| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: physical bodies does.
"An athlete . . . sometimes awakens suddenly to an understanding
of the fine points of the game and to a real enjoyment of it,
just as the convert awakens to an appreciation of religion. If he
keeps on engaging in the sport, there may come a day when all at
once the game plays itself through him--when he loses himself in
some great contest. In the same way, a musician may suddenly
reach a point at which pleasure in the technique of the art
entirely falls away, and in some moment of inspiration he becomes
the instrument through which music flows. The writer has chanced
to hear two different married persons, both of whose wedded lives
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: goodness, the soul, which cleaves to them with a firm faith, is
so united to them, nay, thoroughly absorbed by them, that it not
only partakes in, but is penetrated and saturated by, all their
virtues. For if the touch of Christ was healing, how much more
does that most tender spiritual touch, nay, absorption of the
word, communicate to the soul all that belongs to the word! In
this way therefore the soul, through faith alone, without works,
is from the word of God justified, sanctified, endued with truth,
peace, and liberty, and filled full with every good thing, and is
truly made the child of God, as it is said, "To them gave He
power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: meditation. Such intervals as I had I employed in reading books and
in writing down my memorandums of what occurred to me every day,
and out of which afterwards I took most of this work, as it relates to
my observations without doors. What I wrote of my private
meditations I reserve for private use, and desire it may not be made
public on any account whatever.
I also wrote other meditations upon divine subjects, such as
occurred to me at that time and were profitable to myself, but not fit
for any other view, and therefore I say no more of that.
I had a very good friend, a physician, whose name was Heath, whom
I frequently visited during this dismal time, and to whose advice I was
A Journal of the Plague Year |
