| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: good in us from head to foot [both within and without], and
that we must absolutely become new and other men.
This repentance is not piecemeal [partial] and beggarly
[fragmentary], like that which does penance for actual sins,
nor is it uncertain like that. For it does not debate what is
or is not sin, but hurls everything on a heap, and says: All
in us is nothing but sin [affirms that, with respect to us,
all is simply sin (and there is nothing in us that is not sin
and guilt)]. What is the use of [For why do we wish]
investigating, dividing, or distinguishing a long time? For
this reason, too, this contrition is not [doubtful or]
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: mirth and jollity congratulate themselves on having raised their city
to newer heights of fame. Each several citizen claims to have shared
in the plan of the campaign,[14] and to have slain the largest number.
Indeed it would be hard to find where false embellishment will not
creep in,[15] the number stated to be the slain exceeding that of
those that actually perished. So truly glorious a thing it seems to
them to have won a great victory.[16]
[10] Lit. "and further, wars there are, waged against forcibly-
subjected populations whether by free states"--e.g. of Olynthus,
"Hell." V. ii. 23, or Athens against her "subject allies" during
the Pel. war--"or by despotic rules"--Jason of Pherae ("Hell."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: the rain, and the lasses walked barefoot to kirk through the dust of
summer, and went bravely down by the burn-side, and sat on stones to
make a public toilet before entering! It was perhaps an air wafted from
Glasgow; or perhaps it marked a stage of that dizziness of gratified
vanity, in which the instinctive act passed unperceived. He was looking
after! She unloaded her bosom of a prodigious sigh that was all
pleasure, and betook herself to run. When she had overtaken the
stragglers of her family, she caught up the niece whom she had so
recently repulsed, and kissed and slapped her, and drove her away again,
and ran after her with pretty cries and laughter. Perhaps she thought
the laird might still be looking! But it chanced the little scene came
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