| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: that I was free--no longer a slave--kept me cheerful under this,
and many similar proscriptions, which I was destined to meet in
New Bedford and elsewhere on the free soil of Massachusetts.
For instance, though colored children attended the schools,
and were treated kindly by their teachers, the New Bedford Lyceum
refused, till several years after my residence in that city,
to allow any colored person to attend the lectures delivered in its
hall. Not until such men as Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horace Mann refused to lecture in their
course while there was such a restriction, was it abandoned.
Becoming satisfied that I could not rely on my trade in New
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: out that immortal life is a reality, that love is a
reality, and that one must live for others if one
would be unceasingly happy."
At this point one realises the gulf which divides
the Slavonic from the English temperament. No
average Englishman of seven-and-twenty (as Tol-
stoy was then) would pursue reflections of this
kind, or if he did, he would in all probability keep
them sedulously to himself.
To Tolstoy and his aunt, on the contrary, it
seemed the most natural thing in the world to
The Forged Coupon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: those who feel hunger and thirst, which urge them to it. Some pretend
that it is a matter of liberty and not necessary, and that it is
sufficient to believe without it; and thus for the most part they go so
far that they become quite brutish, and finally despise both the
Sacrament and the Word of God.
Now, it is true, as we have said, that no one should by any means be
coerced or compelled, lest we institute a new murdering of souls.
Nevertheless, it must be known that such people as deprive themselves
of, and withdraw from, the Sacrament so long a time are not to be
considered Christians. For Christ has not instituted it to be treated
as a show, but has commanded His Christians to eat and drink it, and
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