| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: ordered by my Superiors, God will ask for no other excuse. As a
passenger in a good vessel with a good pilot need give himself
no farther concern, but may go to sleep in peace, because the
pilot has charge over all, and 'watches for him'; so a religious
person who lives under the yoke of obedience goes to heaven as if
while sleeping, that is, while leaning entirely on the conduct of
his Superiors, who are the pilots of his vessel, and keep watch
for him continually. It is no small thing, of a truth, to be
able to cross the stormy sea of life on the shoulders and in the
arms of another, yet that is just the grace which God accords to
those who live under the yoke of obedience. Their Superior bears
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: death-warrant of the prisoner. Then Lincoln began his address to
the jury. He was not there as a hired attorney, he told them, but
because of friendship. He told of his old relations with Jack
Armstrong, of the kindness the prisoner's mother had shown him in
New Salem, how he had himself rocked the prisoner to sleep when
the latter was a little child. Then he reviewed the testimony,
pointing out how completely everything depended on the statements
of this one witness; and ended by proving beyond question that
his testimony was false, since, according to the almanac, which
he produced in court and showed to judge and jury, THERE WAS NO
MOON IN THE SKY THAT NIGHT at the hour the murder was committed.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: and pressing it to his hip went back into the room, and standing
in front of the woman, lowered his eyes and asked in a low voice:
'What do you want?'
She looked at his pale face and his quivering left cheek, and
suddenly felt ashamed. She jumped up, seized her fur cloak, and
throwing it round her shoulders, wrapped herself up in it.
'I was in pain . . . I have caught cold . . . I . . . Father
Sergius . . . I . . .'
He let his eyes, shining with a quiet light of joy, rest upon
her, and said:
'Dear sister, why did you wish to ruin your immortal soul?
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