| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of
fortune, and, down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to
another. As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind,
as children of their sire, we beseech of Thee this help and mercy
for Christ's sake.
FOR GRACE
GRANT that we here before Thee may be set free from the fear of
vicissitude and the fear of death, may finish what remains before
us of our course without dishonour to ourselves or hurt to others,
and, when the day comes, may die in peace. Deliver us from fear
and favour: from mean hopes and cheap pleasures. Have mercy on
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: /returning upon itself/ which is one of the soul's graces, was a non-
existent sense for him. The ferocity of the Northern man, with which
the English blood is deeply tainted, had been transmitted to him by
his father. He was inexorable both in his good and evil impulses.
Paquita's exclamation had been all the more horrible to him, in that
it had dethroned him from the sweetest triumph which had ever
flattered his man's vanity. Hope, love, and every emotion had been
exalted with him, all had lit up within his heart and his
intelligence, then these torches illuminating his life had been
extinguished by a cold wind. Paquita, in her stupefaction of grief,
had only strength enough to give the signal for departure.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: we help them to accomplish? Euthyphro replies, that all these difficult
questions cannot be resolved in a short time; and he would rather say
simply that piety is knowing how to please the gods in word and deed, by
prayers and sacrifices. In other words, says Socrates, piety is 'a science
of asking and giving'--asking what we want and giving what they want; in
short, a mode of doing business between gods and men. But although they
are the givers of all good, how can we give them any good in return? 'Nay,
but we give them honour.' Then we give them not what is beneficial, but
what is pleasing or dear to them; and this is the point which has been
already disproved.
Socrates, although weary of the subterfuges and evasions of Euthyphro,
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