| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: and resting upon the waves from the fatigue of their flight, I saw some
magnificent albatrosses, uttering discordant cries like the braying of an ass,
and birds belonging to the family of the long-wings.
As to the fish, they always provoked our admiration when we surprised
the secrets of their aquatic life through the open panels.
I saw many kinds which I never before had a chance of observing.
{3 paragraphs are missing}
From the 21st to the 23rd of January the Nautilus went at
the rate of two hundred and fifty leagues in twenty-four hours,
being five hundred and forty miles, or twenty-two miles an hour.
If we recognised so many different varieties of fish, it was because,
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: Apollo's lute'; or that evil passions fled at his approach, and men
whose dull unimaginative lives had been but a mode of death rose as
it were from the grave when he called them; or that when he taught
on the hillside the multitude forgot their hunger and thirst and
the cares of this world, and that to his friends who listened to
him as he sat at meat the coarse food seemed delicate, and the
water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full
of the odour and sweetness of nard.
Renan in his VIE DE JESUS - that gracious fifth gospel, the gospel
according to St. Thomas, one might call it - says somewhere that
Christ's great achievement was that he made himself as much loved
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: utterly corrupted; as the Law must tell man that he has no God
nor regards [cares for] God, and worships other gods, a matter
which before and without the Law he would not have believed.
In this way he becomes terrified, is humbled, desponds,
despairs, and anxiously desires aid, but sees no escape; he
begins to be an enemy of [enraged at] God, and to murmur, etc.
This is what Paul says, Rom. 4, 15: The Law worketh wrath. And
Rom. 5, 20: Sin is increased by the Law. [The Law entered that
the offense might abound.]
III. Of Repentance.
This office [of the Law] the New Testament retains and urges,
|
