| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: had, at any rate, the philosophic temper. If one contemplates the
ordinary pulpits and platforms of England, one can but feel the
contempt of Julian, or the indifference of Montaigne. We are
dominated by the fanatic, whose worst vice is his sincerity.
Anything approaching to the free play of the mind is practically
unknown amongst us. People cry out against the sinner, yet it is
not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin
except stupidity.
ERNEST. Ah! what an antinomian you are!
GILBERT. The artistic critic, like the mystic, is an antinomian
always. To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: blind us to the mote that is in our brother's. Let us feel our
offences with our hands, make them great and bright before us like
the sun, make us eat them and drink them for our diet. Blind us to
the offences of our beloved, cleanse them from our memories, take
them out of our mouths for ever. Let all here before Thee carry
and measure with the false balances of love, and be in their own
eyes and in all conjunctures the most guilty. Help us at the same
time with the grace of courage, that we be none of us cast down
when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our happiness or our
integrity: touch us with fire from the altar, that we may be up
and doing to rebuild our city: in the name and by the method of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: wilderness, often into the literal wilderness out of doors, where
the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, St. Francis, George Fox, and so many
others had to go. George Fox expresses well this isolation; and
I can do no better at this point than read to you a page from his
Journal, referring to the period of his youth when religion began
to ferment within him seriously.
"I fasted much," Fox says, "walked abroad in solitary places many
days, and often took my Bible, and sat in hollow trees and
lonesome places until night came on; and frequently in the night
walked mournfully about by myself; for I was a man of sorrows in
the time of the first workings of the Lord in me.
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