| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: afraid I did not behave very politely to her that
evening. I hardly spoke or looked at her, and saw
nothing but the tall, slender figure in a white dress,
with a pink sash, a flushed, beaming, dimpled
face, and sweet, kind eyes. I was not alone; they
were all looking at her with admiration, the men
and women alike, although she outshone all of
them. They could not help admiring her.
"Although I was not nominally her partner for
the mazurka, I did as a matter of fact dance nearly
the whole time with her. She always came for-
The Forged Coupon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: grace of God, as it is written, Psalm cxlvii: "The Lord taketh
pleasure in them that I fear Him, in those that hope in His
mercy." So we pray with perfect confidence: "Our Father," and yet
petition: "Forgive us our trespasses"; we are children and yet
sinners; are acceptable and yet do not do enough; and all this
is the work of faith, firmly grounded in God's grace.
XVII. But if you ask, where the faith and the confidence can be
found and whence they come, this it is certainly most necessary
to know. First: Without doubt faith does not come from your works
or merit, but alone from Jesus Christ, and is freely promised and
given; as St. Paul writes, Romans v: "God commendeth His love to
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: nevertheless to affirm the worth of every human system of ethics
fundamentally opposed to human egoism.
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Notes
THE STORY OF MIMI-NASHI-HOICHI
[1] See my Kotto, for a description of these curious crabs.
[2] Or, Shimonoseki. The town is also known by the name of Bakkan.
[3] The biwa, a kind of four-stringed lute, is chiefly used in musical
recitative. Formerly the professional minstrels who recited the
Heike-Monogatari, and other tragical histories, were called biwa-hoshi, or
"lute-priests." The origin of this appellation is not clear; but it is
Kwaidan |
