| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: am, like him, pained with want, but am not, like him, satisfied
with fulness. The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I
long again to be hungry that I may again quicken the attention.
The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves,
where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and waste
their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I likewise
can call the lutist and the singer; but the sounds that pleased me
yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome to-
morrow. I can discover in me no power of perception which is not
glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself
delighted. Man surely has some latent sense for which this place
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: eloquence was drawing the silent mob after him, away from the
house. This justice must be rendered to the parish priests of
the Greek Church that, strangers to the country as they were
(being all drawn from the interior of Russia), the majority of
them used such influence as they had over their flocks in the
cause of peace and humanity. True to the spirit of their
calling, they tried to soothe the passions of the excited
peasantry, and opposed rapine and violence, whenever they could,
with all their might. And this conduct they pursued against the
express wishes of the authorities. Later on some of them were
made to suffer for this disobedience by being removed abruptly to
 A Personal Record |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: truth] they are not [the Church]; nor will we listen to those
things which, under the name of Church, they enjoin or forbid.
For, thank God, [to-day] a child seven years old knows what
the Church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear
the voice of their Shepherd. For the children pray thus: I
believe in one holy [catholic or] Christian Church. This
holiness does not consist in albs, tonsures, long gowns, and
other of their ceremonies devised by them beyond Holy
Scripture, but in the Word of God and true faith.
XIII. How One is Justified before God, and of Good Works.
What I have hitherto and constantly taught concerning this I
|