| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: death-fever, Jesus cries, 'I thirst.' The deadly vinegar is
elevated to Him.
His head sinks, and the sacred corpse 'swings senseless of the
cross.' A sheet of vermilion flame shoots sheer through the air
and vanishes; the rocks of Carmel and Lebanon cleave asunder; the
sea rolls on high from the sands its black weltering waves. Earth
yawns, and the graves give up their dwellers. The dead and the
living are mingled together in unnatural conjunction and hurry
through the holy city. New prodigies await them there. The veil
of the temple - the unpierceable veil - is rent asunder from top to
bottom, and that dreaded recess containing the Hebrew mysteries -
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: ERNEST. You think, then, that in the sphere of action a conscious
aim is a delusion?
GILBERT. It is worse than a delusion. If we lived long enough to
see the results of our actions it may be that those who call
themselves good would be sickened with a dull remorse, and those
whom the world calls evil stirred by a noble joy. Each little
thing that we do passes into the great machine of life which may
grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless, or transform
our sins into elements of a new civilisation, more marvellous and
more splendid than any that has gone before. But men are the
slaves of words. They rage against Materialism, as they call it,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: get a wife and bairns of his own, since he was so fond of them, "I have
no clearness of mind upon that point," he would reply. If nobody called
him in to dinner, he stayed out. Mrs. Hob, a hard, unsympathetic woman,
once tried the experiment. He went without food all day, but at dusk,
as the light began to fail him, he came into the house of his own
accord, looking puzzled. "I've had a great gale of prayer upon my
speerit," said he. "I canna mind sae muckle's what I had for denner."
The creed of God's Remnant was justified in the life of its founder.
"And yet I dinna ken," said Kirstie. "He's maybe no more stockfish than
his neeghbours! He rode wi' the rest o' them, and had a good stamach to
the work, by a' that I hear! God's Remnant! The deil's clavers! There
|
