinances [does not keep these statutes], this, too, is not
right.
These are the articles on which I must stand, and, God
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: day or so we did our best, and I can still remember in my
limbs and back the pumping--the fatigue in my arms and the
memory of a clear little dribble of water that jerked as one
pumped, and of knocking off and the being awakened to go on
again, and of fatigue piling up upon fatigue. At last we ceased
to think of anything but pumping; one became a thing of torment
enchanted, doomed to pump for ever. I still remember it as pure
relief when at last Pollack came to me pipe in mouth.
"The captain says the damned thing's going down right now;' he
remarked, chewing his mouthpiece. "Eh?"
"Good idea!" I said. "One can't go on pumping for ever."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: where it is that you bid them come, and where go. It matters to
you, king of men, whether your people hate you, and die by you, or
love you, and live by you. You may measure your dominion by
multitudes, better than by miles; and count degrees of love-
latitude, not from, but to, a wonderfully warm and infinite equator.
Measure!--nay, you cannot measure. Who shall measure the difference
between the power of those who "do and teach," and who are greatest
in the kingdoms of earth, as of heaven--and the power of those who
undo, and consume--whose power, at the fullest, is only the power of
the moth and the rust? Strange! to think how the Moth-kings lay up
treasures for the moth; and the Rust-kings, who are to their
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