| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: to protect its subjects, and to punish thievery, robbery, and
adultery, as St. Paul says, Romans xiii: "It beareth not the
sword in vain; it serves God with it, to the terror of evil
doers, and to the protection of the good."
Here men sin in two ways. First, if they lie to the government,
deceive it, and are disloyal, neither obey nor do as it has
ordered and commanded, whether with their bodies or their
possessions. For even if the government does injustice, as the
King of Babylon did to the people of Israel, yet God would have
it obeyed, without treachery and deception. Secondly, when men
speak evil of the government and curse it, and when a man cannot
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: from the face of this great land, but even the name of the
enemy from the knowledge and language of the people.
I could only account for it on the hypothesis that the
country had been entirely depopulated except for a few
scattered and forgotten children, who, in some marvelous
manner, had been preserved by Providence to re-populate the
land. These children had, doubtless, been too young to
retain in their memories to transmit to their children any
but the vaguest suggestion of the cataclysm which had
overwhelmed their parents.
Professor Cortoran, since my return to Pan-America, has
Lost Continent |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Till her people all around the royal chariot agitated,
Madly dash'd the darts together, writhing barbarous lineaments,
Made the noise of frosty woodlands, when they shiver in January,
Roar'd as when the rolling breakers boom and blanch on the precipices,
Yell'd as when the winds of winter tear an oak on a promontory.
So the silent colony hearing her tumultuous adversaries
Clash the darts and on the buckler beat with rapid unanimous hand,
Thought on all her evil tyrannies, all her pitiless avarice,
Till she felt the heart within her fall and flutter tremulously,
Then her pulses at the clamoring of her enemy fainted away.
Out of evil evil flourishes, out of tyranny tyranny buds.
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