| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians by Martin Luther: us fortify our conscience with similar arguments. They help us in the
trials of our faith. They turn our attention from the Law to the promises,
from sin to righteousness; from death to life.
It is not for nothing that Paul bears down on this argument. He foresaw
this confusion of the promise and the Law creeping into the Church.
Accustom yourself to separate Law and Gospel even in regard to time.
When the Law comes to pay your conscience a visit, say: "Mister Law, you
come too soon. The four hundred and thirty years aren't up yet. When
they are up, you come again. Won't you ?"
VERSE 18. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of
promise.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: made carefully in stoves of stone. They were a simple strain of
people at the first, unlettered, only slightly touched with the
Spanish civilisation, but with something of a tradition of the arts
of old Peru and of its lost philosophy. Generation followed
generation. They forgot many things; they devised many things.
Their tradition of the greater world they came from became mythical
in colour and uncertain. In all things save sight they were strong
and able, and presently chance sent one who had an original mind
and who could talk and persuade among them, and then afterwards
another. These two passed, leaving their effects, and the little
community grew in numbers and in understanding, and met and settled
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: life, nor is there any attempt at the hypocritical conversation of
drawing-rooms furnished with highly respectable matrons. When, alas!
will respectability be charming? When will the women in good society
vouchsafe to show rather less of their shoulders and rather more wit
or geniality? Marguerite Turquet, the Aspasia of the Cirque-Olympique,
is one of those frank, very living personalities to whom all is
forgiven, such unconscious sinners are they, such intelligent
penitents; of such as Malaga one might ask, like Cardot--a witty man
enough, albeit a notary--to be well "deceived." And yet you must not
think that any enormities were committed. Desroches and Cardot were
good fellows grown too gray in the profession not to feel at ease with
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