| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: "Go and see what baby is doing; and tell him he mustnt" is the last
word of the nursery; and the grimmest aspect of it is that it was
first formulated by a comic paper as a capital joke.
Technical Instruction
Technical instruction tempts to violence (as a short cut) more than
liberal education. The sailor in Mr Rudyard Kipling's Captains
Courageous, teaching the boy the names of the ship's tackle with a
rope's end, does not disgust us as our schoolmasters do, especially as
the boy was a spoiled boy. But an unspoiled boy would not have needed
that drastic medicine. Technical training may be as tedious as
learning to skate or to play the piano or violin; but it is the price
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: asked of Peter whether the children of a king were not free from
taxes. Peter agreed to this; yet Jesus commanded him to go to the
sea, saying, "Lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and
cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when
thou hast opened his mouth thou shalt find a piece of money; that
take, and give unto them for Me and thee" (Matt. xvii. 27).
This example is very much to our purpose; for here Christ calls
Himself and His disciples free men and children of a King, in
want of nothing; and yet He voluntarily submits and pays the tax.
Just as far, then, as this work was necessary or useful to Christ
for justification or salvation, so far do all His other works or
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: vanity, superficially clever, and fundamentally a fool. She has a
red-brown rolling eye, too large for her face, and with sparks of
both levity and ferocity; her forehead is high and narrow, her
figure thin and a little stooping. Her manners, her conversation,
which she interlards with French, her very tastes and ambitions, are
alike assumed; and the assumption is ungracefully apparent: Hoyden
playing Cleopatra. I should judge her to be incapable of truth. In
private life a girl of this description embroils the peace of
families, walks attended by a troop of scowling swains, and passes,
once at least, through the divorce court; it is a common and, except
to the cynic, an uninteresting type. On the throne, however, and in
|
