| 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: schoolmaster.
The Apostle declares that we are free from the Law. Christ fulfilled the
Law for us. We may live in joy and safety under Christ. The trouble is, our
flesh will not let us believe in Christ with all our heart. The fault lies not
with Christ, but with us. Sin clings to us as long as we live and spoils our
happiness in Christ. Hence, we are only partly free from the Law. "With
the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin."
(Romans 7:25.)
As far as the conscience is concerned it may cheerfully ignore the Law. But
because sin continues to dwell in the flesh, the Law waits around to
molest our conscience. More and more, however, Christ increases our
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: end first! A cold in the head? Yes, that's true; but if she has
caught cold, I can't say when, I don't know anything about it--
nothing, nothing at all. I have always kept her well covered;
she's always had as much as three covers on her. The truth is,
it was when you came, the time before last; you were all the time
insisting upon opening the windows in the house!"
"But once more I tell you," cried Madame Dupont, "we are not
putting any blame on you."
"Yes," cried the woman, more vehemently. "I know what that kind
of talk means. It's no use--when you're a poor country woman."
"What are you imagining now?" demanded the other.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: them; Montegnac seemed tossed in their midst like a vessel at sea.
When a house, an estate, a village, a region, passes from the wretched
condition to a prosperous one, without becoming either rich or
splendid, life seems so easy, so natural to living beings, that the
spectator may not at once suspect the enormous labor, infinite in
petty detail, grand in persistency like the toil buried in a
foundation wall, in short, the forgotten labor on which the whole
structure rests.
Consequently the scene that lay before him told nothing extraordinary
to the young Abbe Gabriel as his eye took in the charming landscape.
He knew nothing of the state of the region before the arrival of the
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