| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: this side and then o' that, till at last he said, 'Young man, it's
the devil making use o' your pride and conceit as a weapon to war
against the simplicity o' the truth.' I couldn't help laughing
then, but as I was going home, I thought the man wasn't far wrong.
I began to see as all this weighing and sifting what this text
means and that text means, and whether folks are saved all by
God's grace, or whether there goes an ounce o' their own will
to't, was no part o' real religion at all. You may talk o' these
things for hours on end, and you'll only be all the more coxy and
conceited for't. So I took to going nowhere but to church, and
hearing nobody but Mr. Irwine, for he said notning but what was
Adam Bede |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: dominions?"
"What is it?" inquired one of the kuren hetmans.
"Eh! what! Evidently the Tatars have plastered up your ears so that
you might hear nothing."
"Tell us then; what has been going on there?"
"That is going on the like of which no man born or christened ever yet
has seen."
"Tell us what it is, you son of a dog!" shouted one of the crowd,
apparently losing patience.
"Things have come to such a pass that our holy churches are no longer
ours."
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: and called it good. Not only was he bronzed and creased, but he
was a new man under his skin, with a grip on things and a
seriousness and control. His old companions were amazed when he
declined to hit up the pace in the good old way, while his father's
crony rubbed hands gleefully, and became an authority upon the
reclamation of wayward and idle youth.
For four years Neil Bonner's mind had lain fallow. Little that was
new had been added to it, but it had undergone a process of
selection. It had, so to say, been purged of the trivial and
superfluous. He had lived quick years, down in the world; and, up
in the wilds, time had been given him to organize the confused mass
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