| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: but they fill the world with their pratings and writings, as
though, indeed, the Spirit could not come through the writings
and spoken word of the apostles, but [first] through their
writings and words he must come. Why [then] do not they also
omit their own sermons and writings, until the Spirit Himself
come to men, without their writings and before them, as they
boast that Me has come into them without the preaching of the
Scriptures? But of these matters there is not time now to
dispute at greater length; we have elsewhere sufficiently
urged this subject.
For even those who believe before Baptism, or become believing
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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: learned of the treacherous conduct of one in whom he had every
reason to trust. That evening the prayer seemed unusually short
and formal. As the singing stopped he arose abruptly and left the
room. I hastened after him, fearing some sudden illness. 'What is
it?' I asked. 'It is this,' was the reply; 'I am not yet fit to
say, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us."'
It is with natural reluctance that I touch upon the last prayer of
my husband's life. Many have supposed that he showed, in the
wording of this prayer, that he had some premonition of his
approaching death. I am sure he had no such premonition. It was I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: And clad in bright and burnished panoply
Athena strode across the stretch of sick and shivering sea!
To the dull sailors' sight her loosened looks
Seemed like the jagged storm-rack, and her feet
Only the spume that floats on hidden rocks,
And, marking how the rising waters beat
Against the rolling ship, the pilot cried
To the young helmsman at the stern to luff to windward side
But he, the overbold adulterer,
A dear profaner of great mysteries,
An ardent amorous idolater,
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