| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: promoter of the Revolution; then it helped to destroy the
Revolution, when that had, under Napoleon, become a levelling
despotism; then it helped, as actively, to keep revolutionary
principles alive, after the reaction of 1815:--a Protean
institution, whose power we in England are as apt to undervalue as
the governments of the Continent were apt, during the eighteenth
century, to exaggerate it. I mean, of course, Freemasonry, and the
secret societies which, honestly and honourably disowned by
Freemasonry, yet have either copied it, or actually sprung out of
it. In England, Freemasonry never was, it seems, more than a
liberal and respectable benefit-club; for secret societies are
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's
assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces;
but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both
could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully.
The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because
of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe
to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose
that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he
Second Inaugural Address |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: with us another day--which, indeed, I can no longer urge--give me
at least half an hour more. You used to love pictures, and I
have a gallery of portraits, some of them by Vandyke,
representing ancestry to whom this property and castle formerly
belonged. I think that several of them will strike you as
possessing merit."
General Browne accepted the invitation, though somewhat
unwillingly. It was evident he was not to breathe freely or at
ease till he left Woodville Castle far behind him. He could not
refuse his friend's invitation, however; and the less so, that he
was a little ashamed of the peevishness which he had displayed
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