| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: Burzee, where for the first time in many centuries the rulers of the
immortals who inhabit the earth were gathered together.
There was the Queen of the Water Sprites, whose beautiful form was as
clear as crystal but continually dripped water on the bank of moss
where she sat. And beside her was the King of the Sleep Fays, who
carried a wand from the end of which a fine dust fell all around, so
that no mortal could keep awake long enough to see him, as mortal eyes
were sure to close in sleep as soon as the dust filled them. And next
to him sat the Gnome King, whose people inhabit all that region under
the earth's surface, where they guard the precious metals and the
jewel stones that lie buried in rock and ore. At his right hand stood
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: simple that they are afraid of using it. Still, they use it
sometimes, and, now and then, one comes across it in popular
newspapers. It is, of course, a ridiculous word to apply to a work
of art. For what is morbidity but a mood of emotion or a mode of
thought that one cannot express? The public are all morbid,
because the public can never find expression for anything. The
artist is never morbid. He expresses everything. He stands
outside his subject, and through its medium produces incomparable
and artistic effects. To call an artist morbid because he deals
with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called
Shakespeare mad because he wrote 'King Lear.'
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: thou hast destroyed thyself; but in Me is thine help" (Hosea
xiii. 9). Now what is done by this one precept is done by all;
for all are equally impossible of fulfilment by us.
Now when a man has through the precepts been taught his own
impotence, and become anxious by what means he may satisfy the
law--for the law must be satisfied, so that no jot or tittle of
it may pass away, otherwise he must be hopelessly
condemned--then, being truly humbled and brought to nothing in
his own eyes, he finds in himself no resource for justification
and salvation.
Then comes in that other part of Scripture, the promises of God,
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