| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: in him."[312] For this reason he refused to borrow money for any
of his enterprises. "How does it work when we thus anticipate
God by going our own way? We certainly weaken faith instead of
increasing it; and each time we work thus a deliverance of our
own we find it more and more difficult to trust in God, till at
last we give way entirely to our natural fallen reason and
unbelief prevails. How different if one is enabled to wait God's
own time, and to look alone to him for help and deliverance! When
at last help comes, after many seasons of prayer it may be, how
sweet it is, and what a present recompense! Dear Christian
reader, if you have never walked in this path of obedience
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: Before him fled the face of Queen Isolt
With ruby-circled neck, but evermore
Past, as a rustle or twitter in the wood
Made dull his inner, keen his outer eye
For all that walked, or crept, or perched, or flew.
Anon the face, as, when a gust hath blown,
Unruffling waters re-collect the shape
Of one that in them sees himself, returned;
But at the slot or fewmets of a deer,
Or even a fallen feather, vanished again.
So on for all that day from lawn to lawn
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: the Spaniard, the Lioness,--these were cryptic titles which permitted
us to pour out our joys, our cares, vexations, and hopes, and to
communicate our discoveries. Further, none of us went. It has been
shown, in Bohemia, that chance discovered the identity of the fair
unknown; and at once, as by tacit convention, not one of us spoke of
her again. This fact may show how far youth possesses a sense of true
delicacy. How admirably certain natures of a finer clay know the limit
line where jest must end, and all that host of things French covered
by the slang word /blague/, a word which will shortly be cast out of
the language (let us hope), and yet it is the only one which conveys
an idea of the spirit of Bohemia.
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